Animating Prop Movement: Scaling Props

Sometimes during platformers, you’ll encounter obstacles that change their dimensions. These could be platforms that grow and shrink in size, or get taller or shorter along a certain axis. When an object’s dimensions are modified this way, it’s called modifying its scale.

An object's scale tells you how much to multiply each of its dimensions, relative to itself. Normally, objects have a scale of {X := 1.0, Y := 1.0, Z := 1.0}. If you double the Z value of an object’s scale, it becomes twice as tall. If you half it, half as tall.

Scale is the final part of the transform puzzle. In this section, you’ll learn how to manipulate scale to create objects that grow and shrink to different sizes.

Making Props that Scale

Follow these steps to build the code that scales your props:

1. Create a new Verse class named scaling_prop that inherits from movable_prop using Verse Explorer. Add the <concrete> specifier to this class to expose its properties to UEFN.

   |  |  |
   | --- | --- |
   |  | # A prop that scales toward either a given scale or a Creative prop's scale. |
   |  | scaling_prop<public> := class<concrete>(movable_prop): |