Preview: How I Do Cutscenes
I haven't written anything in a while, but here's something coming down the pipe. We've started building scripted cutscenes for our game! They are all in-engine and I've been challenged with creating scenes that have much in common with battles, but are driven by a flexible keyframing system.
Above is a screenshot of the editor asset, uSequencer used to create a rough draft of one of our scenes. Every block of time here is a custom sequence that hooks into the battle controller to simulate a unit actually taking an action.
Using uSequencer in this way means its job becomes purely scheduling code that (sometimes) has a fixed duration. (There are a few points where the sequence is paused to let the player interact with a dialogue that happens "instantaneously".)
After building the custom extensions I needed to hook into the game, doing a scene from a script+mockups took about a day to a day and a half, including painting the map, laying out props and zero unique code. Considering there will be dozens by the time this is done, I'm pretty happy.