Category: Development Blog

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all having another wonderful weekend! The weather outside is transitioning from one season to the next and the temperature is just perfect for going outside and sipping tea on the deck. Before I do that, though, I had work to do. I found some time to work on two tasks this weekend. One of them was more difficult, and I anticipated that I might have issues with it. I balanced that with another one that was more chill and easy to accomplish. And both of them helped move the alpha build to the final state it needs to be in to get a release.

Cursed Crown Updates:

• Addressed Issue #25 Update Tech Demo (Alpha) Burke Placement
  • I had to fiddle with this one for a while to learn and understand the FSM system that ACF is using for the dialogue system. I’m not going to say that I fully understand it, mind you, but I have in place what I wanted for the purposes of the demo.
  • Burke has a new portrait that looks more like him than the default one provided by the samples.
  • Burke’s display name is now “Burke” instead of “ACFGuy.”
  • Burke’s dialogue is voiced instead of being static text.
  • I’d like to update the dialogue system so that it will automatically advance the stages of the dialogue from one stage to the next, but for now the player has to press “Continue” at each stage to move to the next one. I’m satisfied with this for now, though.
• Addressed Issue #34 Update Chests in Overgrown Ruins
  • I created a new blueprint for an open and empty chest and replaced all the prop chests in the Overgrown Ruins map with them.
  • Essentially, the open chests are supposed to represent that Burke has been through the ruins already and looted everything he found already.
  • There are a couple chests hidden in the area that Burke hasn’t found. In them, the player can find supplies to help: a shield, an off-hand sword, a bow, arrows, and healing potions.
• Miscellaneous
  • While I was updating all the chests in Overgrown Ruins map, I added a few more enemies in. There are several just hanging around the map inside the ruins. They won’t be a huge challenge, but should spice up the flow of the level some.

I’ve been tracking a task list of what I wanted completed to consider the tech demo complete and ready for release. I’ve used issue #18 to track it, though the issue doesn’t really have anything other than that checklist attached to it. What’s important is that the checklist is almost complete. The only thing left on there is to export and publish a proper test build. And while this should be a half-hour task that I can complete right now if I want to, I’m not going to do it right now. Please allow me to elaborate.

Voltaire said “le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.” Put another way, “perfection is the enemy of good.” I know that if unchecked, I’ll allow myself to just build and tweak and add and refine and tack on and so on and so forth. I need to consider what I have as “good enough” at some point. While I’m trying very hard to do that, I also don’t think that I’m at that point right now. What I’ve decided to do is to keep tweaking and adding and adjusting, but only until the end of this year. I have some time off saved up from my full time job and I’ll be taking the last three weeks of 2024 off. I want to spend that time with whatever further updates and fixes I can then start off 2025 with a published alpha build so I can start with beta development.

I don’t have a specific roadmap yet, but by the end of this year, I want to have a laid out roadmap for what I consider to be a full release with a plan for getting there. I’d like to have something like a Kickstarter or Patreon set up to help me fund additional assets that I will require, and I’d like to try to get into the developer backend on Steam so I can get builds out to people faster and more reliably. Between now and the end of the year, I’ll likely have to take more than a single week “off” from development so I can get documentation and other similar work done. There might not be forward-facing changes, but work will always be getting done behind the scenes and I’ll always make sure that there’s something going on here on 6fpsnetwork.com and in the Discord where applicable.

Thanks for sticking with me through all this, everyone. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Keep on gaming!

Hello everyone! This weekend, I’m taking a long weekend from my full time job with my wife. I don’t expect that I’ll get any work done on The Cursed Crown, but if I manage anything I’ll make sure I edit this post.

I’m sorry that there isn’t any real content this week, but I promised last time I “took the weekend off” that I would let you all know instead of just disappearing, and I wanted to make sure I held true to that promise. You all deserve that much respect at least.

I hope everyone can have a great weekend! Until next time!

Welcome everyone! I made some substantial progress on the project today. I can feel the release getting closer and closer every weekend.

