FMP 15- Functionality (Doors, Menu etc.)

 This week was quite fun overall; I added a functional door blueprint to the level, added main and pause menus, added candle flame and recorded some sound effects. 

The door is a simple blueprint that uses a timeline to rotate the door on opening, and reverse this on closing. I did this with a flip-flop node, and a line trace to track where the player's camera is looking. There wasn't much difficulty involved, but I did have to separate the door into three pieces to allow each mesh to rotate. I also used a widget to display a button hint, which was a bit fiddly as I needed it to display once, only when the player is looking at the door. It reappears as the player looks away and back again, and doing this combined with happening once required some extra thought. 

The main menu is actually a playable level, but only contains the chalkboard seen above. I  used another line trace with a blueprint containing decals and collision boxes. The colour is controlled by a material collection set in the blueprint, allowing me to only use one decal for all three options. The only problem with the menu system is that the main menu must be open to begin play there. When I try to open the main menu on begin play in the master level, it works up until play is clicked, then the main menu is opened again. The begin play node fires every time the level is opened, and not even a branch and boolean would stop this. I also tried putting this in the character BP, because of its more permanent state, but this did not work. The pause menu did not cause many problems, but I did need to look up how to change the FOV, which I then set using a command in the blueprint.

I used some simple functions in Substance Designer to create the candle flame spritesheet, which I then made a flipbook material out of and added to a billboard material in the lamp BP. I wanted to set the pivot point of the billboard to its lowest point, but I still have not figured out how to do that. I also tried to make the lamp look more convincing, as the translucent material shows the inside far too clearly. The best I could do was to use a masked blend mode with dithering, but this looks quite pixelated, so I will continue working on it. 

Audacity came in handy for recording the sound effects, which are a collection of chair noises, door noises, footsteps, bangs and pipe noises. I will add these to various blueprints and some audio actors around the level, and they should provide some nice ambience.