Been working on a FPS Horror game called Arrhythmia. Pretty new to Blender and game creation all together so I am using this as a journal for my progress/problems.
Started with creating my Player.
Basically a cube with a camera and a rig with arms and a flashlight.
The Player seemed to work fine using logic bricks for keyboard movements (WASD) and a mousemove script.
Then…I added the arms, a flashlight, and some animations/sound. (still getting the sounds and animation for the flashlight to work right. If you click the left mouse button to turn the light on and off too fast it will get screwed up and then it doesn’t flow with the animation right. I need to figure out how to use some kind of priority logic so clicking the left mouse button will only work after the animation has completed it’s cycle)
Had a bunch of weirdness with clipping and collisions. My rig worked fine before I added arms. The armature seemed to be interfering with the Player Character physics…making it shake and hop at the beginning of the game…and every time I actuated the armature’s animation, the character hopped to the left. Lastly I had some problems with the flashlight clipping through walls and objects. I tried to encapsulate the entire armature within the bounds of the Player, but for some reason, that made the whole thing fly off the map. Solution was to select Player in Object mode, tab into edit mode, scale the player sit it was shorter than the armature rig in Z, scale along X and Y to make the bounds bigger and then snap the mass to the center. No more jumping shaking or clipping.
Started on HUD. Have some inventory icons on the HUD. They need some tweaking. NOt quite happy with the way they look yet.
Created blend file with objects for batteries and candy pick ups. These items, along with the Player and HUD are linked into each “level” (blend file)
Took waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long to figure out the logic bricks for;
Player that collides into “pick up” item (batteries and candy), then displays textual clue to pick up item, press EKEY to pick up item which also plays a sound…AND then ends the object. As I said…it took me forever! The problem was trying to get the sound to play BEFORE the object ended…but…I got it! (I almost threw my laptop across the room!)
Eventually, this will also add the picked up item(s) to inventory and show their values on the HUD.
Still need to tweak the flashlight armature so that the animation, light on and off and sound stay in sync. Need to figure out how to press FKEY so that it can’t be pressed again until the armature animation completes all of it’s frames. Right now, repeatedly pressing the FKEY turns the light off and on before the animation ends and geeks it all up!
I also now have a timer on the flashlight lamp that will set the energy back to 0.000 after a specific amount of time.
Did that so I can eventually have use the existing animation that will lower the arm with the flashlight when the timer runs out, then press 1KEY to “reload” batteries from inventory. (no inventory = no battery reload and a message saying to find batteries) If required inventory exists, this key press will also play a reload sound (maybe animation too) and then you can hit FKEY to turn on light and raise arm up again. Also need to figure out how to pause the time so if you toggle the light off, the timer will pause when not using the flashlight.
Created a random sound generator using only logic bricks…That one was pretty simple…lol! Now every 400 “tics” a number between 0 and 5 is generated and if the number 1 pops up, it plays a buzzing fly sound. Coolness.
Once I get the HUD and inventory pick and usage all figured out, it’s time to start modeling my levels! Lots and lots to do yet!