Cursed Crown Updates:

• Addressed Issue #5 Create a Goal for the Tech Demo
  • My original plan for this task was to create a trigger that faded the screen to black, played some sort of credits or message, then kicked the player back to the main menu. After thinking about this for a while between the creation of the story (July 4th, 2024) and today (October 12th, 2024), I decided that the planned functionality wasn’t really what I wanted in the end.
  • I created a trigger volume that contained a reference to a widget blueprint. That widget blueprint contained a block of text basically thanking the player and letting them know that they’ve reached the end of the content in the tech demo.
  • Upon entering the trigger volume, the block of text is displayed in the top-right of the screen. It is removed when the player leaves the trigger volume.
• Addressed Issue #32 Overgrown Ruins Level Extension Pt. 2
  • I added several rooms to the end of the ruins after the boss. After defeating (or running from) the boss, the player can progress through the rest of the ruins.
  • The “end” of the level is to be found somewhere further and deeper than the boss. Also included is an Easter egg if players can find it.
• I updated the main menu logo. It’s currently just a logo and no text, but I’ll continue to work on it as time progresses. In fact, you just saw it up above at the top of this post! Let me know what you think on Discord.

There’s not much else to report on right now. I’m hoping (so please don’t hold me to it if things slip a bit) to get some sort of published build out by the end of the year. Unless more bugs pop up, my task checklist for the tech demo only contains a couple more things. I’ve got some time off saved up from my full time job and I hope to take around three weeks off in December. If all goes well, I’ll try to dedicate a bunch of time to getting this tech demo wrapped up. Then, I’ll start detailing the next stage of my plans. As always, keep an eye on this space and on Discord for the must up-to-date information! Until next time, everyone: Keep on gaming!

Hello everyone! It’s time for the first update of October! I wanted to get done a few tasks this weekend, but I didn’t anticipate just how long and involved the level design work was going to be. As much as I loved the process of making maps for Doom and Duke Nukem 3D back in the day, the process of making (reasonable-looking) levels in modern engines is far more complex and slow. I don’t think I’ve done poorly with the work, but it’s a lot slower than writing code for me. I’ll just have to keep plugging away and make sure I allot myself enough time to work on things going forward. Let’s keep the expectations realistic and it’ll all go smoother.

Cursed Crown Updates:

• Addressed Issue #20 Overgrown Ruins Level Extension pt. 1
  • I added a new extension beyond the main ruins where the player can progress. This area is hidden behind a secret door.
  • I created a custom secret door for this level that will open when the player is holding a particular key item.
  • I created a key item that the player can find by exploring the rest of the ruins.
  • Inside the new ruin area, I’ve added a new boss. I didn’t customize it much from the version included with the ACF tools, but it’s a good start and I think it’ll be reasonable for the purposes of the tech demo.
• I updated Burke’s in-game display name from “ACFGuy” to “Burke.” I intended to get some more work done with his script and add some voice lines, but I find that I’m not well-equipped to handle voice recording right now. The work I did was painful to listen to. Figuratively, not literally. Though a little bit literally; the cringe was real. I’ll figure it out with some better hardware and software. But the fact remains that I shelved working on the Burke task for the weekend since the level work took two days.
• I created a follow-up to issue #20: #32 Overgrown Ruins Level Extension pt. 2. This task covers finishing up the rest of the Overgrown Ruins map, including the ability to “end” the tech demo and the level. I don’t think the expansion will take as long as the first one did, but I don’t know for sure. I’m just going to do it one step at a time.

I tested that the new additions didn’t cause any issues with the build, but I didn’t publish one this week. I’m going to hold off until I get the second part of the level expansion completed and let players get the whole experience. As we get closer and closer to the initial stable build of the tech demo, I’ll probably release preview builds less often in favor of including more content in them. Keep an eye out for further updates. Thanks to everyone for continuing to check in, and keep on gaming!

Hello everyone! Today’s update is a little bit of a short one. I ran into issues trying to solve the problems presented and didn’t have time to get more than a single issue completed this weekend.

