Updates week of 20/03

Shared Camera + Local Multiplayer

Implementation of a camera that folows all active players in the scene. 

Zooms in and out based on the distance of the players, takes average position of all players.

Two active players in the scene that both have their own controls.

Merged Mechanics

The two core mechanics are now inplace. Not only that there have been several polishes to the mechanics.

• dash in direction of movement (blue arrow) + dash cooldown
• speed limit
• punch retracts on impact with other player + the closer u stand from the object the less power the punch has 

Completed the Swing mechanic and upgraded it in multiple way: 

1. Now the player takes the velocity from the hook itself. Each hook can be set up individually, and they have two editable parameters from the game level: Direction and Speed. Direction is either counter clock or clockwise around the positive Z axis (up). The speed will always be editable and viewed in the level editor as a positive value. The Hook will then apply the direction on it.
2. Hooks can now me On or Off.  As a prototype, you can set up the minimum and maximum time a Hook can be On/Off. Being On/Off means that that the player either can hook to it or it cannot To help visualize this effect, depending on its state, it's emissive material changes; green-On, Red-Off; For the moment, they stay in place and the ON time == OFF time. Animation to be added later
3. Player hooking angle range increased. The radius the player has to be in, or rather, the distance from the hook position, stays the same. However, now the player does not have to be directly facing the hook. An angle range of -15/+15 degrees was added so that it makes it easier to hook during game play, specially fights
4. Player Rotation and Direction The player now, when hooked, if released, will be thrown in the same direction as it is rotating. This was not yet working. As mentioned for the Hook, the player takes its speed and direction from the hook he gets attached to. This is now fully working too. The player rotates in both directions, gets released to the appropriate one and gets the speed from them too. The very last thing that needs to be tweaked will be the release speed, which has to be correlated with the speed of the rotation. P.S.(images and gifs not included due to a perforce issue being fixed) 

Background Testing

We tested a lot for the background, since it should not be too distracting from the battlefield. The Background should give the feel of an atmosphere, but not be too eye catching, which lead to several prototypes.

Tried very different methods to fill the background with a complex particle system of thunderclouds.

I then tried to stylize the clouds a lot more using a custom Alpha for the stylized clouds.

After the particle effect was taking away too much attention, we tried with something more stationary. 

Here I build the arena on a mountain, to give it this high up mighty feel. This was generally accepted as a good idea and really connects the narrative.

Here i tried two different backgrounds. Both of them were generally perceived as good by the team and both are very doable and add a certain depth.

Procedural Hook Objects

• Transferred the procedurally generated obstacles for in the arena 
• Optimized the blueprint 
• Added in more adjustable parameters 
• Fixed some of the problems there still were with it