I think I need a break from development for a bit; I should have had lunch a while ago. So let's do a progress blog post, shall we?

When I heard the word "sacrifice", my Super Best Friends Play addled brain went straight to "sacrifice X for more time on the clock." A little bit of brainstorming later, and I had my idea.

It's a single player, arcade style arena shooter. You're dropped into an arena filled with continuously spawning bad guys, given a time limit, and told to get the highest score possible before the timer hits zero. You earn points by killing enemies, and you can earn bonus time by picking up items that enemies drop on death (which I am calling widgets for lack of a better name) and returning them to a base station somewhere in the arena.

Here's the fun bit though: your score multiplier depends on how many widgets you're carrying, and returning several widgets in one go gets you more bonus time than returning them one by one. However, if you die, not only do you have to wait 5 seconds to respawn, you irretrievably lose all the widgets you were carrying. Furthermore, the only way to restore your health is by returning widgets to a base station.

So that's where the "sacrifice" bit comes in. Do you collect only a few widgets at a time, taking fewer risks at the cost of a lower score? Or do you collect a whole bunch and cash them in at the last possible moment, because you don't want to let go of the 20x multiplier you've got? The choice is very much yours.

As for current progress, I've got player movement done and a basic implementation of hitscan ranged and melee weapons. Right now I'm working on AI, which is to say "reading a bunch of tutorials and unreal support forums to try and figure out what on earth I'm doing". Currently the AI characters just move towards you while T-posing menacingly, and while that is intimidating, they need to pose some kind of threat to the player.

Once that's done, the plan of attack is Game Objects -> Game Logic (scoring, time limits, etc.) -> HUD -> Map Creation -> Music, SFX, Particle FX, Meshes, Other Graphical Stuff -> polishing and tweaking. I'm trying to get everything up to the HUD done by the end of today, but I think that might be wishful thinking.

But right now I've got a sub sandwich that needs eating, and it has definitely gone cold by this point. :/