So instead of using quads with single bones (skeletal meshes) like I wanted, I'll keep the system I had previously with Flipbooks and a custom made State Machine with Enums and Timelines.

Unfortunately this has some problems while switching weapons, I want the game to feel like the new Dooms where you can switch pretty fast while they reload and it wasn't posible.

But I'm trying some ideas to fix this with a couple of bools and Blueprint Interfaces.

This is what I'll focus on next. This and enemies.

And since I also have doors, teleports, bounce pads and switches working, I'd have the minimum pieces for a game.

I'd only need menus and such, which I can simply copy-paste.

If things go well I'm thinking about publishing a cheap shooter game before ProBoon, that will serve as a sandbox, to get feedback and to nail down multiplayer.

It also has a Weapon Location component I'll use to attach weapons, which is my next task.

Without Paper2D I can use a Skeletal Mesh with just a quad and a bone, like I'm doing with characters. This way I can use an Animation Blueprint with State Machines and Montages for the weapon mechanics instead of Timelines and Enums. I have to reconvert all the logic but it'll be worh it.

And the bone can be used for the bobbing animation when the player moves without shooting and when switching weapons.

As for pickups, they work as you can see in the video, I just need art, which I'll made later with Blender.

I like the way Doom 64 looks, so instead of using Freedoom's sprites I'll make my own. With more resolution, higher color palette and normal maps it'll look awesome.

I also have tried some Doom 2016 mods for GZDoom with a combo system that let you switch weapons while reloading, so you can fire the SG, SSG, RL and BFG one after the other and it feels f**king incredible.

I want it, and with Animation Notifies it'll be a piece of cake to implement.

So this is what comes next, GUNS.

I copied what I had before but this time using an Animation Blueprint.

Inside the material I put a Flipbook node and the Animation BP sends the animation time (frame) to a dynamic material instance inside the character and with a material parameter I select the correct sprite.

Now I think I will start with all the shooting mechanics and the character health.

Since last year I've been stuck because UE4 is an engine dedicated to 3D games and I chose to use Paper2D which is UE4's system to manage 2D sprites and animations.

This was all well and good at the beginning but after a while I started to face some limits that forced me to work in a hacky way.

I was allways fighting the engine and the logic was sustained by hacks and workarounds.

The "right" way would have been making plugins to add the functionality Paper2D lacks and I needed.

But the REAL right way would have been using skeletal meshes, animation blueprints and leveraging all the tools the engine has out of the box...

So this is what I'm doing from now on, I'll scrap Paper2D and all the hacks using Timelines and all that sh*t and switch to skeletal/static meshes, billboard materials, animation blueprints with state machines, montages and animation notifies...

I feel stupid, frustrated and pissed because I chose the wrong path and lost a lot of time doing so but at least I can reuse most of the logic already written so it's not that tragic.

So this video is to show what a difference already makes the change.

In the latest project version I have with Paper2D I have a map with 1000 actors with the basic Paper2D material and Flipbook Characters and I could barelly get 28 fps.

Now, using regular quads with billboard materials and the default Postprocess effects and such I can get 40+ fps with more than 10000 actors!

And the best part is that, when I transfer the rest I will be able to finally have multiplayer functioning because I won't have to deal with weird replication problems I had before.

Let's see if I can finish the switch before the month ends.

One day I wanted to continue but after openning the project everything was messed up and I decided to send OpenShot to hell and switch to a different editor.

Time passed and I didn't continue with the video because I had to do it all over again and I forgot about it.

Today I was removing files from the HDD and found the original videos so I said "F*ck it, let's just finish this."

And this is the result. I don't know if it's useful at all but I want to keep it somewhere because the videos will be gone from my disk to free up space.

To give different materials to the wall I used Select Random.

Rendered with a little bit of Bloom, Screen Space Reflections and Motion Blur.

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/Syq6JjMdyhI

Rendered with a little bit of Bloom and Screen Space Reflections, it has some artifacts and I don't know if it can be improved.

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/-0tMeMZpeXE

Created following this tutorial:

• Part 1 https://youtu.be/7MRonzqYJgw
• Part 2 https://youtu.be/L0AY61v6-M4
• Part 3 https://youtu.be/WFzIbz2FN28
• Part 4 https://youtu.be/OFmKedu8r88
• Part 5 https://youtu.be/irlEIYkeRCI
• Part 6 https://youtu.be/g8683RF1COo

The scene has a 2 light set up, 1 with light red color and the main one light blue. I added yellow Bloom.

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/51SdWI-yof4

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/98FkRIbihyQ

Rendered with Freestyle (Relative instead of Absolute) outlines. Animated with Constant Interpolation.

The footsteps are noises generated with a bfxr clone called rFXGen and modified with Audacity, reducing pitch.

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/HxK4zopuTFo

Rendered with Freestyle (Relative instead of Absolute) outlines and 100% Roughness. Desaturated colors with Standard color view instead of Filmic and Motion Blur.

Created following these tutorials:

• https://youtu.be/E8VnklgI1r4
• https://youtu.be/Lx9hNou8RJU

Rendered with Freestyle outlines and 100% Roughness.

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/8ZWvVvox-sI

Rendered with Motion Blur. The object in the center has 0.8 Metallic and 0.2 Roughness.

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/ur9Ap6KA5II

The colored parts of the fan use a material with 0.6 Metallic and Clearcoat to give them a shiny look.

There's a small glitch when the blue wing passes, I'm not sure why, probably bad keyframing in that point.

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/bNFn8_fISiY

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/26fLkwy6EiQ

Rendered with "Freestyle" on, 179º Crease Angle and some edges marked manually.

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/-fKtfwXR6E0

Rendered with the "Look" setting on "High Contrast", 100% Roughness and 0.2 Subsurface Scattering to make it look a little more like plastic.

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/4OUYOKGl7x0

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/nQwn-GzmdeA

Created following this tutorial:

https://youtu.be/71WnmX1UrEk