Untitled Gnome Game Devlog #2 - Friendship ended with BLENDER

Now UNREAL is my best friend

As I've imported skeletal mesh of the Gnome it will be nice to rename assets according to norms. Not necessary but future me will need to do it anyway to find everything easier. Also I've cleaned up physics asset and left only those shapes and constraints I really need. Also Imported main color texture and made simple material. It will do for now.

Main reason for a cleanup was that Gnome didn't simulate rigid body correctly with originally generated physics asset.

In other folder I've added animations, renamed them too and made 1D Blendspace. 1D means one dimension and because my Gnome will always face direction he's moving - it will do. From left to right I've placed Idle, Walk and Run animations and named axis Speed, because, well, animations are binded to speed, right?

Then I did the same thing to a backpack - it's animations are linked with Gnomes speed, so I have synced its local Speed variable with Speed I'm getting from Character by casting to main BP, that gets Speed form Character itself. 

Now it's time to make Gnome a Character of the game - and I've cut some corners here by simply modifying standart Character BP by replacing skeletal mesh and adding my 1D BS to its Animation Blueprint. Then I've added child actor component to the Character and placed backpack there. For now it's there permanently, but later on we'll make it a pickup object.

Modifying Movement was a simple task. We don't want our Character to be rotated with mouse of right joystick, so I've disconnected those inputs in Character BP. Then in Camera Boom I've set it to be completely static to its position, so it doesn't rotate with a Character, set Arm length and rotated it to 45° as I see fit the gameplay.

Do Collision Test will be set off for now, but later we will try to make Camera's Arm to hide objects that are in between Camera and Character.

And look what we got! What a cutie. And seems to work fine! We can see all animations are blended perfectly, We can stand, walk and run, our backpack and Gnome are and synced with each other.

Next time we will try to make our Gnome pick up stuff with simple Action.

If you are reading this log while working on your own Project - be sure to take some brakes - it will help you a lot to systematize your steps and will bring new ideas. Sitting behind screen 24/7 working on stuff will not get you anywhere and increases the risk of burnout. Go take a ride somewhere or just sit in a park looking on clouds. It's more fun than you think. Even if your day is bad or whether is not nice - be positive! <3

See ya!