Work continued on the Ledge Climbing mechanic today. It was slow and with issues. And it was definitely one of those days that felt like nothing works, even though I've clearly made progress. Soul draining, isn't it? So much fun...

What have I achieved so far:

- The character hangs on a designated model.

- The character can move left and right while on the ledge (animations implemented but not wired because of a little issue written below)

- The character can drop from the ledge at the press of a key

- Clamp the yaw rotation of the player camera while ledge climbing (look 90 degrees to the left or to the right)

What I am planning to do:

- Make the player jump up on the ledge above (+animations)

- Make the player jump to the left and to the right (+animations)

- Make the player move on corner ledges (+animations)

- Make the player climb on top at the end (+animations)

Here's what the progress looks like:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bQZsSLex65qlTmBjlZpDZmUyO9v_VnEE/view?usp=sharing

So far things are actually going OK-ish. I mean, the basic functionality is there, I can build something with what I've got, even if it is simple and crude and one dimentional. There are a number of issues that occurred, though:

1) When hanging on the ledge, the player character rotates with the camera. And this one is going to be either the easiest or the hardest issues to solve, for one simple but big reason: The camera attaches to the capsule component of the player. This means that whenever I rotate the camera, I rotate the capsule (DUH!). Also, as a consequence, whenever the capsule is rotated, the player gets rotated. And herein lies the problem: the camera needs to be separated from the capsule component, which UE4 does not allow to do. It has to be linked with the capsule. I did thought of a solution, but it felt flat on it's face: adding a second camera. This is when I discovered that UE4 does not allow you to attach a camera outside the capsule component of the character. So that went out the window.

2) I managed to restrict the camera yaw movement while the character is hanging on the ledge and it works just fine. The problem is that when the character exits the hanging state, the camera either: a) retains it's 180 degree yaw movement or b) is stuck at the 0 degree angle and you cannot move the camera left nor right, only up and down. An absolutely stupid fix solved the problem: In the Set View Yaw Min and Max (minimum and maximum angle at which the camera can turn on the Z-axis) the values were -359.9 for min and 359.9 for max.

Yeah, THIS works.... Because if they are exactly 360 max and -360 min, it will remain stuck in a 0 degree angle and you can only look up and down, but if its 359.9, you can do 360 movement dozens of times....THIS works...jeez

3) I may have fudged this one up quite a bit, but here goes: I've used the ThirdPersonAnimBP onto the FirstPersonCharacter BP. When going into the Event Graph of the blueprint to create some logic for the animations, I've encountered a stupid problem. The boolean variables do not interact with the Cast to First Person Character node, only with the Cast To Third Person Character node. So either I have to rename the ThirdPersonAnimBP or I have to re-make the First Person Anim Blueprint with the Third Person Anim logic.

4) The player character doesn't stop at the end of the ledge, but goes a bit more further. This might be solved easily by tweaking some of the tracer capsules' values. Hopefully...

Taking off my visual scripting hat and putting on my designer hat, the way the ledge climbing feels now is... just slightly out of place for a first person game. I dunno... it feels kinda off. It feels like this mechanic should belong in a third person game. But I've seen wall climbing in first person shooters before and they worked. But they did feel like it feels in my game. I have a suspicion that it's a camera thing that holds this mechanic back.

As I write this, I've remembered that I had a talk with a user from another forum about a particular feature for when the player is looking down the dam. He suggested using an FOV kind of thing (which ultimately turned out that he was reffering to a Dolly shot like in the movies). I tested this feature at a different field of view for when the player is grabbing the ledge and it sort of works. It feels different at 110 FOV than at 90 FOV. This time, it also gives an actual sense of height, which is cool. It actually is an improvement. We're getting there guys!!!

Nice view, though.

What also really feels satisfying is the drop from the ledge. It's a small thing to be satisfied of, but it really matters. The drop has a nice bounce to it, not in the cartoony sense, but in the dynamic, interactive sense. You feel that when you drop, it's not just a simple drop, it has a weight to it, a throw to it, a certain force to it. It feels like the character put some effort into the drop (if that makes sense).

I can add things that might work. I remember mentioning this a while back (don't remember in which post) but if the ledge climbing or wall climbing is paired with some boulders or rocks falling, that would make a lot of sense and would add a challenge. Also, if I pair the wall and ledge climb with a stamina meter, then things will get really interesting.

When I'm done with this mechanic, I'll implement 2 more mechanics to see how they feel. A dash mechanic (though right off the bat it seems a little bit on the nose) and a ground pound mechanic. The latter felt a lot of fun in another project, and I found myself using it out of the blue.

That's all I've got for today, ladies and gents. See you in the next post. Bye