April 2022 Update
Hi Everyone! 👋
We hope you all are doing well and appreciate taking the time to give our update a read!
We just wanted to give a quick update on what we’ve been up to during the past few months. It's been a busy but exciting journey remaking Laxidaze in Unreal so far and we just wanted to go over what we’ve been able to do so far.
The main systems we wanted to start on first were the dialogue and the combat systems since they were core parts of the Unity game. We have started building out a scalable dialogue system prototype that works similar to the unity system and utilizes Unreal blueprints which we have been getting familiar with. We have also started developing a rudimentary inventory system that is integrated with the dialogue system.
In terms of the combat system, we have been doing a lot of research and Proof-of-concept type work to learn the fundamentals of the new Unreal 5 physics engine (CHAOS) since we have been used to the Unity physics engine. From our research we have been able to learn a lot about the new CHAOS physics and can definitely see huge improvements in performance already. We have started developing our combat prototype using the Unreal 5 demo tools as a base since it includes the best practices to follow in terms of software architecture. On top of the new physics engine Unreal 5 also sports a new Lighting (Lumos) and a new FX system (Niagra) which we have been experimenting with. From our research we have found these new systems to be both performant and relatively easy to use. We are also even more excited to see how Laxidaze will turn out on Unreal 5 since these new upgrades are incredible.
Lastly, we are happy to announce that the Lockle plushies have arrived at MES HQ! We can’t wait for you to see them and will be reaching out about shipping addresses in the coming weeks.
Well that’s it for our update. We know it's not too exciting of an update but in terms of the technical knowledge we were able to gain, we are very excited for the future of Laxidaze on Unreal 5.
Please follow us on Twitter and join our Discord as we have an awesome and growing community!
That’s it for our April 2022 update, catch ya soon!
-Machine Elf Studios 🤖