Doors... (Patreon)

The jump to Unreal 5 and the world partition system has come with a few speed bumps along the way.  Instead of the old system (and its headaches) of managing individual levels and loading / unloading them for interiors and exteriors.  Now I'm loading and unloading layers that are all in the same level.  Which has come with some new and different headaches.  The doors in particular were giving me a number of issues.  NPCs wouldn't load, the player would need to use the door multiple times, parts of the layers wouldn't turn off or on, and a bunch of other stuff.

So I started digging in and trying to sort out all the different bugs... and I think I have a working solution!  In my limited testing the layers reliably load and unload, the NPC spawn points are getting triggered correctly, and the player is being placed in the correct spot.  

Doors also support the lock system and the lockpicking skill.  They can also be set to lock at a specific time of day, which is tied into the new NPC schedules system.  

The last step, after some more testing, is to polish off the player facing stuff.  Adding a better camera fade, a door animation, and some loading screen UI.  But the heavy lifting on doors should be done!

Day Job update:

When I took my current day job I really thought it would be low stress and give me more time and energy to dedicate to working on Feign.  In the early days that was mostly true.  But things have gotten worse over the last few months.  The layoffs caused a ton of chaos across the studio and things really haven't recovered since.  Schedules have also been shortened while expectations have remained the same.  Lots of people have shifted teams or left for greener pastures.  Which has slowly eroded my free time and energy reserves.  What could it hurt to start applying for other studios right?  See what's out there?  

Turns out one of those studios offered me a job!  I'll be starting in a few weeks.  We'll see how this one works out but I'm really hopeful.  It seems like a really fun project and an awesome art style and I'm really hoping it recharges my creative batteries.  

But not to worry, this doesn't mean anything will change on the development of Feign (hopefully I'll have more time for development actually).  Feign has also been a huge help to keep me engaged and enjoying game development overall.  It's that reminder that game development can be fun and exciting and a creative outlet and that there's always something new to learn and create.   And getting to talk to and interact with everyone that supports the project is always a huge morale boost!  You're all awesome and I really appreciate all of you!  You all help keep me grounded and help me appreciate how lucky I am to be able to work in video games as a career.  Thanks!