This week I want to give you some technical insight into our project.

I want to start with recapping what happened over the last week: The player movement for the cell stage is implemented and the GUI is wired up, too. There is now a health-bar, DNA-bar and you can see your current compounds as well as your compound balance.

Currently I'm working with or rather exoerimenting with Unreal's UProceduralMeshComponent. My main goal is to create a mesh I can manipulate on runtime. The first thing I want to use it for are the compound clouds. When the player swims into them they should bend around him as if they were being absorbed while simoultaniously decreasing their value until it reaches 0 and the dissovle completly.

Once I'm familiar with how this class works I will use it for the creature editor. So far it's the best thing I know of for creating meshes that can be generated on runtime. 

Currently I'm struggeling with writing an algorithm that creates a mesh that roughly outlines the shape for the compound cloud and mostly acts as a trigger and the bounds for the simulated clouds. On that point I discovered somethin you might be interested in this topic: 

So far I haven't tried it but it looks exactly like the thing I need for this.

And something special: Version 1 of the Lyfe Main Theme is done. (Lyfe_Main.mp3)

That's it for this week. I want to focus on the cell stage for this devblog as long as I'm working on it. This might result in shorter entries but we want to keep you up to date.

We're also still looking for people to join the team if you're interested.

UPDATE:

I managed to create an actual cube with a procedural mesh

UPDATE 2:

We go some actual random shapes that will later function as the outline for the clouds.