Hello everyone! As a personal project in my spare time I’m developing a prototype of a first-person action game, project codename is Citizen Pain.

Here is a prototype on enemy mechanics. In the video I show some of the progress I made last month:

• Added Lunge attack, triggers as a running attack;
• Added Wild Swinging attack, as a follow-up to Lunge attack;
• Added Hit Blocked Stun, a state in which the enemy’s hit is blocked by the player;
• Enemy Hit animation;
  
  

This month I started making a greybox of the first map. I was inspired by the Boletaria level from Demon’s Souls, trying to understand how the gameplay mechanics are integrated into the level design:

I added rooms and passages, almost completed the stairwell leading to the first shortcut to the beginning of the level.

Added stairs, torches to illuminate dark areas, bridges, obstacles, and dangerous bridges without barriers where the player can risk falling if not careful about spacing during fighting.

Also in the greybox I am careful to make sure that the weenies are visible (the starting point, various buildings etc.).

Not barely halfway to the planned level, but I am already very happy with the result.

I will try to post updates weekly!

This week I continued to work on the level design.

I’m probably more than halfway through the planned level. I finished the second tower with the stairwell, and I had quite a bit of fun putting in areas with columns, torches to illuminate and guide the player, put in various props like barrels and boxes as obstacles and to make the room more interesting, and even a couple of balconies.

Also this month I plan to continue the level greybox.

I am building the second part of the level, where it will rejoin the starting point via a shortcut. I think I've gotten better at greyboxing. I'm hurrying a little bit and probably I am a little less consistent with the placement of props (barrels, crates etc.) so some rooms may seem a little more empty.

When I finish the greybox I'll have to place enemies and to set some traps, it will be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to it, but for now I have to focus on finishing the level.

The map got quite big.

Last stair tower in the map, it will be quite high, lots of stairs to place.

This past week I continued the greybox level design. I got to the final stages of my greyboxing, where all I need to finish is the boss room, and then I'll move on to iterate on the layout and enemy positioning.

I had fun making a very large hall with columns, made a bridge, put a last tower with stairs where it takes you back to the beginning of the level (and to the boss area), and place the usual lights to guide the player. 

Also in Unreal Engine thanks to Lumen is very convenient to be able to see the bounce of lights in dark areas right away, without having to do the usual slow bake lighting of static lights.

I also had to move a whole portion of the level to get the last tower to be near a particular area, but the fact that each room is a Group actor (each room is a group of walls, floors, lights and props), moving each room is like moving Lego blocks, it's very modular, and it took me just 5 minutes.

And with the boss room I’m done with adding new rooms. It will be time to start placing enemies.

I had to fix the stairs because the AI can’t walk on the stairs (when I had started greyboxing I had made them too high).

Navmesh fixed!

This past week I continued with greyboxing level design, completing the boss room. 

I started placing enemies in the map. To test the mechanics of the enemies, I am recreating the Boletaria level from Demon Souls. I put in Navmesh and redid some stairs, as they were too tall and narrow and the default Navmesh would not take them (I made them at least 100cm wide and 0.25 high). I positioned the enemies and tweaked their sight radius (some enemies should not trigger from a distance, so as to catch the enemy off guard for example). 

 Next step will be to create destructible props so it can hide behind various things (enemies, secret passages, traps etc.)

Destructible, I add a fracture, to be blown up with a Field system when you hit it with an attack.

Placed destructibles in the level. Also implemented a simple enemy logic: if the enemy has an obstacle in front, the enemy must destroy it with an attack. Simple and effettive.

Greyboxing level design continues, this time with the implementation of destructibles. I made destructibles as fractures. 

They can be destroyed when the player attacks them. Same logic was done for enemies, with the addition that if AIs have a destructible in front of them they always have to hit it. Also, I changed the player dash again. I had lowered the dash speed since it was too fast, creating a lot of motion sickness. Prevously, to prevent motion sickness, I had lowered it too much and the dash was very boring. I raised the dash speed again, but this time eliminating the motion sickness by greatly reducing the dash time (from more than half a second to ¼ second), I was inspired by the dash in Doom Eternal. 

Faster dash could make you too much stronger, so I greatly increased the consumed stamina for dash, now you can't dash 2 times in a row, and you have to wait 1-2 seconds before you have the stamina needed to dash again. Also I tweaked the Lunge attack, since this also was creating motion sickness due to the combination of high speed and dash time.

I had to stop a bit with greyboxing, I have some performance issues to reach 60fps because of too many lights in the level. I am putting in various triggers for switching the lights only when the player enters the area.

I am adding a new enemy, a soldier who shoots from afar.

I'm still implementing the soldier throwing arrows, fixing the arrow collider. I'm not sure if the size of the collider is right, a little too big.

I positioned the soldier with the crossbow, shooting the player from above while the 2 melee enemies attack the player. Also I placed a hole, there is a collider that kills on collision at the bottom when someone falls into it.

I’m adding new destructibles.

This week I stopped with the greybox to implement some gameplay things.

I added a new enemy, a soldier who shoots arrows from a distance. The arrows also destroy destructibles.

I also made some improvements to destructibles, including removing the collision with the player and enemies right after it's destroyed. Plus you can now destroy destructibles using dash.

I placed a hole in the level, where there is a collider at the bottom that kills the player and enemies.

I spent the rest of the time placing various destructibles in the level.

New destructibles: tables and chairs.

I am implementing a new enemy, the soldier swordsman: