Progress Update - 7th - 13th Nov 2022

I used this video to begin creating the terrain for my shooting range.

 I plan to create a relatively flat desert environment, with the player spawning in a wild-west style town. They would be able to freely explore the bounds of the town and interact with the environment, which would tackle both the VR artefacts I want to create. I had originally planned to have a separate door interaction artefact, but I felt that this would test my current skills more and facilitate the growth of my skillset better. It would also be much more interesting  and immersive from the player's perspective. Being able to work on both artefacts at once by making the shooting range part of a bigger overall experience would also make development more focused, which will make it easier for me when I begin creating my AR artefacts as I feel that these will be where I struggle the most.

The shooting range, whilst being the smaller part of the overall experience I intend to create is possibly the most mechanically complex part of the overall artefact. If I were to have the interactive environment be separate from it, I would possibly spend too much time on it and the interactive environment would suffer as a result.

I've created a landscape by following the advice of the video, and I now know how to apply materials that aren't a part of the template to the shapes I create in the world. Due to Unreal constantly crashing due to the same error however, it's proven difficult to make any meaningful progress in engine, so as of right now, I have a flat plane I can manipulate.

I took a sand texture from here: https://freepbr.com/materials/sand-1-pbr-material/ which I intended to use, however, in engine the sand looks noticeably darker than it appears in the texture image. I may use another texture.

I have made progress with the rifle model, which, once completed, I plan to import into the engine. I will use a placeholder in it's blueprint for the time being so that I can continue to work in engine on the technical aspects of the artefact.

Next, I hope to create an ammo counter system, but I am unsure of how I want to go about it. The more immersive I make it, the harder it becomes to implement. For example, one way I could implement an ammo counter is by having the player look into the bolt mechanism, which prompts the game to show them a number or a series of bullet symbols, since a player may not want to individually count each round left. This would further immerse the player by having them perform an action that makes their weapon seem more tangible and complex, but being able to detect when the player looks into the bolt mechanism may prove difficult. Whilst much simpler, having an ammo counter display on their wrist would break the theme of an old western town since it could be seen as futuristic.