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[agent00]

Hi comrades!!
We are a small group of students developing our very first game.
We will be posting our progress in this thread.



Agent-00 is an isometric puzzle game in wich the player takes control of a Soviet spy, Agent-00, who has to infiltrate United Sates to uncover a secret government proyect.

Contact: https://twitter.com/Agent_00_GAME

[agent00]

Post 1 - Core Mechanic: Room Rotation

Hi again comrades!  

We have developed our first core mechanic, Room Rotation.
Rooms are divided in two sections, A and B, with two walls each section. At the begining of each level, all A sections are displayed and are visible while B sections are invisible.

When the player uses this mechanic the room where he is in changes its rotation in Z axis 180º, the walls of section A changes from visible to invisible using a dissolve effect. The B section walls turns to visible using the same effect.
Every prop or interactive object are assigned to a wall so they can do this effect too when the player uses this mechanic (we will implement this feature in the future).

https://twitter.com/Agent_00_GAME

[YogX]

This looks super cool - reminds me of Framed

[agent00]

Post 2 - Core Mechanic: Portals

What's up comrades!  

We have developed our second core mechanic, connecting doors through portals.
As we explained in the last post "Room Rotation" rooms are build in two sections, A and B. This ones are connected between each other by doors. Each room has four public variables where we can save other Room Actor (via Editor), then we just need to tell the room wich door is going to connect with the other room. (We have to do the exact same thing in the other room).

When the player uses the input inside the door trigger ("A" on XBOX controller and E on keyboard) and if the two doors are visible, this two do an animation rotating in Z axis 90º relative to their position and then the player is allowed to go through this doors.
If a player tries to open a door that is connected to an invisible door (The invisible section in the room we want to go) there will be displayed a brick wall that won't let the player pass through.

Also when the player enters the trigger of the door, an outline will be displayed to show that the input is going to open that door.

https://twitter.com/Agent_00_GAME

[agent00]

Post 3 - Core Mechanics Update: Portals And Room Rotation

What's up comrades!  

We have been working really hard this week and we got a big update for both of our core mechanics.
Let's start with the "Room Rotation" mechanic.

Room Rotation: Dissolve effect applies to decoration + Feedback.

We needed really hard to get props inside each room make the dissolve effect when the player rotates a room and to turn their collision to "No Collision" if they are in the invisible section.

To decorate our rooms we make "Child Blueprints" from the main Blueprint Actor "RoomBP". In this child actors we added some static meshes but we had no way to make them dissapear when the room was rotated so we developed a new system to do this.

So the first thing we did was set two arrays inside each child blueprint, one for the "A" section and the other one for the "B" section, inside each array we add the Static meshes/Props that belongs to these sections.

Then we tried to directly call the dissolve effect on this props but that was impossible because we realized that "Timelines" and "For each loops" doesn't get along (We needed the timeline to make the dissolve effect in the exact time we needed). So we end up saving the results of each timeline in a variable and then applying this value in the loops.

Also we added a button on top of the room the player is in to remind the player that he can rotate the room. (This will help us in the future when we implement the new rooms that the player won't be able to rotate.)

Portals: Automatic animation + Feedback.

In the "Post 2 Core Mechanic: Portals" we've talked about our portals system and how this works.

We were not convinced that the player was the one who had to enter the room so now when the players press the input the input will be disabled and an animation will be displayed from the players position to a position inside the portal and then the player will be teleported to the other portal and will do an animation from its position to the room center.
*It's impossible to post a photo of the Blueprint because it's huge.

As we did in the Rooms we added a feedback button that is only displayed when the player enters the door trigger.

https://twitter.com/Agent_00_GAME

[agent00]

Post 4 - Core Mechanic: Picking Up Files

What's up comrades!  

Today we have developed our last core mechanic, "Stealing Files".
Our Agent needs to pick up some files to exit each level (The elevetor won't open till the player picks up the indicated amount of files).

We've added a feedback effect too. A glowing sphere spawns in front of the Agent when the player picks up a file, this sphere goes up and when it reachs the height of the Agents head, the sphere goes to the number that indicates how many files does the player have and the the sphere "explodes".
We couldn't use the Destructive Static Mesh that Unreal have because we didn't know how to trigger that effect without making the object collide with other object, so we added a visual effect and at the same time we destroy the Blueprint Actor  that contains the glowing sphere.

https://twitter.com/Agent_00_GAME

[agent00]

Post 5 - Side Mechanic: Registering

What's up comrades!  

We've been working hard this week to develope new side mechanics. The first one is "Register".

This mechanic consist in two parts:

• Register: The player has to hold the input for three seconds to open this desk and take the key inside it. If the player releases the input the countdown will start again. Once the player finishes

• Open Briefcase: Once the player has the key, it will be necessary for the player to find the briefcase and open it with the key, this will provide a file for our agent.

To show the player if he can open the briefcase or not we display a 2D widget. If the player doesnt have any key a red circle with a locked poadlock will be shown otherwise if the player does have a blue circle with a unlocked padlock will be displayed the same way as the locked one.
Also we added a shiny material to a cube inside the briefcase and a smoke fx so when the players open it a mysterious and epic effect will be shown.

https://twitter.com/Agent_00_GAME

[agent00]

Post 6 - Portals Update: Invisible Doors Feedback

Hi again comrades!  

Since we are doing some playtestings we realized our invisible doors needed some feedback so the player knows if the room he is going in have any door in the invisible section.
We decided that a small triangle will make the player know if theres a door or not without making too much noise in the screen.

This small triangle will be only displayed if there's a invisible door, so in our check visibility function in each door we set visible or not depending on the visibility of the door. An animation will be played when the door turnst invisible.

This is the final result

https://twitter.com/Agent_00_GAME

[agent00]

Post 7 - Editor: Level Editor

What's up comrades!  

After making some levels for our playtestings we realized we needed a faster way to make our levels so we developed a level editor for our game.

This level editor is divided in two parts.

• Create Level Basic

For our editor to work with rooms we need a "Grid" in the level at the position x=0, y=0 and z=0. This grid have inside 36 positions ready to be used as reference for the room position. So "Create level basics" button spawns every blueprint, trigger, lightning or else each level needs.

• Positionate Rooms

Once we have our level with everything we need we can use the "positionate rooms" buttons. The level editor has 36 buttons, each button makes reference to a grid position.
If we have a room selected and we press a button, this room position will be the grid position.

https://twitter.com/Agent_00_GAME