All in All

So overall, I probably spent about 4 to 6 hours a week on this for the 4 weeks we were in school for this project. And then the last week, because it was crunch time and we were putting the final touches on everything, I spent close to 10 hours a day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday trying to finish everything up. and then Monday and Tuesday I spent a total of 36 hours in the lab, mostly trying to fix the build errors that we were getting. And then a few more hours Wednesday and Thursday. Overall, I spent about 90 hours in the lab working on this project.

An overview of what I accomplished:
We developed an idea and pitched it.
Pitch failed so we developed a new idea and pitched that one. It succeeded.
Me and Andony worked out how we would make the game system.
I did a tutorial on UE4 blueprints to give me a head start. ( And some extra credit too ;) )
I learned how to use the UE4 editor, and the differences between it and the Unity editor.
I learned how the mechanics of UE4 work and how they are different than Unity.
I taught myself a new programming language (C++.)
I taught myself a new programming style (Visually Based Programming as opposed to writing lines)
I taught myself how to use the VR handsets and how to reference them and use them in BP's.
I created and coded 6 original spells on my own.
I worked to fix the build error codes and try to figure something out for a long while.

So basically, the learning curve was high for me on this one. But I and my team feel that I have risen to the occasion and done an extraordinary job.

All said and done, I know that I have worked hard and diligently. I know and can honestly say that I have given it my very best, and given it my all. Even when I wanted to quit and this project tried me, I stayed in and kept going.

I am grateful for the opportunity to prove myself to my peers, my team-members, and to my professor Jeff. I know my work is good and I am proud of what I have accomplished.

Thank you Jeff for this opportunity, and for the valuable lessons that I have been taught through this class. There is no better method of teaching than an experiential teaching.  

(also, please don't forget about the extra credit. You asked me to remind you in the blog.)

The Lesson Learned

So, there was a HUGE lesson to be learned in all of this. It was a really painful lesson to learn to, seeing as we are still trying to fix it. But essentially we should learn to communicate better with our team members, always have back-ups, have some more back-ups for the back-ups just in case, and probably have back-ups for those as well. Also, dont wait until the day before to try to create an executable. I have learned that even if you don't get errors when you run the game, anything wrong will rear its head once you try to build, so go ahead and build every now and then just to make sure. It would also be a good way to keep track of progress and be something that you can give to your client so that they can have tangible evidence of the work you have done so far.

Chain Lightning

Finally, I have saved the best for last. This one is most definitely my favorite. I think that it is the most logically interesting to have implemented and I am honestly quite proud of myself for figuring this one out.

Here is the video!

Spawn Person

This one was fun to do just because you could spawn a person out of thin air simply by pressing a button. It was pretty simple to do just because the AI were also BP classes, so I could just call a spawn actor by class node. The interesting part about them was, the first time I did it I still had the scale of the transform on .2 for each of the dimensions. So when you spawned them there was a tiny little person running around trying to fight for you. It was pretty funny. But I fixed that and made them normal and that was the only real hiccup I had with that BP class.

Orbital Strike

Alright, so this one is pretty cool. I really enjoyed making this one because I basically had to make another spell for it. Essentially, you cast out your spell and where ever it hits, it calls down a strike from above. The spell it calls down though is what is cool because it chases the target down no matter where they go. So I made a tracking spell! And then I implemented it in this way, because this of course is way cool.

Here it is in video form! No point in wasting time reading, right?

Large AOE

This one was much the same as the last spell that I showed y'all. Once I had figured out the logic I decided to have a little fun with it and make it a much bigger effect that dealt more damage and looked like a different spell. This was the hard part. Instead of making a bigger explosion, I wanted to make it look like there was a curse that had been put on the Actors. This was mostly inspired by the dark souls curse effect. I made red particle effect that looked similar to the one that they use in Dark Souls and then put an added spin on it myself by adding a particle effect to each individual actor that looked like cursing words spinning around their dying bodies. Pretty cool, huh?

Here is a video where I explain it all and show it more in depth.

Small Area of Effect (AOE)

Now that I had created a single spell, I started getting the feel for this whole BP class thing and started having some fun with the spells I was making. So in this one I figured I would make a pretty decent AOE spell, just in case your aim is a little bad, or you wanted to hurt more than one enemy at a time. Just in case if I am leaving someone hanging, an area of effect smply means that instead of applying damage to just one target, it apply's damage to all targets within a certain volume.

Here is a video where I explain how I did this.