College Game Jam Project: Starship XS

Hello, my name's Joshua Morris and welcome to my game jam project.. stuff.  

For the entire project, I'll be working with Cort Roberts all the way to the end. Our roles are simple, Cort makes the concept art, I make the models/animations, and  essentially put them in UE4 and make a game with them. Also we both collaborated on our ideas. Thought I'd mention that. 

Before we get into the meat and potatoes, lets talk about the pitch, eh? 

The pitch we both went with is Star ship XS. That's it, you can continue on below now.

 Here's a quick mock up I've made of what the game could look like and its UI.

Here's a piece of concept art made by Cort Roberts.

Pretty cool eh? 

Now onto the models I've made. I've created two for now, one for the player, and the other for the enemy.

Here's the model for the player, front and side.

Now that's a cool looking space craft.

Now for the enemy, front and side, and its character rig .

You might be wondering, why a wasp? Well here's the twist, its a robotic wasp! Look at it's antenna, there satellite dishes. Cool eh? 

Now I have made animations for both of the models. The ship has two, and the wasp has one. 

The first animation for the ship is when you spawn in the game, it'll fly on in the camera view. Second is moving the ship down. 

Now for the wasp. The animation it has for now is hovering. 

That's pretty much it for now. There some more ideas we're both thinking on adding, for example there's going be a fly swatter power up and you can guess what that's gonna do.

Here's concept art ideas for the boss. Phase 1 and 2.

More concept art from Cort. This time an enemy variants and stuff.

Update Below. Underneath the issues listed,  are stuff I've implemented in the game.

There's been a few issues while making this game. I'll list them down below. I'll also list issues that cropped up after packaging the game. 

1. The player's HUD widget shows up in the menu. The only way for it to go away, is to click on "how to play" button, then click on "quit". This should make it disappear.

This is before packaging the game:

This after packaging the game:

2. The player's HUD widget still shows up when go back on "how to play". I don't know how to fix it, that's been their since the beginning.

3.There's two health bars. Good reason. I've made two player BPs (Blueprints), and tried to connect the second BP to the first player's health BP, but that didn't work. I ended up making another health bar and function for the second BP. That's why there two. 

4. The enemies don't always spawn consistently. Don't know how to fix that either. The max amount of enemies  is 10, but it seems to be random amount of enemies that will be spawned each game. 

5. The player doesn't shoot, and no enemies spawn on the second level. Don't know how to fix that. Was working before packaging the game. 

Now going away from the issues, lets take a look at the stuff I've implemented.

I've made a working player BP that moves and shoots. Same goes with the enemy, it shoots when the player is in its line of sight. Also, if you collide into the enemy, it'll explode, but also taking 50% off your health. And did I mention earlier that I've made a health bar that works?  

I've made working menus ranging from the main menu, to the game over screen. 

Made a background that moves on its own. It makes it look like its camera is auto scrolling.  Can't really show a picture of it, so you have to play the game to see it in action.

Also I've made a working score and time widgets. 

I couldn't figure out how to make a score function where if you get a certain amount of points, a win trigger will show up, and it will show a win prompt. To get around that, I made a trigger box that slowly goes up, underneath the player that will eventually you'll eventually touch. It'l show up around the 50 second mark. 

If you want to exit to menu on the second level (if the mouse cursor doesn't show up), press tab for the pause menu to show. The press tab again so a box shows up around "return to menu", and press enter. Press tab at least twice and then enter, and hopefully you'll escape to the menu. Or you can Alt-F4 the application.