Safe Puzzle (4th – 5th May):
The safe puzzle as a whole works well, however there are a few annoying bugs that could not be fixed in time for the deadline.
One of these issues is that an infinite amount of numbers can be entered, which leads to numbers appearing past the keypad. This should be fixable if we continue this game by setting a maximum variable for the user input.
Another issue, perhaps more concerningly, is that the keypad is impossible to exit unless the correct code is entered. Therefore, if the player forgets the code or hasn’t yet found the note with the code on, they will be soft-locked. Again, this should be fixable in the future by setting the camera to transition back to the first-person character when “E” is pressed.
Virtual Shadow Map (4th – 5th May):
When testing other areas of the game, such as the safe puzzle, I encountered a warning from Unreal detailing “Virtual Shadow Map Page Pool overflow detected”. After some research I realised that virtual shadow maps are better at handling nanite, whereas regular shadow maps are not – but are less extensive on your system (Unreal DevOP, 2022).
Turning virtual shadow maps off, in favour of regular shadow maps, may be an option to stop light glitches and low framerate.
Conclusion:
Sadly, due to time constraints, we didn’t have time to test the whole game as a team and so we decided to test our own separate levels to save time. The safe puzzle glitches can easily be avoided but the soft-lock problem will need to be solved if we continue this project further.
References:
Unreal DevOP (2022) Unreal Engine 5 – Virtual Shadow Map Performance (Explained) [Video]. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJgOlSNVVW4&t=417s [Accessed 04/05/2024].