BGP Week 4 – Soar Currents

One of the main features of Clouds Below, is the ability to unfold your wings, and soar on the wind. Initially it was intended that this could be used anywhere, but due to its game breaking ability, allowing the player to go anywhere, we decided that it had to be restricted in some way. Since the vertical slice is a linear puzzle platforming experience, where we want the player to go to specific places, in a specific order, we decided that we would have wind-currents, which would lead the player where we wanted, but still allow the player to move around somewhat freely in them. The first iteration of this, completed a few weeks ago, used gigantic (well, actually the size was variable), trigger volumes which simply added a velocity to the player in the direction the volume was pointed. We figured that we would place a whole bunch of these all over the area where we allowed the player to soar, and thus lead/force the player in a general direction.

The problem with this solution revealed itself during the official Alpha tests we conducted. Players could break out of these currents *way* too easily. It just wouldn’t do. Now, optimally, we would’ve designed the level in a way which allowed players to soar somewhat freely, but due to the narrow time frame, we reckoned that we wouldn’t be able to iterate on it enough times, for it to get good enough.

We therefor decided to redesign the current. Instead of having “boosting” volumes (boxes as they were), but rather design it more like the East Australian Current from the movie Finding Nemo. I created a blueprint in Unreal, which used an editable spline (explained vaguely in a previous post), spawning collision capsules between each of the splines points. Entering any of these changed a target location towards which the player always tried to aim at. This meant, that even though the player is free to move around in this current, he/she will always be pulled in the direction we wanted.

Before we also had to place out each trigger volume manually, and test it iteratively, as well as place particle systems manually. This was a very time consuming action and, time is not something we have. The new method allows us to just place a current-actor in the scene, and pull the spline however we want, and then let the blueprint add the volumes and particle systems automatically. This means that we can change things around way quicker.

Until next time – Let’s Soar// Sky OuO