You Bot Better

The controls for the player where done using a player controller blueprint, enhanced input actions and enhanced input mapping context. There was then also blueprints inside of the player character themselves that took these inputs and converted them into actual movement. 

The movement itself was the easy part, the harder part came when incorporating the 2D player character that needs to move around and interact in a 3D space. This was done placing the 2D sprite into the centre of a capsule collider. We used a addon that gave us access to a paper flip book which made the animation much easier for are animator to assign, so that is what we had as out player. 

Through testing I found that it could be very hard to see the player when they where close up to the camera, so I spent the time to add a script so that the player character sprite would always be rotated to face the main camera while leaving the hitbox where it was, this allowed us to see the character much easier when it was being controlled while also still giving us an accurate hitbox for collisions with the rest of the terrain as i found out that if the hitbox rotated with the sprite then it gave the ability to jump over obstacles that you shouldn't be able to as well as causing the player to collide with htings that shouldn't be in the way, but this was all remedied via my previously explained fix.

The movement and input assignment logic

The rotation and animation change logic

When we where deciding on the layout for the levels as well as the features we wanted to add into the game, we used Miro for out brainstoming. Miro is a collaborative online platform designed to support teams in planning and execution across different locations. It was very helpful for us as we could all add and share ideas at the same time. 

We first decided on what each level should have you build, and we decided there would be three separate parts per level, I then came up with and designed what each work station would be, what interaction type would be needed to create or add on to parts at the station, and then also the layout of the stations themselves. I designed the layout to go along with the build order so that players would have to keep running backwards and forwards or would have to keep throwing items across the room to each other to make sure they could complete the items faster than the bot could. In the image below (Fig 1) you will be able to see my final layout plan for where the stations should be situated as well as my final plan for what will be created on each level and what steps would be needed to take to complete these steps.

In Fig 2 you will see my brainstorming for the features that should or could be implemented into the game. This brainstorming was also assisted by Rolandson and I got feedback from the whole team on what aspects people did or did not like and on what aspects people wnated to change. I went through many drafts before landing on this final spider diagram of ideas on how things should work and ptential features that could be added. 

Fig 2