A Strong Start

After about two weeks of development, I’d thought I would give an update as to the progress of the game so far. Overall the progression of development has been good and I feel that I am well on track to completing a polished game by the end of the semester. Naturally, progress has been limited due to the fact that I am currently a full time uni student, meaning I have three other units that also need work to be completed. Progress has also been limited due to the fact that I have to learn and understand the blueprint system.

In terms of the game’s progress, currently the very basic core loop of the game has been completed at this point. The player is able to spawn in with only their pistol and wonder around an environment. The game currently has one prototype basic zombie which the player can shoot and kill, earning them money. The A.I for the zombies (which uses unreal’s A.I behavior tree) could certainly been improved, especially in regards to detecting the player, as well as how they move when close in to the player. The walk, attack and idle animation for the zombies are in, however, these likely will be polished in how they look. I did have some difficulty with getting the animations to work, due to some small issues that including needing to download/import the walk animation from Mixamo properly and making sure bools have been correctly set.

The map - work in progress layout

Basic Zombie behavior tree as it currently stands

Zombie walk and attack animations (Model and animations currently from Mixamo)

When the player manages to die, they are immediately brought to the work-in-progress shop screen. This screen currently allows the player to purchase the only other gun in the game – the assault rifle. Once the player is finished in the shop, the move onto the inventory menu. This allows the player to select which weapons and which slot those weapons will be in when the player respawns. When the player is happy, they can respawn back at the start of the level with any new weapons that they purchased. The player is also able to spawn seamlessly between the two weapon slots.

How the primary gun inventory slot works

The player receiving money and gun variables from the game instance

Already on reflection at this point, the way that I have done the weapons might not be the most optimal or best way to do this process. The instance of the gun has been designed using data structures, where each different gun will have the same types of variables, including the gun’s mesh, muzzle flash and sound, the type of firing it uses and so on. These variables then get updated to the player’s blueprint whenever the player switches weapons or spawns in. How the game knows which weapons the player has equipped in their gun slots is done using an enumerator. Overall this process I feel works, albeit making the player’s blueprint more complex and detailed than what it should be. However, I feel that this beats having to create a completely new blueprint for each gun and having to reference the blueprint multiple times. If I were to make another FPS unreal game in the future however, I would certainly attempt to use the individual blueprints idea to see if it is actually better than my current method.

The custom data structure layout for the guns

A custom node that I created to easily update all the player variables associated with the current gun

In the next week or two, I plan to have the main challenge of the game, as well as improve upon and polish the game and make a more detailed environment. The main focus now for this week is to get the wave spawning of the zombies complete. From there, I plan to improve upon the shop and inventory menu’s, as well as incorporating ammo for the guns in the game.