Cursed Crown Updates:

• Addressed Issue #19 Create a Collapsible Floor Prototype
  • I had to follow quite a few tutorials to try to figure out how to invoke the Chaos system and prep meshes for use. I tried to get a decoration prop in addition to the floor that I was using, but I can’t seem to get the ACF weapons to interact with things. In the end, I wasn’t able to solve that particular problem, so I left it at just the collapsible floor.
  • The floor looks identical to any other floor in the Lordenfel set, but when the player steps on the trigger (it’s specifically set to not trigger if an enemy steps on it) the Chaos system activates and the floor collapses immediately. It might be worthwhile to find some way to spice it up, but it works fine for now.
  • This works toward the goal of completing issue #20 as well, but is only part of it. I’ve marked the wall that I want to delete to add on the deeper section of the ruins, and I renamed it in the level hierarchy to make it easier to find later.

There’s no new build this week since nothing player-facing has changed. Thanks for stopping in, though, and I hope to have more for you soon!

Hello again, everyone! I was able to find some time during the week to finish getting the project back up and running from the UE5 and ACF plugin updates that caused issues. As a bonus, I made the player model wear a cape on the title screen and in game. Otherwise, I got everything working as expected again.

Cursed Crown Updates:

• Reimported the knight and blacksmith model pack.
  • This didn’t have an issue associated with it, but I wanted to get the model I’m using for Burke back into the project.
  • Once the models were imported, I stripped out everything except the meshes, physics, and materials. I retargeted the meshes to use the skeleton included with ACF.
  • I created a basic NPC and assigned the Burke mesh to it and put it in the Overgrown Ruins map. It works pretty well, if not a little basically. The player can talk to and interact with the NPC, but the script that the NPC uses is still the default sample provided with ACF. That will get updated in another task.
• Addressed Issue #26 Prototype Melee Enemy (Grey Skin) AI is Broken
  • I fixed the issue with the melee enemy prototype. There was a problem with the parent that the blueprint class was created from. After deleting my child blueprint and re-creating it, everything worked properly again. I don’t know where the issue stemmed from, but it’s solved now.
• Addressed Issue #27 Investigate Crash with Chest Inventory
  • It appears that the ACF plugin code for the chests was updated at some point. (The “Take All” button was removed at the very least.) I can no longer reproduce the issue that caused the fatal error and crash to desktop. Marking this issue as resolved unless it pops up again.
• Addressed Issue #28 Material Transparency on Main Character’s Shoes
  • During the update to fix the issues this week, I somehow accidentally reassigned the material for the main character’s shoes and had to fix it. It was an easy enough fix.
• Addressed Issue #31 Update Prototype Enemy Meshes
  • Edit on September 22nd: I just wanted to poke my head back in and say that I addressed this issue this morning. I wasn’t satisfied with the work I did yesterday due to the issues that arose around git and pushing my project updates. I did replace the enemy meshes this morning and I’m looking forward to everyone being able to see them!

In other news, I have a strange issue going on with my project repository. I can’t seem to push my changes to the server repository. I’ve confirmed that the issue lies with the local files since I can’t push these files to any repository, even a new one just created to test this stuff out. I think there’s an issue with some LFS file somewhere, so I have to poke around and see what I can find. The project itself works, though, so nothing was lost. I’ll continue to investigate and try to resolve the issue.

Until next time, have a great weekend, everyone!

Today’s update is a bit of a bad one. There was an update to UE5.4 today that caused issues with the project. I was forced to update the Ascent tools as well but the project would no longer run after building. By the end of the update process everything works again, but I have to fix a couple models to get things working again. I’ll do what I can to get back to where the project was before next weekend, but if I don’t have time throughout the week I’ll have to spend next weekend’s development time just getting things back to where they were.

On the other hand, there were several bug fix updates that were put into the Ascent tools, so that gets moved along into my project. Plus, I can try to take this as a learning experience and make sure that from here on out every blueprint I use is a child instead of the ones that ship with Ascent. To be honest, that’s entirely what the issue was with the update. The changes that have to get made are due to the original blueprints being put into place again and overwriting my changes. If I had just used child blueprints instead, I would have saved myself the trouble. Well, lesson learned and moving on.

