Don't Spill Your Beans (WindieGo)

  Embracing the spirit of Thanksgiving, this week served as a reminder that amidst the hustle and bustle of work, prioritizing moments to recharge and nurture our well-being is equally vital. Fortunately, thus far in the month, this project has unfolded seamlessly, free from any significant errors or challenges. I must express my gratitude to the incredible team I've collaborated with so far; their dedication and cooperation have been nothing short of amazing. Looking ahead, I aspire to maintain these valuable connections. Wishing everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with gratitude and joy! Author: Justin Bethea Post: 11/25/2023

 I chose to implement an animated widget utilizing c++ and Unreal Engine 5. Setting up the animated widget was a challenge in itself, but I got it done and learned a lot along the way. Setting up the widget to be used in script was a whole new task in itself. After doing some research I knew what I needed to do.  First, I needed to set up the UPROPERTY in the widgets script properly, which required a specific property to be set. I also needed to set up the PlayAnimation function a certain way to get it to play the animation forwards and backwards because the widget was meant to be toggled. Then I needed to ensure the buttons were connected properly. Lastly, I made sure all of the blueprints were connected properly. After some debugging I realized I forgot to mark some functions as UFUNCTION and the menu was set up as intended.  Author: Zachary Giffin Posted: 11/17/2023

At the moment the games game instance holds the games saving functionality. Something I have wanted to find out is if its possible to have it separate and persistent like the game instance. It is not necessarily a problem the player will see but is something that effects their experience of the game. The solution to my search was when I came across a post a fellow student made about Subsystems in Unreal. Looking further into the topic on my own I think moving the save into its own "section" would be beneficial for organizational reasons as it is making the game instance unnecessarily long. While a subsystem is a solution to the problem it is not one I think is wise to implement with the amount of time left. Author: Krishnie Katie Naidoo Posted on 11/16/2023

Unreal does not have a default navigation system like Unity so when you add a widget to the viewport it doesn't automatically focus on buttons at times. This can be a bit of a issue when playing with only controller since you need to use a mouse to focus on a widget. This is an issue for the player since having to swap to mouse feels odd and if you don't have a mouse you can get trapped in a menu. After researching the topic of UI navigation in unreal I decided to look at a widgets to see if they had any navigational settings. I managed to find a section dedicated to it. There are different options such as Wrap, Escape, Explicit and custom. Using blueprints I was able to test these various types for myself and get a better understanding. Using blueprint I was also able to quickly test my theory of the focus not being set when the widget switches to another. Testing Switching Focus When Opening A Submenu A problem I was having was not being able to switch between the rows of but...

  While crafting the item manager class responsible for handling the state of pickup objects and ensuring the persistence of that state between levels and game sessions, a hurdle emerged. It was discovered that the save system couldn't access the item manager because the save system was being invoked before the manager was ready, leading to an access error.   Initially, the strategy was to assign the item manager outside the "begin play" function to allow sufficient time for the manager to construct. Unfortunately, this approach introduced additional issues and posed potential challenges in the future.   To avert this problem and mitigate the risk of future complications, I opted to refactor the item manager. Instead of assigning it directly, I modified it to notify the save system when it was ready. This adjustment ensured that the manager was valid before proceeding, enabling the game to seamlessly progress with the crucial functionality of saving pickup states ...

 I have been struggling to implement the player's combo attacks. My original idea was to just have the attack function called, and for each time the attack is called, it increments the combo and increases in damage up to a certain point in which it resets the combo. After talking to my teammates, the best plan of action was to set up the combo in an animnotify. This will allow for certain animations to be called separately from the classes they derive from. It adds a bit more organization and ensures an easier form of transition between the character and its animations. I am finishing the implementation and will hopefully have it ready by Monday of this upcoming week.

I wanted to create a new menu for our game this week and chose to make things a bit more interesting. I decided to learn how to animate widgets, however, I attempted to first learn by doing. It didn't go well. I began by creating the widget as I would normally. After multiple attempts to complete the widget, I was left with discrepancies each time.  I then turned to YouTube for a short tutorial on animating in an older version of Unreal Engine. I was able to take the information and use it in UE 5. By doing so I was able to create one widget that uses three different canvas panels and animates with an informational panel. Animations open up so many new possibilities for interesting and fun menus. Author: Zachary Giffin Posted: 11/10/2023