BA2a - Week 5 Summary

Creating a Moving Sky

After the practice pitch, I got feedback that I should make the sky a cylinder which would rotate slowly. II implemented this in Unreal Engine using a sky graphic I had made (revealed in a later post about UI and Graphics), and then to get it to rotate I used timelines.

Setting the Camera

To create the camera view, I simply added a blueprint with a camera inside and used Set View Target with blend. This will let the game know that this is the camera we want the player to see.

Setting up the second Canon

Now that I have one canon set up and firing with a projectile, it was time to implement the second canon. All I had to do was to copy the first canons blueprint and edit it to suit the functions of the water canon.

Because this canon will not shoot a projectile, but rather firing water; I thought the best solution would be to create it from a particle effect. The projectiles will still act as a 'firing bullet' (so to speak), however it will be invisible so the player will believe it is the particle effect that is hitting the target. For the water particle effect, I downloaded the particle effects from the Epic Games Workshop and then modified it.

Switching between the two canons

Before I was able to create the blueprints to switch between the two canons, I firstly needed to create some Binding Inputs. I needed to do this in able to use the 'possess' node.

I was inspired by this tutorial, but instead of the character getting into the car, it would be switching between the two canons.

For the game to realise which canon I am controlling, I created a Boolean variable called 'Controlled' for both canon blueprints which is set to 'True' when the player is using a particular canon; however switches to 'False' as soon as the player changes the canon.

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