Impressive but perhaps unmanagable. Sometimes it’s useful to visualize your data straight onto the level to see what you are doing, but, there’s so much going on you can barely navigate.
At such times It’s often more useful to remove the visual bloat from the level (those colored events on rail?) and move them to data, since data can be visualized just when you need it and in any format you need it.
A while ago I shamelessly advertized my Event Manager plugin which could help calming your mind (and interface).
The idea behind it is that you can set up “action, reaction” in your level for just any event, from simply moving over the rail to a custom event the mind comes up with. It uses the “observer pattern” to do so.
Any action, either simple or advanced (Player moves 20% over rail, kills enemy X, did not find Y), can be set up beforehand, like:
A benefit is being able to centralize your event / reaction structure to code, and minimize the clutter shown on the level editor.
I think it’s silly to display “take damage” when you visibly walk through the trap. Maybe it makes more sense to display where the damage came from (a blood texture bottom right or left etc.) so that the player can immerse in the environment and receive feedback on positions he gets damaged from (so UI position functions as useful feedback).
You might find this useful then:
Math question. finding distance to the edge of a plane in direction from center. - #12 by Roy_Wierer.Seda145
I also included it with my Utility Plugin
But the player walks right through it? That doesn’t seem right. If he needs to destroy the statue, maybe spawn enemies until the statue is destroyed, and when destroyed, walk to the next part? Else the player could just run forward and ignore the fire.
The flame statues do get the attention. I like that they are nearby while the enemies spawn. The player will feel the tension “should I shoot the flying ones, or the statues”, while getting near the statues.
In the current scene, I don’t think they have a purpose. They’re there, you can see they’re there (it won’t be a surprise), then after X delay they start walking like known (zombie like) enemies. Makes me wonder, what makes them special? They don’t run super fast, don’t behave differently, I could see them realllly early as a statue, what does it do to me?
I think maybe, that if they had surprised me in this particular scene, they’d have had a place. Like being invincible as stone, running super fast 4 at once, or… maybe like the Dark Souls 1 Gargoyles, 2 (smaller threat) out of 6 (large threat) early bosses. maybe, they’d have a special power. Maybe, they’d totally surprise me being camouflaged as part of walls, but rn they’re just regular zombies.
At the point you shoot the arms off and they start kicking, this might have an unintended effect on the public. To me it is amusing, because it reminds me of the Monty Python scene “just a flesh wound” , a comedy of the hero defeating the black knight (by removing all his limbs), and the knight just won’t give up. What I’m trying to say here is, maybe, who is this enemy who turned from a statue, to zombie, to a limbless kicking uhhhh… The expectation of a zombie is, it tries to eat me. the expectation of a statue is, it’s a statue. but what just happened? A statue just tried to kick me like a zombie? I’m just confused? Maybe not amused or surprised.
There’s something odd going on top left with em disappearing, and a “statue > enemy” kind of respawn going on . You could use the same enemy character as a statue without respawning anything, fixes the glitching. The animation blueprint, the AI logic tree could stick to a “wait” state until triggered.
The “Headshot” sound effect… It was satisfying in old Quake… UE tournament? Like “headshooot” “double killll” “multikilllll” but on the video it repeats “headshot” all the time which I think maybe is too easy or too repetitive to do good. It sounds a bit annoying. Does it have a gameplay purpose that I don’t see on the UI? Point is to make it satisfying. In my case (playing a rail shooter with dismembering limbs) I’d probably find splatter (gore) of headshot more satisfying than repetitive sound effect.