Week 1: A Hat in Time Mod

What This Project Is

This semester, for my Advanced Seminar in World & Quest Design class, my plan is to create a story-based level for the game, A Hat in Time. Originally, me and a group of friends had planned to enter a contest held by the developers a few months ago to create a set of levels. Unfortunately, we all had too much other work that had higher priority levels, so the plans had to be cut. This semester, I want to pick that project back up and create something really cool.

Getting To Know The Editor

My first week of work on the project was more about learning to use the Hat in Time Editor on Steam. The game was originally developed in Unreal Engine 3, and when it comes to Unreal, I don't have a lot of experience. Fortunately, I found a great tutorial made by Steam User, The Great And Powerful Weegee, on how to get started in the editor and create my first level. To a bit of surprise, it was really simple to put everything together once I knew where to find things. Probably my favorite part of the process was working with the editor's kismet and matinee windows. I used these features to put together some basic animations that would make platforms rotate and move around.

This Week's Final Product

My first level in the Hat in Time Editor.

The end result from my practice in the editor was a pretty basic level set in the game's Time Rift setting. I'm probably most happy with how the rotating platforms came out; specifically the big gear and spiked platforms. I like that I was able to make the small cubes rotate, but I want to make their rotation feel a bit more natural since they didn't use the constant rotation like the other platforms.

Once I made the final build of the practice level, I saw that I had made a mistake with the checkpoint I placed. When I loaded the level, I was put at the checkpoint instead of the starting position. On top of that, I moved around to find that a second player mesh had been spawned. During the building process, checkpoints were something that I struggled, so I'm not too surprised that something happened.

My little mistake (but it's still pretty cute).

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how the practice session went. Of course there were some slip-ups, but that's bound to happen. I can't wait to dive deeper into this editor and come out with something great.

Coming Up...

Moving forward, it'll be time to get my hands dirty with creating a story. My plan right now is to take on of the environments from the level, Alpine Skyline, and make a story based around it. Alpine Skyline has a lot of different environments that I think could have some really cool stories behind them, so it seems only fit to pick one of them. Of course, I'm not going to be ignoring the editor, because that would be pretty stupid. Hopefully by the end of the week, I can have a level built that can give the player some platforming challenges, and have an ending. For the time being, I'm going to wait on story implementation in the editor and focus on making each aspect good.