Hello, for our first check-in on Parasite Zero, each member of our programming team worked on a separate aspect of the game that will culminate together to make a whole.  Each of us wrote up a little devlog below to show how progress is going.

Dameron:

This week, I worked on enemies:

Thomas:

During this beginning portion of the class I worked on a distraction tool for the player called the Echo Lure. The idea for this ability was that the player would be able to throw a small biomechanical object that would stick to the surface it was thrown at and emit a noise that would draw the attention of enemies. 

I made an actor component that could attach to the character and run most of the code for the lure. It shares a good amount of code with the grapple ability, as it uses trace channels to find a surface the player is looking at and spawn an actor at that surface. It does differ from the grappling hook in a few ways though, namely that it doesn't use a dedicated trace channel, as we wanted to give the player more freedom with where they place the lures. Another obvious difference is that the lure has no effect on the player's position within the level.

I also built the base blueprint for the bio-locked doors that we plan to use as a way to gate player progression. I wasn't able to fully work out this code however, as we're waiting on the interaction interface and mutation mechanics to be more developed before I can progress. 

Going forward I would like to focus on adding an animation montage for the action of throwing the Echo Lure, fleshing out the bio-locked doors, and implementing whatever mesh/Niagara system the art team decides to use for the Echo Lure itself. I will also playtest the lure with an enemy to see if it draws their attention and if the radius of effect needs to be adjusted.

Owen:

Player health and mutation percent are displayed and should be updated properly on the HUD. Damage interface is integrated, currently no way to die or respawn. Interaction interface will be working soon.

Derek:

Alex:

Implemented a simple shotgun and sword (hitbox) that are attached to the players mutation meter. This means that the mutation “abilities” become unlocked when the player reaches a certain percentage of mutation. There was a complication with the implementation of the animations so only the hitbox was added for the sword. BPIs were added for the enemies and a damage system will be added to them during the next update.