Devblog Week 7: Sprint 3

We're all back hard at work so let's have a look at a few things we've been working on.

Since last Devblog, I invented what I like to call "Location Based Opacity". In essence, meshes which are in between the camera and the players are turned invisible. This is achieved using Material Instances with a opacity variable, and a HideableMesh blueprint. We do a raycast between the Camera and the Players, and cast all results to HideableMeshes, if this succeeds, we access their materials, and transition the opacity to 0. If a HideableMesh is no longer in the way, it will transition to becoming visible again. Mechanically, this is now fully functional, but for it to work properly in-game, the artists need to keep in mind this mechanic when designing walls & other meshes for the level.

I also, finally and way overdue, implemented Dynamic Player Spawning. Instead of having to define the number of players before starting the program, when you start the game, you now have to press A on the controller to spawn your player and start playing. This is achieved using SpawnDummyPawns, which, when the game starts, are created, and the controllers take possession of. The only thing they really do, is, when A is pressed, they tell the GameMode to Spawn another player and assign that controller to it.

That's it for this week! If you download the game, you'll notice a lot more art assets have found their way into the game, so it's definitely worth having a look!

-Glenn