KayLand

22 January 2025 The very last item on my "Must Haves" checklist for this game was that I wanted to know how to create a piece of paper in the game, that had a clue/note in it for the player to read.  Having already learned how to apply a JPG image to a cube (when I applied the image of Aelinor onto a great big wall), I realised that I probably just needed to create a simple message in a drawing program (Linearity Curve, in this case), choose a suitable font to make it fit in with the genre of the game ("HanziPen SC" font), and then save it as a JPG format. I did that, then imported it into the Content Drawer of my current level in UE5. Just when I was about to apply the JPG to a small thin cube, I realised that I could select the 'Plane' shape instead, so I tried that.  That meant I had finished all of the "Must Have" items on my checklist for the development of the game.  THE END!

22 January 2025 (Continued) Having created a very pleasing outside of Aelinor, I needed to find a way to get the character inside it. I did a quick Google search and found a tutorial that looked like it might do what I wanted: " Build levels FAST with UE5's new Cube Grid tool " This showed me how to punch a hole in the wall object that showed the Aelinor JPG. The CubeGrid tool basically allows you to select cube-shaped chunks in the building materials of UE5, then move them or destroy them. In this case I didn't have much time so decided to just punch a crude hole through the door of Aelinor's structure: I'm not too pleased with the current effect, but at least it's a doorway that the character can walk through: Today I have also added a few trees to the landscape around Aelinor, to make it look more like a forest and less like a wall-with-a-JPG-image-stuck-to-it when the player is playing the game: I hadn't used the 'foliage' tool before in U...

22 January 2025 Another VERY good day, so far. Today I wanted to try to add an image of the outside of Aelinor itself to the game. (Aelinor is the cathedral-like structure made from merged, ancient soul trees.) This is the image that I created using DALL-E, right at the beginning of the project: If this project had been longer, I would have like to try creating Aeilinor itself as a 3D object, but because that was outside the scope of the project, I wanted to at least try to put this image on a big wall, to see how it looked in UE5. In the end I managed to do it just by trial and error. I imported a JPG file into the content drawer, then dragged it onto a big flat wall shape: When I tested it in Play mode, the effect was brilliant! Because everything is rendered in 2D on the screen, it actually looked like Aelinor was a great big structure that the character could approach.  This was my best moment of the whole project: The only problem was that the other side of the wall was identi...

21 January 2025 (Continued) Earlier I had got the game to a stage where if the character approached the red bottle, a message appeared saying, "Use this bottle?", and "Yes" and "No" buttons also appeared on the screen. BUT: 1) the player couldn't select either of the buttons because the mouse pointer didn't appear on the screen, and 2) even if the player had made a selection, nothing would happen, because I hadn't tied any actions to the Yes/No buttons.  After continuing to watch the  tutorial  video, I have at last been able to add some functionality to the buttons.  Now the player is able to choose between Yes and No. If they choose No, nothing happens yet. But if they choose Yes, they now get a message at the top left of the screen, saying "You Win!" I know this is very very basic functionality, but at least I can build up my knowledge and skills from here. The "You Win!" message is basically a placeholder for what I woul...

 21 January 2025 (Part 2) Yay - I've continued to watch the tutorial and now the cursor appears on the screen and the player can select either Yes or No. Nothing happens yet, of course, but I'm GETTING SOMEWHERE. Shame the game has to be finished tomorrow... Now if the character approaches the red bottle, a message appears saying "Use this bottle?". The player then has to choose between Yes and No. If they choose No, nothing happens. If they choose Yes, they get a message at the top left of the screen saying "You Win!" These two actions are just 'placeholder' steps, to prove to myself that the logic of the game is working. As far as I'm aware, it wasn't even necessary for the logic of the game to work for this Gateway Level 2 course, so I could have just left these as text boxes on a 'greybox' level. But instead I've introduced logic to the game so that the character can interact with other assets (coloured bottles, in this case)...

21 January 2025 Busy day. (Complete coincidence that the project is due to be submitted the day after tomorrow...) I've gone back to the tutorial I mentioned yesterday (" Making A Game in UE5 28: Giving Our Player A CHOICE!!! "), and have carried out the steps I skipped before. So now when I move the character near the red bottle, the red bottle glows red. (That's not what I'm actually aiming for, but I wasn't able to get the later steps to work without doing this first.) UPDATE:  Now I've continued to follow the tutorial and the red bottle still glows, but at least it now stops glowing when the character moves away from it.  NOTHER UPDATE:  At last! I've been able to get a message come up on the screen asking if the player would like to use this bottle*. ...but I can't do anything with it, because the cursor doesn't appear on the screen. *Note: I forgot to take a screenshot at the time, so the bottles are now on a giant bench instead of the de...