Bug Busting and Mapping Adventures

Author: Daniel Ben Zvi

Date: 12/14/2023 EST

Blog Entry Part 1: The Headshot Headache

This week's journey in game development kicked off with a puzzling bug affecting AI navigation tied to the headshot feature which resulted in unexpected glitching behavior in the AI's navigation originating from the Actor's colliders.

Blog Entry Part 2: Resolving the Headshot Headache

Navigating through the colliders, the solution to the headshot bug emerged. Surprisingly, a simple checkbox proved to be the key, rendering the collider navigation effects invalid and unraveling the headache.

Blog Entry Part 3: The Full Map and Map Marker Challenge

Transitioning to the next challenge, the full-screen toggle map feature brought its own set of problems. Reusing the existing map marker component from the small circular minimap widget revealed hurdles, as I could not easily reuse minimap marker logic in order to add the Actor's marker for both the minimap and full-screen map simultaneously.

Blog Entry Part 4: Solutions for the Full Map and Markers

Continuing the journey, the focus shifted to navigating solutions for the full-screen map feature and map marker challenge. Two main solutions were taken into consideration; each with its own benefits & risks, the first offered simplicity but gave up reuse as I would be creating new components and managing multiple markers per Actor, the second offered reuse but could prove to be eventually ineffective; this solution focuses on attempting to expand on the map marker component's logic to toggle between full map & minimap positioning logic or something similar.