Surviving to the End!

After four weeks, the Survival Game has come to a close. My game, which I named 'Asylum Escape,' puts the player on the outskirt of a mental asylum which they have just escaped. I have been able to implement many extras that are very cool and look amazing. The criteria stated that the player's Health, Stamina, Mood and Warmth bars must effectively kill the player when any bar reaches zero. I added a fifth bar, called Insanity. This bar increases, and as it does so, it distorts the camera lens and gives the screen a pink tint. When at nearly 100% the screen becomes extremely difficult to see, and the player dies when the bar reaches 100%. All water in the level also turns to blood when the Insanity bar reaches 25%.

The game features a save and load system which saves not only the player's stats, but also their location and inventory. The only thing I was unable to get sorted was saving items that had been collected in the world and keeping them 'deleted' when reloading a game. I also managed to implement a day and night cycle which was super easy to do. I attempted trying to implement two background music themes that would change dependent on the time of the day, however this was proving troublesome for some reason, so reverted back to a singular track, which is also good as it is ominous and relaxing.

The player can die from taking too much fall damage, burning themselves in a camp fire or drowning in water or blood. When the player enters water an Air Gauge will pop up that will start ticking down, and when it is empty, will begin depleting the player's health. It also actively reduces the player's warmth. Initially I was having difficulty trying to instantiate the camp fire item when it's 'base item' was used in the inventory. I had a bizarre issue where the fire would instantly kill the player or burn them rapidly despite not actively being in the burn range.

To help compensate with the darkness of the level, I added a 'torch' that the player can use to help see during the night, as well as adding flaming braziers that help path out the level itself. The custom materials I made were largely used on the asylum building itself. I created the stonewalls, doors, door handles, roof as well as the blood river being a modified dynamic material and the insanity lens effect is also a dynamic material.

Overall I am extremely happy with how the game turned out. I would like to actually revisit the game at some point to expand on it when I am more proficient in Unreal Engine. I still occasionally feel a bit lost in Unreal Engine, and this is largely due to the interface of it. Several tabs can make finding specific scripts difficult if you have a busy project. All in all, I feel as though I am more proficient in finding information by myself on the internet, however still occasionally struggle with the 'what' exactly I need to search. But this will improve over time.

#GAM111