I looked back at previous work to help me figure out how to get smooth rotation working in my VR project. I looked at Project Anaximander which is a third person RPG game that I made in the first year. Looking through the code for the player character helped me to figure out how to get smooth rotation working in my VR project. I now have smooth rotation working better than I had it working before as it is now quicker and less snappy.

This article defined what was important in a action-adventure game, having balance between action and adventure. Action being the combat and adventure being the exploration and puzzle solving. What this article made me realise is that I focused too much on the puzzle solving when thinking about the mechanics of the axe. All the powers of the axe have a role in puzzle solving but I haven’t yet implemented them into combat which is something I need to think about. As the action is just as important as the adventure.

This article talks about Tomb Raider (2013) and what they felt worked well and what didn’t. What I found helpful in this review is them talking about the importance of having variance in combat and puzzle solving to keep the game interesting. This is something they thought Tomb Raider did well by introducing you to new mechanics slowly throughout the game. This kept the gameplay interesting and varied but also made it easier to learn many mechanics. This is something I want to implement into my game, introducing game mechanics slowly throughout the game.

This article reviews God of War (2018). Throughout the review they do talk highly of the story of the game but story isn’t something that I have or will be focusing on for the FMP as I want to focus on programming and game mechanics. Just as in the Tomb Raider (2013) review above they talk about the importance of keeping variance in game mechanics to keep them interesting and engaging. But it also talks about keeping the mechanics realistic, to a degree, and satisfying to make them enjoyable. They talk about out satisfying throwing and recalling the axe was in God of War. They enjoyed the fact it took longer to recall if you had thrown it further and the vibration in the controller when Kratos catches it was a nice touch. I will try integrate these features into my axe throwing and recalling mechanic.

This video talks about elements and how they are used in video game. It talks about how the elements are used in the same way in every game and that it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because the elements are so consistent game developers don’t have to give a tutorial on how each element works you will just instinctively know. This was helpful to me as I will be using elements in my game and this has shown me that it’s okay to lean into the standard stereotypes as it will be what players expect and if I differ from those stereotypes it could confuse players.

This video talks about the importance of clones and how clones can be successful. It talks about how clones help genre evolve and change to keep them alive. It also talks about the importance of clones honouring what has been done before by having key feature that are expected but also include changes to the usual that make the game feel new and interesting and not feel like a clone. This video was helpful to me as I’m creating a game the take from (clones) Tomb Raider and God of War. It’s important that the game doesn’t just feel like a clone but has something different to bring to the table.

This video showed me how to get smooth locomotion working with sprinting and jumping. The video was very helpful as I had spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get smooth movement working correctly and without any problems. The only thing that I would improve about the video is that it doesn’t show you how to get smooth rotation working which would have been helpful. Apart from that the video is very good. It went through everything you need to set up smooth locomotion step by step.

This tutorial shows you how to get the Leviathan axe working in a third person flat screen game in Unreal Engine with throwing and recalling. I was hoping to use the principals from this video to help me with my own work but instead it highlighted some problems that I’ll have. With the throwing for this tutorial they can just give it an impulse in a direction to throw it but for my VR project I have to work with the forces already applied onto the axe by the player when they throw. I don’t just have a button press the player actually throws the axe which makes the forces a bit different. The other problem is that with the recalling they disable player movement, have the axe fly towards the camera and swap the axes back when it ‘hits’ the player which works because you can hide stuff behind the player character. I can’t do that because mine is first person VR and another thing I realised is what ever I do for recalling has to account for the fact the player can move where there hand is. Though this video was directly helpful with showing me how to get throwing and recalling working it did highlight some potential issues I might have which was very helpful. It could be better by being made for first person VR that would have been really helpful.

This Reddit post is someone showing of their auto aim for VR in Unreal Engine. I liked the way that the system worked and looked in their clip so I decided I wanted to copy it for my project. Helpfully they left a comment with a rough guide line of how they achieved this. This helped me get started and create a system that worked. I would have preferred maybe a little more information to help me but I did appreciate the vagueness. It allowed me to figure things out on my own and I felt like I learnt more than if I were to just follow a step by step tutorial that holds your hand.

This was very helpful as I had been searching through many Reddit post and Unreal Engine Forum post that had Suggest Projectile Velocity working perfectly fine with Launch Speed set at around 200-300 which didn’t work for me but I didn’t know that was the problem. I assumed it was something else and had spent a lot of time trying to find a fix until I found this post where they suggest ramping up Launch Speed to around 4500. This worked immediately which helped a lot with getting auto aim throwing working.

This is Unreal Engine documentation about how material instances work. This was really helpful as it explained exactly what I needed and I got material instances working in my project very quickly with the help of the documentation. This was exactly what I needed. The only problem I have is I wish all UE documentation was like this. A lot of UE documentation is very lacking and not helpful which means you have to find other sources to understand how features work in UE.