Piczle Cross Adventure was initially mainly designed specifically for the Nintendo Switch. I baked in a few extras to make porting to other consoles potentially a lot easier, and because of the size of the largest puzzles I also made a decision to not use touch input. A big headache in Piczle Colors was developing … Continue reading BluePrints: Mouse input overlay
Category: Unreal Engine 4
Blueprints: Quick reflex input
One of the many reasons I decided to include a fishing mini-game, aside from it being required by law in any RPG-like adventure game, was to challenge myself on a few new scripting issues. Both the casting off and the reeling in require the player to press A when a pointer moves over a specific … Continue reading Blueprints: Quick reflex input
Blueprints: Get a clue
The nonogram puzzles in Piczle Cross Adventure are merely a string of 1s and 0s. Everything else required is calculated while playing the game. Actually, let me take a step back and correct this lie. The puzzles all live in one big datatable, with the puzzle part itself forming a string of 1s and 0s. … Continue reading Blueprints: Get a clue
UE4 support
Unless you enter into a private arrangement with Epic Games, as a EULA user you won't have access to "proper" tech support. As not every indie developer has the kind of money to sign custom deals like that, most of us rely on other sources for insight and help. Here are just a few of … Continue reading UE4 support
Post-processes
A post-process is, very basically, an effect that is applied to all or parts of the image of the screen at some part of the rendering process. Try to see it as a layer in Photoshop to which you apply a filter. You can have this filter apply to part of the image or all … Continue reading Post-processes
eNums
When working with variables, as the gamedev joke goes, thinking of a good name for them is one of the hardest tasks. We all have our own standards and ideas regarding this, but I generally rely a lot on UE4's categories to keep relevant variables grouped together. One thing I have been relying on a … Continue reading eNums
Localisation
Unreal Engine 4 has a very nifty localisation dashboard, which, once activated, does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to localising your game. With it you can gather all the texts in your game from folders you've selected and create a robust localisation using .PO files. There are a couple of caveats … Continue reading Localisation
Working in Unreal Engine
For any developer there is a wealth of options out there for out-of-the-box solutions. In the triple-I spheres the choice seems to be Unity or Unreal and both certainly have their detractors and supporters. Personally, I chose Unreal because it gels with me and I like BluePrint visual scripting. It may not be the right … Continue reading Working in Unreal Engine
Mini-games
Piczle Cross Adventure is mostly about following the story and playing picture crossword logic-puzzles. However, there is a little more fun and adventuring to be had outside of all that. There are some mini-games and mini-puzzles! When deciding on what kind of mini-activities to include and where I tried to stick to a few simple … Continue reading Mini-games
Books
I am a personal fan of books in adventure games as a way to offer extra information in a way that is entirely optional to the player. It is a cheap but effective way to populate the world with extra information, back story, whatever you wish. And in this case I also use books to … Continue reading Books
