SEAR DevBlog week of 4/21: Boom Boom Here It Comes

So many placeholder boostpads.

I might get a little gushy this time. Apologies in advance.

Had some deep dives into multiplayer this week, particularly the differences between GameMode, GameState, PlayerPawn, and PlayerState (and PlayerController.... yeesh) in UE5. SEAR won't be ready for multiplayer out of the gates, we're aiming for single player in the demo, but if MP is anywhere on the horizon it's good to keep in mind while doing single-player dev, so that's what we're doing.

This came up particularly in the context of where to house the AudioManager and VFXManager components I built this week (Brian Fuller says all our sounds should be housed in Metasounds, so by golly, that's what we're doing), which leads directly into the most exciting development of the week: audio and video.

We've got our custom vehicle models underway, but for the most part we're still using placeholder assets for visuals and audio. Even still, it's pretty exciting to start hearing some NOISE when the player punches turbo, hits higher speeds, and flies over boost pads. I was able to set up a basic fade-to-black for the phase transitions getting triggered by the song, and then play one of the little test levels with the music pumping, the sound effects running, the strafing and drifting working, and when the music hit a transition point and the screen darkened to signal a new phase, I'm not gonna lie. I got emotional.

Mayank is a great developer with both breadth and depth to his experience. I like to think we're each learning something from the other, but seriously, some days I think this guy could be charging me tuition. While his UE experience is absolutely invaluable, that's not the only way I lucked out when I found him. He's also passionate about the idea of SEAR. 70% of people I explain the idea to just don't get it right away, which is completely understandable. But Mayank understood it in about 15 minutes... and immediately started exclaiming about how cool it was and how "no one's done this before, Adam." : D

Now a cynic might say Mayank is on my payroll and may therefore just be blowing smoke up my ass, but if you spend any time with the guy you will realize this is simply not true. I'm going to tell you something he said this week in order to illustrate. This quote is all paraphrasing - I didn't record him or anything - except for the last five words, which I remember perfectly.

"I can't wait to get this demo finished. I can't wait to play this game. Driving on the track, taking the turns, while you're hearing the music and it's just like boom boom here it comes."

Boom boom here it comes.

Man. It describes SEAR so well I'm seriously thinking about just making it the tagline.