Updated InGame test of the available weapons in the game.
Coming next:
And finaly a playtest (hopefully soon)
After watching the video and some pondering, i realized you do not need to speed up or slow down anything. The player will have to carefully time their reloads to give themselves the needed time to avoid damage and hit targets. If each weapons has different reload times, then this has to be taken into consideration for strategic use.
Yes this is the idea behind the reload speed. But it can look very strange at faster reload speed later.
The best on-rail-shooter i played use also funny moments, so you kill all enemys and turn around to walk further. but if you reload at this moment you might have a problem. looks like this would the perfect moment but after you turned around there is an enemy jjust about to attack.
I loved such moments, if you remember this there is no problem because you simply wait for this and reload after. but if you dont, the enemy catch you while reloading and hits you.
Just get stuck a little with the sync of player mesh and weapon mesh animations.
I found a workaround but it is kinda a strange code. I guess this is the moment to post a problem in the forum, maybe someone knows a clean solution.
Added new UI Images for Weapons and Ammo.
Also sync the reload animation with the sounds.
So Weapons are basicly done now.
Some changes for a few of the shooting sounds are needed, also tweak the reload animation a little.
The weapon upgrade and buy system is also fully working now.
Short vid::
Working on some of the menu Images. More a try how the colors could look like if i stay within the theme and base colors where i started.
I think every game should have a Online Leaderboard. Awesome Work!
Thank you. This leaderboard is more meant to be the local offline version, but the code is already prepared so it could also be used online. Not sure if it makes much sence to do it as online thought.
The moment the new much more improved demo version is ready i will also put it on the epic store.
I know epic and steam have already a good system for online leaderboards.
So i just would need to implement the code from the framework and people can use the leaderboards as the know them.
Not sure how to implement them at the moment, but the game will defenetly have online leaderboards. No matter if i host this myself somewhere or use epic/steam for it. Most likely it will be local/epic/steam.
I would encourage Online Leaderboard that can also function Locally. Online Leaderboards offer a form of Multiplayer Tournament/PVP in Single Player Games, without having to implement replication in the game itself.
even in games that dont need it, such as a Single Player Horror Game or Visual Novel.
I originally came to UnrealEngine to develop a 3D Competitive Treasure Hunting Maze & Monsters game I called Dragon’$ Gold. At that time, I did not have the skills needed to bring it to life. However, after I acquired the needed skills, I made another attempt to revive it under Project VAPOR, which is currently sitting dormant on my hardrive awaiting resurrection.
Good point, thank you for the suggestion. In this case you would need to update them only and have always if connected the leaderboard from all players.
I really like the idea.
I will dig into this more at a later point. Only localy was more meant for people they dont want to have a leaderboard for all. It´s more a thing if you want to have only want to see your own progress.
At the moment i am not sure how to handle this exactly. First i need to see how the epic/steam leaderboards are function.
But this is a thing with player agency also, i can give them whatever they want. I can put always more display options for this into the game. I am glad this is more a question of “what should i use” then “is it possible to do”.
It is always better to add more options then remove them, i know player (and i can talk for myself) don´t like if you remove things they might liked.
Almost ready with the Weapons and Menus.
I need to figure out how the Epic store works. Not even sure if it works the same way to make a demo version playable without a finished game right now.
Already paid the fee but was more focused on steam because i announced the new demo for today.
So i just made the new demo version with all the new stuff on steam available first.
A few images from the cemetery i work on. I try hard to stick with the art style i started the project. I also wanted to use as less materials as possible and still looks good enough. I get away with just 6 different materials for all models in the scene.
Another day another test.
I did test if i can get away with only 2 materials (2 dif / 2 orm textures no normals) for a mausoleum and still have it look kinda realistic. Seems like it works.
Just needed a few different Nanite meshes to make it work.
I am still impressed what you can do with Nanite.
I created lots of modular nanite walls and pillars, so this can easy be changed in size and look.
Next will be the roof. After this almost all models are ready to finish the level.
I put a lot of work into doing the UV´s a way so i can use only 1 material that only use a base texture for the color, no normal no orm. I think the result is pretty nice and the models look realisitc enough for what i try to do.
Now with the new and the old models i already build i can finaly finish this level.
Here is the result of just playing a little to mix and match all together.
Edit:
Here i use 4 out of 6 materials i use for the whole graveyard to see if this works. Seems like it is possible without the need of a lot textures for each model and still looks pretty nice. This feels like a very performant way but still have a realistic look.
Tested a few combinations if it really works the way i want. Turns out it is ready to use. I can build a few hundret differnt looking models with all the parts i have build so far.
It is not the look of a graveyard, i wanted to build something different but still look like a graveyrad.
The best of all, i can, if i want to, just use a single dif texture.
Next i will try to set up the whole thing and hope it still looks the way i hade in mind as i started.
Hello,
Do you have and idea when your game will release on Steam?
Hello @leb78 ,
i hope to have the standart levels ready till february next year. At least an unpolished version to do maybe a public playtest to gather some feedback.
Hopefully the game can be finally finished and released within the second quater of 2025.
Wow. Very nice.
Today i did a last test how it looks if i scale the polycount down.
I think it is still good enough because i know a player will never come very close to the models to notice a difference.
Now the models have 1-3 MB each instead of 20-x MB. I did not do the math how much this will be in the end, but this will make the needed drive space much smaller.
Now it is time to start building 
Here is a first test how this all will look in game.
