Hey everyone. I'm back with another update to my final year project. It has been a while but I've done a few things. The first noticeable thing would be the new set-up for the room the smelting mechanic is in. I changed this simply to make it clearer what was what and kinda because I re-did all the kismet for the mechanic. I'll go on more about why I did this in a moment but first a picture. :)
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| Overview of the new room with textures. |
Ok, so now you've seen the new layout. Now for the changes to the kismet. A few days after posting my last blog update there where a lot of things I didn't like about the whole furnace system. The biggest one was the way the coal functioned. In the current version the coal now has durability and every 0.5 seconds (or cycle) it will pick one piece of coal at random that is in the furnace and reduce it's durability by 1 point. When this hits 0 it is removed from the furnace. This makes it easier to maintain higher temperatures and is more predictable by the player. The more fuel they add the longer it will stay lit and the hotter it can get. Simple.
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| Coal durability reduction. |
Of course I didn't change this just because I didn't like it but also because I wanted a better system for the next mechanic I'm going to be working on and for this I wanted to make sure the fuel system was the same to ensure consistency through my project. Placing the coal in the furnace has pretty much stayed the same, however the way the particles and lights are done is different.
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| Kismet for adding fuel into the furnace as well as the initial texture change. |
I use a similar method for the particles, giving each coal its own attached particle system. The big change is the way the light levels now work. Each coal also has its own dynamic light source. The brightness is pretty low but as more lights get turned on the brighter the surrounds look. This may not be the best method of doing this but its simpler and overall gives a better visual effect to the player.
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| Kismet for fire particles and lights. |
So what else have I done? Well I've also changed the way the bellows function. I found myself just spamming the E key to get the bellows to work which I just didn't like. Then I got thinking, why not turn it into a little mini game... Probably not the best way to describe it, however there is a reward feature. As of current every complete cycle of the bellows increases the furnace temperature by a set amount. This on it's own is pretty boring so what happens is, if you can reactivate the bellows within half a second of it finishing, it'll speed up how long it takes for the bellow to complete it cycle. Initially it takes 6 seconds to complete a full cycle on the bellow which is pretty slow. This time can be reduced down to 2 seconds which is 3 times as fast allowing the player to increase the temperature faster. If the player tries to activate before the cycle has finished or takes to long it slows it down.
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| Kismet for the bellows and cool down function. |
I've also made a few chances to the heating and cooling down which I'll get to in a moment. Sneak preview in the picture above. :P To help the player know when the cycle has finished there is a particle effect in the furnace. This becomes harder to see as the furnace gets hotter and more fire particles are present.
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| Effect from the bellows. |
Ok so on to the new stuff. I've now got a crucible that the player can pick up and place metal cubes inside. I'm not going to go into to much detail on how this works but its a kactor with a trigger inside. :)
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| The crucible!! |
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| The metal cubes!! |
The metal cubes are also kactors the player can pick up. To place inside the crucible the player simply places it over the crucible and press E. It is then placed inside the crucible where it can then be moved around. If the player wants to take it out they can by pressing E on the crucible again.
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| Metal in the crucible. |
So once the player has placed the metal in the crucible they can pick it up and move it around. The idea from here would be to place it into a hot furnace. (about 600) The player can tell what temperature the furnace is by the number of flame particles they can see. For approxamitly every 100 furnace temp a fire particle will be active. 6 fire particles means about 600 furnace temp. Once this is done they simply place the crucible into the furnace and wait.
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| Crucible in the furnace. |
The benefit to this system is that it's possible to melt more crucibles at the same time. (If I added more) This would add itself to a dynamic smelting system and even allow for casting of multiple metals. As a visual indicator the metal will turn red to show it's melted. Ideally it would be nice to have a gradual change but I feel I don't have time to mess around trying to make fancy materials.
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| Hot metal inside a crucible. |
I'm not going to explain much about the kismet behind how the crucible works like I said but below is a screenshot of the kismet for the heating up when its in the furnace. A similar method is used to cool the metal down when its not in the furnace.
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| Kismet for heating up the metal when it's in the furnace. |
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