Hey Party Panic! fans,

Chris Here!

While the team took some well-deserved time off during Spring Break, I soldiered on to make some exciting progress on our game. Let's dive into what I've been up to during this solo adventure!

4-Player Pong Minigame

I developed several versions of a new 4-person pong minigame, with players 1 and 2 at the top and bottom, and players 3 and 4 on the left and right. Stopping the paddles at the walls seemed straightforward with overlapping events, but the ball's interaction with the paddle posed a challenge. I needed to determine the impact point to control the ball's direction after hitting the paddle, and for some reason, the hit events just wouldn't trigger.

After much struggle, I discovered that if the paddle pawn had a root component that wasn't the mesh, the hit events wouldn't activate. Moving the mesh to the root fixed the issue, and now the 4-player pong minigame is ready to be integrated into the main project.

Menu System and Player Customization

I also started working on a menu system that allows players to select whether each player is human or computer-controlled. After that, human players can choose their desired color. AI players will then randomly pick from the remaining colors.

There's still some work to be done, such as assigning colors to the mesh materials, but it's coming along nicely.

Local Multiplayer Research

As we move forward with the development of Party Panic!, I've been researching how local multiplayer works so I can start implementing it into our minigames. There are still a few kinks to iron out, but I'm confident that we're close to a breakthrough!

One major issue I discovered is that controllers other than player 1 (Player Controller Index 0) don't function in the "New Editor Window." This revelation should help us tackle the problem more efficiently.

Wrapping Up

It's been a productive week of solo work on Party Panic!, and I'm excited to share my progress with the team as they return from their break. Stay tuned for more updates and behind-the-scenes stories from our game development journey!

Until next time, keep partying on!

Your Party Panic! Dev Team