Week 23.

Decided to try and and make my own special HUD, rather than the basic one the tutorial gave me. This ended up being really difficult, but also became really good practice for what I needed to learn. Started with the basics, health and mana, but also had to make spaces for things to bring up menus, put potions, and skills into as well. Had to make a massive inventory section, along with areas that you could see current equipment in. This made the knowledge I learn from the tutorial really stick with me better as well. The amount of work put into the HUD also astounds me now, since I was trying to make an actual one. Also learned that I had to make a drag and drop function for picking up items and whatnot. That made me cry a little.

Week 22.

The Tutorial from last week was finished, but I wanted to see if I could "equip" something on my character. I decided to try and do it by myself, and I actually managed to do just that by the 4th day of the week. I wanted a pickup that I could then use to equip a briefcase, which was neatly put on the Model's back (Its unsafe for a person to try and shoot a rifle with a briefcase in either of their hands). equipping the briefcase would then increase inventory sizel. I was really happy that I was able to do this, considering it was doing things the tutorial didn't cover. First hard blueprint logic I had to figure out for myself, and I was really proud of that.

Where else was he going to put it?

Week 21.

This week I was dead set on learning more about blueprint, and looked up a tutorial on how to use Unreal's UMG blueprints, which make up the game's HUD. The tutorial went through a lot of stuff about connecting events between blueprints, making blueprints  look nicer, and generally how things work in blueprints as well. By the end of the week, I had the HUD up and working, along with pickups that I could pick up and store in an inventory that the tutorial had me make. Great investment of my time, as I feel I got a lot smarter just making the blueprint and having to solve small errors that I made when trying to copy the tutorial.

All the basics the tutorial taught and some background particles.

Week 20.

Kept on working in blueprints this week, and also optimized the particles a bit more, so they would be even less ram intensive. Also realized that the AI I had running through the level would just stand in one inconvenient place once it ran its course, so I made him explode. I also brushed up on some parts of the level, removing the old landscape that went further than needed, and replaced it with a smaller one. Made a cloud particle so I could have my lightning and rain in a more reasonable area, rather than just being there without anything to make them. Made the lightning a million times better as well, making it better looking across the map, and up close. Made the lighting better too, you can actually see now.

Finally getting the scene to have the right feel.

Week 19.

Started doing more with blueprints, but before that I made the rest of the platformer level. It was now possible to make it to the goal without going into Sonic mode. In blueprints I made pickups that would let the player get back health and jumps. and also made a plume of fire that would hurt the player if they walked into it. Made it so the player would restart the level they were on if they died as well. 

Technically a game.

Week 18.

I felt like an idiot for most of the week trying to figure out how to talk between blueprints and get player health working. For some reason, something that I had done before (which was casting from blueprints to get variables to change in other blueprints) was so hard to remember. Never forgetting again. When I finally figured out what to do, I immediately went to making fire hurt the player, and give the player jumps to make them lose stamina. I made limited jumps a mechanic in my one level platformer, and the only joy I got this week was having people hate the jump limit.

Game was the base, people were the acid, therefore salt.

Week 17. Semester 2.

Got back into the classroom and immediately started looking at blueprints some more. I wanted to learn more about what I could do in it, and this is when I really started getting my feet in the water. I really wanted to get player health and stamina working, so I started working on that. Used what I learned from variables to start and try it. Got really sad when I couldn't figure out what to do even though I thought I knew. I also went back to almost all of my particles I had made, and made them more optimized for gameplay. The FPS in my level went from the poor 20 or so to a full 60 FPS, and made the game look better at the same time.