WireFrame: Air Superiority

Blueprints. Man, this week has been awesome, I've got everything functioning correctly and it really ties the turret together, it looks all techy and ready to go. I was very concerned at some points, because there were some low moments where I wanted to give up and walk away from rotation blueprints. Side note- you would think that of all the simple things to have, Unreal 4 would have a single node or two, that asked: 'rotate on axis/pivot? Great, what speed?' And that would be it, done, neatly wrapped and taken care of in a few hours work. That would be way too convenient though, instead it was a grueling week of trial and error, it really doesn't help that because this version of the engine is brand new, resources are scarce, there was no tutorials that had what I needed, so I was working from the ground up. In retrospect, this really taught me more than a tutorial would- I know exactly what every node does and why it's needed, and that's probably what got my next- far more glamorous- blueprint working as well- however I bet it could be done with half the complexity, oh well, fake it till you make it.
So all's well as long as those propellers rotate, Which they do- ha! I'm so pleased!
Oh- also: DMU 3rd years absolutely rock, they helped me out loads getting these things going and showing me how to work timelines. Really appreciate it!

I also got the bullets shooting out of both barrels, which was some pretty simple stuff, although it did give me some really weird bullet problems. There was a whole day spent constructing and reconstructing my turret because my bullets weren't firing. Turns out the second barrel collision box was screwing with where the bullets spawned, so they weren't going anywhere, so I had to remove the collision on the barrels, and I staggered where the two bullets spawns were for each barrel so they didn't collide with each other and make a terrible mess. Getting the gun working was pretty sweet though, it felt more powerful than the single and helped compensate for my tiny puny bullets.

Putting sound on there was also way easier than I thought it would be, though it is obnoxiously loud so headphone users be wary, just a cool stretch goal I managed to grab before hand in. After that, I thought I was done, it wasn't until I was sitting in labs on hand in day when one of our tutors- Max- was checking everyone's turret out. He looked at mine and mentioned how cool it would be if I got it to move around the scene. I asked if he was serious and he gave me a laugh and told me to try. I'm still not sure if he was joking, but with a few hours to go, I decided to give it a shot regardless. I didn't expect anything, I'd spent a week trying to get propellers to rotate, I couldn't get this thing moving in a few hours... TOTALLY COULD, TOTALLY DID.

The turret now follows you around at a slightly slower speed so the player can kite the turret and keep out of range, or choose to engage. It will also always rotate around you to try and stay in front of the player. I felt like a total pro after getting it working, maybe the hours could have been techincally better spent polishing textures, but the blueprint and overall confidence boost this gave me I feel- on a personal level- was way more valuable.

So project over- feel good, bring on the character project.