A new start
I have now worked years with Unity. It is a good engine perfect for learning and knowing the basics of the game development world. But in the end, it’s no secret that the market for unreal developers is higher than that of a unity developer. And besides, I always wanted to learn C++ and Unreal engine.
When I switched for this project I was mind blown of how confusing it was. Gameobjects are Aactors? I was really confused. But fortunately with help of some Unity to Unreal documentation. So when I got past all the research and learning. It was just getting easier. Unreal does so much for you and Unity doesn’t but the good thing about that learn the insides. But glad that I don’t have to it in Unreal.
Goal
The goal was “I want to make a Third-person space robot shooter”. So with this idea, I researched some games that gave the same impression. So took some inspiration from: Dead space, Mass Effect and Halo Franchise.
I really wanted to focus and follow my design. So while looking at some of my insperations, I designed cells for my first level. As you can see in the picture I tried to let the players know when they are in a totally different area. So by adjusting lights with bright and dark colors, I managed to created totally different enviorments
Entities
This character is meant to be a peace of cake when its in low numbers. But when this enemy appears with greater numbers they became a swarm of danger.
Not only are they meant to damage you, they are also meant block you and be annoying combined with a range enemy.
The sentry turret is a turret that fires for 3 seconds straight at the player ones it finds the player.
And the Machine gun is designed to do the same time thing but with a faster fire rate. And is also more accurate.
Both of the turrets focus at the player point and say focused for 3 seconds. I chose this design so that the player has chance to dogde and reposition him self. Also to take cover.
This is my proudest entity I made. I put a lot of thought in its design. it has 3 attacks 1 Arm blast, 2 laser visor, 3 shoulder missle. And more about the second attack “Laser visor” it once it hits the player it applies the on fire effect taking 10 damage each second.
Pictures
Highlights
I was v
ery nervous to work at a AI in Unreal Engine. And I rather code everything in C++ but I knew that blueprint was the best option because it is easier. But what did I know, unreal had something for me Behavior Trees and black boards. And my god what did I love it. It is so nice to have a visualization of the behavior that you’ve programmed. So that made all this work way easier.
Unreal Engine is not only used for games but also movies so it had in build movies components. Like a camera rig and rail. And the focus more on the camera’s in unreal engine they are very detailed different camera lenses. Wich make it easier to with camera work ofcourse. And the all the camera effects you would normally would use are build in.
Then we have the cinematic panel itself it was so easy to make urself a cinematic: audio, camera cuts, visual effects. It made everything way easier and also nice that every parameter is exposed for the cinematics.
Ofcourse unreal engine doesn’t manage everything for me so I had to make a objective system myself. My tasks were
- Create a Objective Data struct
- Make a Objective Manager
- UI for Objective Manager
- Making Trigger Objectives and Callable Objectives
So I had to learn to make structs in unreal engine and how to expose it in blueprints. After that when that worked out I started with the Manager and each type of Objective and that Objectives can trigger each other with a interface called logicobjects