If there is one thing I’m bad at it’s trying to estimate how long something will take. I seem to never be able to grasp just how big some tasks are. To me most things seem easier than they are when I’m thinking about them. This is beneficial as well as harmful for me. It means I’m always late to everything, but it also means I’ll undertake and accomplish tasks I would never have even started if I truly had a grasp on the amount of time/work required.

As I mentioned in a previous post I’ve scrapped yet another version of Zeds in order to work in the Unreal engine. Knowing that I’m bad at work estimations I’ve begun working on a much smaller project in order to learn the new engine. My first game is an untitled miniature golf game. I spent a night working on it a couple of days ago and got a nice little prototype working.

I’ve found the new Unreal engine to be incredibly easy to use. The blueprint system is fantastic and intuitive and the most trouble I have had so far is setting up a custom player pawn and camera. Something I was eventually able to work out after some time.

So when is slaying zombies like playing a game of golf? Well for starters the camera rig I built for my golf game can be directly ported over to Zeds. It uses standard RTS keyboard controls and handles very nicely. On top of that my miniature golf game uses procedurally generated courses. given the complexity of the golf course is miniscule in comparison to Zeds maps but the basic concept behind both is similar enough that building it in the golf game should give me good insight on How I’m going to need to set it up in Zeds.

The prototype reminds me of “Octodad” or “Surgeon Simulator” in that its physics based and difficult to control. I’m having fun trying to play it for now though. Maybe once I get it a little polished I’ll post it here.