Unturned II Devlog #015
September 24th 2018 by SDGNelson
Rev rev
Vehicles! After working on the new animation tools I was really excited to put them to the test with 4's more challenging vehicle animations. Everything's under construction again especially after the new character rig, but we need to get closer to weekly devlogs:
Immediately next on the to-do list along with implementing feedback from this devlog are:
- Better engine audio. Currently it's one clip adjusted based on the current gear, but I think we need multiple clips e.g. one for idle, and potentially special clips for revving.
- Collision audio and effects. Bumping or smashing into objects should cause different reactions, sparks, etc.
- Proper animations for the non-driver passengers, and general multiplayer tuning.
- Using single-handed items while driving.
- Probably should get the animations and clothes working on the new character again hmm...
Behind the scenes:
One of the interesting challenges implementing the vehicles was deciding how to work around their Controller>Pawn architecture, as they do have some car physics as a wheeled vehicle pawn. The downside of using that would be not being able to control your character e.g. use items at the same time as driving, so I moved most of the car stuff into Actor>DriveableVehicle>WheeledVehicle hierarchy. One aspect that still needs sorting out is how to handle driveable animals like horses, so ultimately I think this will get moved into components.
I've held off doing particle effects for a while now until Niagara was mostly stable, and it seems to have been worth it. Niagara is definitely a lot nicer than both Cascade and Unity's system.
For the vehicles I added tools to the maya plugin's dev branch for mirroring animations, as well as managing animation takes for export. Most likely the takes window will need some updates, and I want to add features for immediately reloading the asset in Unreal as well to speed things up.