Hi all,

It's been quite some time since i last posted a journal entry. This hasn't been for lack of development of the game, more lack of free time where i'm not being a Dad, working my day job, or finding a few minutes to add to the game. Unfortunately for everyone who reads my journals, writing about my progress kind of came last, and for that i'm sorry.

There have been many advancements to the game in the past three months, these are:

Porting of most of the gameplay code to C++

Certain parts of the game were quite slow. I had narrowed this down through a small profiling session to loops within Blueprints. It seems that while Blueprint is good for some things, for loops especially it has some issues, as well as casts, which cannot be resolved at compile-time like many C++ casts can, and will quickly bog down performance.
To resolve this i rewrote large amounts of the code in C++. During this time, I encountered some annoying bugs, such as this one, which I reported to the Unreal Engine developers, and they are fixing as we speak:

To rewrite my code in C++ i had to basically create a C++ base class for each blueprint and move variables first, then code a function at a time, manually rewriting it. In the process of doing this I learned a lot about Unreal Engine that i didn't know before, and this was a great learning exercise for me as well as helping improve the game's performance.

Adding new crate types

I have finally had time to add a new crate type to the game. The new crate type contains radioactive waste, and i have dubbed it the "goop crate". This crate appears later on in the game, after a major plot twist. The crate explodes with radioactive blobs of glowing green muck upon impact, which linger around and cause damage to any crates that pass across them:

I created this particle effect using CPU particles with collisions, which when they collide with a horizontal surface (by checking the surface normal) they leave a decal on the surface, which is embedded within an Actor with a timer set to fade it out by adjusting values in its material instance.

I am quite happy with the effect, and hope to find some time to add some more types of crate very soon!

Adjusting the apperance of the machines

I have decided that as i cannot get the previous artist for the game on board, and the look and feel of the game has changed anyway, i would like to go with a darker, grittier and less comedic, less cartoony feel for the game. The first part of this is to replace the comedy machines that produce the crates with something slightly more realistic. To aid this i have placed grilles on the sides of the machines and created a more realistic lamp which sits atop the machine. When the machine is due to produce a crate, a siren sounds and the lamp flashes. The flashing is realistic, working with a spotlight pointed at a mirrored surface, and a rotating lamp body which has a great effect. The model for the lamp cost me a cool $15 on turbosquid (let's be honest here, i am a programmer and i cant model something like this to save my life). Below is an example of the new machines in the game, and a development test in the editor:

As always comments are more than welcome! (it's encouraging to know that people read and sometimes enjoy what i write here). Let me know your thoughts, minor flames, or whatever comes to mind.

Bye for now and stay tuned for future developments!