Left Turn Outta Nowhere

Today I planned to do research on how I could possibly do a chunk loading system so that I could in theory create a long river for however far I want. However, I quickly realized that it's not possible, or at least very difficult for my skills. Therefore I quickly planned to just make a long landscape. The experience would be shorter but it would be there. UNFORTUNATELY the bugs that would eventually rise from the experimental water system have risen.

Water system messed with landscape. PCG's turned off.

Whenever I made the landscape larger (either adding components or starting it off big) this would occur. I tried deleting the river but for some reason it permanently messes up the landscape with these random divots, even when sculpting or flattening they still appear. The smoothness of the river bed is also out the window as it has become more sharp and ugly. Sadly, after testing some things to see if it can be fixed, I realized it couldn't, and I would have to create the biggest foundational part of my game by scratch, so the river visuals, the post processing volume, buoyancy, river flow, and water detection. With the river visuals, this also means landscaping the river myself. This added with the fact that I'm going to be manually making a long landscape means that I suddenly got a lot more work put before me.

To make a long enough level I divided my landscape into 4 "chunks" where the river will flow through, then I need to have a final ocean area to show the completion of the objective, which is to reach the ocean.

Today I also planned to start working on the HUD and the start of the menu system, but I had to backtrack to recreate the water system so those will have to get started tomorrow.

Completed

River, Water Detection, Post Processing

First I created a cube and added a water material to it, using the files provided in the description of Unreal Sensei's UE5 Starter Course tutorial. Then I had to create a new object type, "river", to set the water volume as so that the collisions in the player blueprint would detect only the water volume, toggling the player's inWater? variable if the collisions begin or end overlap with the makeshift river. Figuring this out automatically set back up the camera controls nicely.

The nice thing about the UE5's water system, which included water physics and landscaping (both of which I have to manually do now), is that is had its own post process volume for underwater, so I had to recreate that as well. With the creation of the river and the underwater visuals I think I'm happy with what I've got so far. It's a shame I had to waste another day recreating my own water system since the plugin is just too buggy to be used for my landscape, I'll just have to put in a lot more work quickly if I plan to get this game done in time.

New river. Water is currently more clear for landscaping purposes.

Underwater PPV. For some reason the FoV blur doesn't work on runtime -_-

Water Physics

The biggest thing was recreating the water physics, which was mainly buoyancy and the river flow. I ended up making a very hacky blueprint section that focuses on constantly adding an impulse force upwards for buoyancy, and forwards for river flow, with a delay on the river flow so that the player isn't sent flying forwards.

This surprisingly works! Although the control of movement in the water is less sharp, I think it works well to recreate a rushing water current. I also really like the addition of the delay node because with it I created a variable called "river flow ramping", which basically controls how quickly or slowly the player's movement down the river ramps up (since the impulse force doesn't immediately go away, there's still velocity that exists), which is perfect for the game progression I'm trying to make.

Overall Standup

• Completed: started landscaping first land chunk, redoing: river volume; river PPV; water detection; water physics
• Obstacles: no longer using water system, unable to do chunk loading system
• What To Do Next: a LOT of landscaping, HUD, menu systems
• Possible Roadblocks: A LOT OF WORK AND NOT A LOT OF TIME

Check out the FishFest game jam here! --> https://itch.io/jam/fishfest