So I decided in my spare time, when I am not making fancy effects and such, to actually learn about the game mechanics and blueprints, so I remade one of my favourite child hood games entirely in blueprint, some of the movement mechanics need work and there are graphical glitches, and no enemies. About 4 days to get to this point so far.
Once I finish the 2D remake, I plan to remake in 3D using the effects I’ve produced so far, and to learn more about the game mechanics C++ side.
I was unsure of what exactly captain comic was. So after a bit of research, I must say that what you have created looks great. I hope you will keep us updated as you progress through your remake. Great work!
A sweet walk down memory lane. I only played a few times because it was too boring for me, but it is an excelent learning exercise. Instead doing a classic like pong or bricks, you decided to make a more dynamic and complex game. Good choice.
Yeah I plan to use this thread to show ongoing progress from the 2D to the 3D version.
I actually was going to do a bricks game, but yeah I wanted something different, and have always wanted to recreate Captain Comic.
I have uploaded the current version of the game to my web server as a HTML5 build. I would like some feedback as to wether or not it runs (Seems to be some people have issues running it, and I occasionally get out of memory exceptions, even with Firefox Nightly 64-bit build). So far I have tested Firefox 32-bit and 64-bit no issues (Although I did notice that using 32-bit browser, it uses about 400mb memory after initial load, where as the 64-bit will use 2.1gb of memory). And it does not work on Chrome.
Also would like some tips on how I can reduce the download size, maybe the Epic devs can give some information on how they reduced the size for Tappy Chicken, right now shipping build is about 140mb.
Link is:
Controls are:
A = Move Left
D = Move Right
Space = Jump
C = Fire
L. Alt = Open
F = Wand Teleport
Very cool! One suggestion is to try out bUseFlatBaseForFloorChecks=true on your movement component. That should prevent the ‘sliding down’ behavior as the capsule sides over the edge of a ledge.
RE: Size, how much is cooked data and how much is the executable stuff? I know that when we put Tappy Chicken on the server we made sure it was serving everything gzip compressed which helps a huge amount for the executable. We also compiled optimizing for size and stripped out FreeType, Vehicle Physics, Speed Tree, Simplygon, and Recast (all doable from your Target.cs IIRC, no header hacking). I’ll ask to chime in on Monday for more details.
Hi , thanks for the tip. I originally has used bUseFlatBaseForFloorChecks, but due to the ledge overhang stuff, I was able to walk over the small gaps without any chance of falling into them, now I have a ledge overhang event that reduces the collision cylinder to a radius of one to ensure the player falls. There may be better ways, but messing with the ledge overhang values didnt really prove fruitful.
I just updated the webserver with the new code, which includes the bUseFlatBaseForFloorChecks. And some fixes to the jumping mechanics. There is a bug where for some reason u can fall straight through the KillZ volume down to the previous level.
Comic.data = 66.7mb (I dont suspect to be able to reduce this any further since thats just my assets, mainly the levels)
Comic.data.js = 78kb
Comic.html = 7kb
UE4Game-HTML5-Shipping.js = 67.8mb
UE4Game-HTML5-Shipping.js.mem = 6.03mb
UE4Game-HTML5-Shipping.bc = 74.4mb
I enabled gzip compression on the server and it has certainly helped in the download speed, so thanks for that tip.
I may need some help in stripping them out, as my project is a blueprint only project, I tried to add the Target.cs file (Generated project files) and tried specifying a whole bunch of defintions to zero ie. WITH_APEX=0. Which did reduce the engine size by a few kb. But when I tried to launch the resulting product, I just kept getting an error about FGenericPlatform::ExecutableName not implemented (Hopefully thats right)
Will do , as for Game Mechanics, I haven’t really thought too much about that, I will have to introduce more as the game will be very boring in 3d as is. I will be sticking to the same zones that are in the original, so like Forest, Lake, Space, Base, etc. but improve them graphically, and make them longer and probably harder.
I am just spit balling here, but I plan to introduce things such as traps, more interesting obstacles, probably some kind of puzzles (I will expand on the original with new items, etc.). More variation to enemies, more complex enemies (Graphically and behavior)
I kinda want to stick to the old school platformer, so dont want to introduce too many new movement mechanice, such as wall jumping, ledge climbing, etc. But I am thinking maybe multiple weapons.
When I am ready to begin the 3d side, I will begin with the movement mechanics, so i will probably upload what I have to my webserver and get some community feedback. I want to keep the whole development process open.
New video, enemies are now working.