TLDR
Building A Story
Zombies
Robots
Juice
Other Features
Calibration
Fixing Bugs
Building a Story
Last sprint we made conceptual leaps and bounds when it comes to the philosophy of our product. We are not just selling a fitness app, we are selling a fitness game. And a crucial part of most games is a clean narrative. We aimed to achieve that using our previously disjoint activities and combining them into a cohesive experience.
We present to you: Urban Rush
In Urban Rush there are three stages. The first stage is quite standard and is what you all are used to so far. Much of our development has been focused on the first stage with its squatting activities and car dodges. As you get further into the game the ambiance of the world will change to something a bit... spookier. BAM! Now you have zombies chasing after you, but also a baseball bat in your hands. Use the bat to eliminate the zombies, while also dealing with the same obstacles we see in the first stage. Once you get through that stage we get to the final most difficult stage. The robot apocalypse. Be prepared to dodge a hellfire of bullets from our robot drones, but don't fear you can now fight back. Use punches to launch projectiles at the drones to eliminate them and gain points.
Zombies
The zombie activity was much iterated on and was something we started anew this sprint as opposed to the robot drones which were in development for a period of time. Zombies are programmed to move towards the player while the player is dodging other obstacles. Players are given a bat and have to hit them with a high enough velocity to make them despawn.
Robots
This task was very frustrating because it relies heavily on the VR Pawn existing in the world which means a lot of headset wearing, whereas many of the other tasks can be tested in the simulation world. Another challenge for the Robot activity was projectiles. Originally we opted for a standard impulse node mechanism but them opted to use Unreal's build in Projectile Movement Component. Big Mistake. Many hours were spent trying to make it work (which it did) but all this caused was lost time and a limit to what our Robots were able to do. Also to make the collision work we had to create a new collision target for the turret so that our obstacles only interact with the turret and don't accidentally trigger collision effects with other overlap objects. After a lot of fidgeting we were able to complete an experience where Robots shoot at you and you can shoot at them with all the collision working properly and particle effects to match.
Juice
We changed the feel of the game when entering in the zombie and robot levels by changing the fog, sun location, and music. We also added sounds to many objects, such as the robots and zombies. We also made the UI look nicer. Added instructions for all the levels.
Other Features
We spent a long time figuring out how to reset our game, but then realized we could just open the level again using a blueprint node.
We added dynamic positioning of the squat gates and coins based on player height.
We made more variations of activities
Added haptic feedback on the controllers when player is in the menu and when hitting zombies
Calibration
We had many things to calibrate this week including.
Dynamic height adjustment
Coin placements
Fog
Sun positions
Activities
Video: