Becoming a Social Media Guru
The above gif got a record breaking reception on my Twitter (a whole 10 likes!). This was showcasing my new and improved character controller: complete with bespoke running animations along with added HUD bob and tweaked ball sizes. Funnily enough, I had not implemented blendspaces for running at this stage (as I still lacked an idle animation) so no stopping was allowed when recording the gif. But let’s not sweat the details.
Like the Good Old Days
The game now supports split-screen (unfortunately I had no test subjects on hand to play the game with me at the time of writing.) I have only “tested” it with 2 players so far but the game feels pretty solid at this point. Although, I had to disable camera shake for the time being as I could not get the camera shakes to play for the correct players. (Player 1’s camera would bob when player 2 was running/jumping and vice versa).
What Next?
Most of the time was spent fiddling with UE4’s aim offsets, blendspaces and additive animations to get the character to move somewhat naturally (I’m no animator.) But they’re at a stage now where I won’t have to touch them for some time. So now I can focus on enhancing the core game.
I’m undecided on how to handle goals. When the player scores, should the game keep going like Halo Griffball or should the scene reset like in Rocket League? I think the answer to this will lie in how easy it is for the average player to score: whether I have the goals on the ground, in the air (or both?) or make them bigger or smaller. I guess I will have a clearer picture when I find people to test this with.
I guess it’s all experimental at this stage. Try a bunch of random things, see what works, and what doesn’t.
Robert J Harper 