Next weekend will be some forward progress again. Until then everyone, thanks for sticking around. Keep on gaming!

Hello everyone. First off, I want to offer a short apology about missing last week’s update. I wasn’t in a very good place mentally and took the weekend off. I know that this is perfectly acceptable, but I shouldn’t have done it with accompanying radio silence. I’ll try to be better in the future.

Cursed Crown Updates:

• Addressed Issue #22 Create Teleporter Prototype
  • I created a functional teleporter for the player to use. It’s not a “teleport at will” kind of usable item in this case; it’s a “step into this static spot to go somewhere else instantly” type of teleporter.
  • The teleporter functions properly and moves the player to a new point, but ignores any other entities including random items on the ground, ragdolls, physics objects, and enemies.
  • A second blueprint specifically for the destination is used to control where the player ends up after teleporting.
  • I created a follow-up issue (#23 Update Teleporter for Beta) for logging work related to removing the developer art and making the teleporter look more like what the end result should be in the game.
  • I added the teleporter to the Overgrown Ruins tech demo map.

Due to the simple changes that were made this week, I haven’t built a new test version. There isn’t much to test really. There are only a few issues standing in the way of the tech demo being released. It’s going slowly sometimes, but it’s always moving forward. I’m looking forward to being able to let everyone know about it!

Until next time, everyone! Keep on gaming!

Hello everyone! I’ve got another update for you all.

Cursed Crown Updates:

• Addressed issue #7 Update Loadout Inventory
  • I removed the player’s starting inventory and replaced it with a more appropriate set of gear. The player starts with a sword and a couple health potions.
  • A chest to the right of the path at the start contains a bow, some arrows, and a couple more health potions.
• Addressed issue #13 Create Basic Controls Documentation
  • There’s a new document created and stored with the design document that details the current tech demo controls. The defaults provided by ACF might need some updating before release, but what exists right now is documented. This document needs to be handed out to testers when the receive their builds.

There was an issue with the assets included in the pack I imported for the Burke model. I couldn’t get the assets to properly compile so a build could be completed for testing. For the time being, I’ve removed those assets. For Burke to exist, obviously I’ll have to re-import and fix issues with those assets, but that’s an issue for another day.

If I get the chance, I’d like to work some more tomorrow, but I can’t make that guarantee, so I’ve gone ahead and published the newest build (0.1.5) on the downloads page. If you’re a member of the testing team, you can download it right now. For the time being, though, keep on gaming, everyone!

Hello again everyone! I have a lot going on this week, so the updates were more investigative and experimental than normal. I still wanted to make progress, though, so I ensured that at least something was done.

Cursed Crown Updates:

• Addressed issue #17 Replace Prototype Chests with Working Blueprint.
  • I found a basic interactive chest blueprint that was included with the ACF tools I have. I created a child class off of this and did some editing to it.
  • The mesh, that initially used an asset from Infinity Blade, was replaced with a more suitable mesh from the Lordenfel set. I chose to use a chest mesh that had a base and a separate lid.
  • I modified the interaction routine in the blueprint so the chest lid opens when the player interacts with it. It currently just “pops” to the right rotation so it could likely use some tweaking later to make the transition smoother. I’ll probably be adding some sort of animation for the player when these sorts of interactions happen and I’ll have to sync the chest animation to that, so I didn’t want to spend too much time on crafting a solution that was going to be replaced later anyway.
  • I had to experiment and investigate some to figure out how ACF was handling the chest contents. I was able to identify an additional component that was added to the chest (I was digging into the blueprint itself initially with no luck.) that handled the contents. (It’s ACFProceduralStorage if anyone else ever needs to find it.) This component handles random generation of loot, dropping of specific loot, and dropping of money +/- a variable amount.
• I found the model that I think suits Burke, another of the NPC survivors of the shipwreck! The image below looks low resolution, but it’s due to low LOD when viewed in the blueprint editor. Don’t worry, he’s much more handsome in-game!

It might not seem like much for now, but that’s all I’ve got for you. I’m making progress, and that’s satisfying enough for me. Look forward to more info as it’s made available!