Update 02/04/2020

Over the past week, I have begun the process of reaching out to industry artists, who I believe will be able to give me valuable information on their workstyles, inclusive of Character Design elements and Gameplay programming techniques. To do this, I have first reached out to them formally, introducing myself and the reason for the contact, before requesting that we have a chat about their experiences with the relevant disciplines. As of yet, Ihavent received any responses, however I am hopeful that I will be able to gain some invaluable lessons and experiences from these artists. 

In terms of the progress I have made on my project, due to the current global Covid-19 situation, my progress has slowed quite dramatically, however, I am still on track with my project and hope to be playtesting 1 half of my game properly within the next couple of weeks. This will involve players playing through a couple of levels as one of their characters, fighting off enemies and testing balancing, such as enemy difficulty and looting value. I would like this part of the game to be incredibly enjoyable and also rewarding, without being too easy or too difficult. That would mean ensuring that the best guns available to the player dont become available too easily and I have some ideas as to how to achieve this. Firstly, my game will use a fairly simple procedural loot system. This will involve actors around the map deciding whether they should spawn loot or not. If they should, they will then decide what kind of loot to spawn and then the specific item to spawn. The possible issues involved with this would be that:

 A) the player could find the best items in the game almost immediately

B) So much loot would spawn that the player would be unstoppable to quickly, ruining the other mechanics on show.

To fight these issues, I will deploy these tricks. Firstly, the best loot will be removed from the loot pools and placed manually in the levels, meaning I have certainty that the player wont stumble across the best items accidentally. This is a method deployed by Role-playing games such as the Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Secondly, I will ensure that loot spawn chances are balanced correctly, to ensure that the right amount of gear spawns. As players will have access to weapons dropped by enemies, I feel it important to ensure that players dont get overwhelmed with options. The player has 8 slots in their inventory for consumables and weapons and I should remember this when balancing the loot. This will be achieved mainly by playtesting and so the pressure is on to get to that stage.

I am also aware of the other part of my games progress. This part of the game will consist mainly of UI menus and so development will be contained to the creation of widgets in UE4. The last process I did before slowing down was to go back over what I had for this stage so far, fixing bugs and gripes I had with those elements. This included making the world clock more professional, as the previous iteration didnt work off of any convential clock and had a tendancy to move position when the clock read less than 10am. This meant that what should have been 09:30 actually read 9:30, making the clock move and this looked really messy. 

The next stages for this part of the game will be to add the base menus, with character information screens, character enhancement screens, a base inventory screen and the improvement and development of the world map. I would like to add an event log, which the player can look back over to see how their world has developed. Additionally, I need to ensure that characters move around the map to different locations, as well as add the functionality needed to allow characters to be captured at locations.

Much work to be done but I am confident I can continue and make the best possible experience for the topic of character attachment I have chosen.