Door Check In Part 2

 Door Progress 

        So as for progress its been pretty rocky but I've managed to research and understand where Id like to go with this assignment. My troubles have stemmed mainly from tech related issues, I do not have a pc in my dorm (yet) so I have to use a flashdrive to move information back and forth for sessions and some of my data seems to not save/maybe im not looking in the right place but that will shortly be fixed. I should have a pc here in my dorm by Wednesday and I will be uploading and completing what I have outlined for my doors. Ive been following along and writing down notes so that once I move forward with my plans I will have some ideas of troublesome parts, in addition I have been running questions and seeking aid from Hunter and Ty which has been a great help to me seeing as collaborating and sharing ideas has helped me rethink some of my old designs/ideas I had. Your scope is sometimes too big without realizing it and its very helpful to have other minds wrangle those ideas into much more manageable ones so that you can execute them properly. 

    As for my idea/plans for my doors I was thinking of designing a level where the goal of the 'game' per say is to have each player interpret something differently by having them walk through a series of identical rooms but each room adds or removes something from the narrative of the story. The true story will be that of a mystery story, with either happy or sad connotations but I see this as more of an experiment to see what people will piece together with what information I give them in each room, whether that is notes, furniture, or even simple subtle things such as a door being opened just a crack. Though mainly each door leading to the next will be made differently according to the narrative of the story. 

Working On Doors

 Working On Doors

Chris Lenhart

    The door I am designing in Unreal Engine 4 is a 'double door' , meaning that the door will slide and split from the middle allowing the player to move into a new area to explore. Though if I can I would like to try and make the doors pivot outward away from the player to incite in their mind that there is no need to return to the previous area once passing through the doorway.

Reading through Liz England's blog I thought many of these questions really pertain to what kind of game is being made alongside what features it has, if the game is a single player game then questions pertaining to coop are then irrelevant. So for the questions I am choosing to answer I am doing so from the point of view of a single player third person boss fighting game.  

The Door Problem:

• How does the player open the door? 
• The player will stand on a certain spot, say a pressure plate, in front of the door that will allow it to open and enable the player to progress. 
• Do doors lock behind the player?
• Some doors will lock behind the player forcing them to progress and disabling them from backtracking through the same way they came in.
• Are there doors in the game?
• This one seems sort of redundant, asking if there are doors in the game when I am writing a something entirely about doors. Though its quite important, I recently played Risk Of Rain 2 where there are no doors in the game for the player to engage with in any manor. So you still have to ask, "are there doors in the game?"

The Other Door Problems:

• Concept artists: 
• The role of the concept artists would come up with various looks for what door could be, they could be decrepit old former selves of once majestic doors or even such things as a iron bar jail door. 
• Level designer: 
• As a level designer, maybe since the doors are tied to pressure plates some might need more weight and that could be free form. Meaning that anything the player could think of to put enough pressure on the pad could work. 
• Animator: 
• This one is rather simple, the doors could be triple A quality but if they don't move properly like opening or closing that isn't very helpful if the player has to move through said door. 

    Getting back into Unreal Engine 4 was a bit rocky. Though I do remember working as a group last year with Ty, Hunter, and Elijah on creating a level which had doors in it. There were trigger boxes, animations for the door to play, and other tid bits I remember which most of this is jogging my memory back to where it should be. I still have difficulties following sometimes what each component does in the visual scripting but talking through it and giving them simpler names helps.