Before I finished Garden: Urada Chapter, I knew I wanted to try making an action RPG and to create it I wanted to use one of the modern, more complex game engines. After seeing some interesting videos of 2D games made with Unreal Engine, I decided to try it out myself.

Basic idea of what I want to do is to create a test project with 2.5D sprite graphics where the player character can move any direction and has ability to jump and climb allowing the game world to have platforming sections. Player would fight enemies in melee combat with attacks that can be chained together in combos. Enemies would be relatively easy but could punish the player if they're not paying attention. Occasionally there would be a more difficult boss enemy.

A huge inspiration for the project is a game called Hyper Light Drifter by Hearth Machine and the Souls-series games by From Software.

Development Blog

Afterthoughts

UE5 - Boss updates

Block and Counter

UE5 - Modeling continued+

UE5 - Modeling mode continued

UE5 - Modeling mode & other updates

UE5 - Boss battle

UE5 - Combat

UE5 - Basic animations

The basic layout I use in UE5. Another layout for level design maximizes the viewport while minimizing the docks to the sides.

The first "boss" is down, moving on the next one...

Afterthoughts

24.8.2023

The project has been "finished" for a few weeks now. By finished I mean I've learned enough to start building an actual game. There's still a bunch of stuff I don't know how to do, but I'm more of the type that learns along the way, so there isn't much point to keep working on the learning project forever. I'll be using it as a reference for future work (what to do and what not to do) and as a little sandbox where I can try things out.

Unreal Engine has been really nice to work with. Coming from GB Studio (which is pretty awesome too) I feel EU has lots of modern and convenient features. PaperZD, the plugin to improve 2D development, shows how powerful plugins can be especially for features Unreal is lacking on. I still haven't touched the C++ side of the engine, but I was planning to find out at least the basics of C++ development with Unreal, someday.

Beam Attack: The beam attack is spawned at a point set in the boss' actor and set to the player's direction.

Knockback: This blueprint launches the player in the correct direction but the knockback distance is not consistent.

UE5 - Boss updates

28.7.2023

The first update to the boss battle is the blue Break bar in the user interface. It depletes as the boss takes damage and when it's empty the boss is staggered for a few seconds before the bar refills.

The boss has also gained new moves. A knockback stomp attack is included in its random attack pattern and a beam attack that triggers at certain health thresholds. The beam attack happens twice, the first time the boss runs to either of the top corners and shoots the beam at the player. On the second time, the boss simply shoots at the player from its current position, and in addition, the beam rotates around the arena.

The beam attack kept targetting at the player actor's 0,0,0 point (where the feet touch the ground), which caused the beam to spin at an unintended angle. The solution was to have the beam ignore the player's z-axis and instead, use the beam's spawn point's z-position to keep it in level.

The knockback attack isn't without issues either. It is supposed to knock the player directly away from the boss. The 'Launch character' action in the blueprint sends the target in a specified direction, but I couldn't figure out the correct way to get the direction. Currently, knockbacks on the left side of the boss tilt toward up or down. Playing with the different x- and y-values got me pretty close otherwise (the z-axis is ignored so that the player doesn't fly up in the air). A properly working knockback seems essential for explosions and such, so I need to figure out how to do it right in the future.

Precise execution of the Block negates all incoming damage. Though should this attack be unblockable, since it was meant to be avoided with movement after figuring out its pattern?

Block and Counter

26.7.2023

For this type of game, the ability to block enemy attacks and maybe perform a counterattack after a precisely timed block seemed like a good idea to try out, so I created a simple system for it, quite an easy task at this point. However, before finishing I noticed how much it actually affects the gameplay. Something a gameplay designer might want to carefully consider.

Here's how blocking and countering work at the moment.
Pressing Block starts the blocking animation and locks out any player action for the duration. Any attack that hits the player has its damage reduced by 25%. If the enemy attack connects within the first 0.25 seconds of the block animation, the damage is reduced to 0 and a window to perform a counterattack opens for the remaining duration of blocking. If the player presses the attack button during the counterattack window, a fast counterattack is performed, and the blocking animation ends.

So, reward and punishment (what precise execution of actions essentially is) are there for the player. Precise execution of block and counter negates incoming damage and grants the player a counterattack. Failing either one leaves the player to wait in place for the remaining duration of blocking possibly taking damage, even though reduced, they could have been avoided by other means.

On paper, all of it seems good, yet this leaves much to consider gameplay-wise. Balancing out the risk versus reward. Does the feature feel good in-game? Should some attacks be unblockable? Does the game even need a block nor a counterattack?

UE5 - Modeling continued+

17.7.2023

After further experiments with the modeling mode and seeing some inspiring material from other games, the level prototype is starting to look better. Further improvements would include more complex shapes, foliage, fresh textures, and lighting adjustments.

At this point, I think I've found my level creation tools for the next game project.

UE5 - Modeling mode continued

11.7.2023

The next issue that needed to be figured out was how to make the created level have proper pixel art texturing. After creating a small prototype level I used the material editor in UE5s modeling mode to paint textures on the surfaces. The lighting and 45-degree angle of the level made it look a bit weird on top of the texture assets that were originally created for 2D games. Still, it was a promising start to what I had in mind. Making the levels decent looking is probably going to take more time than I thought.

I'll probably do a similar prototype level using 2D tilemaps to see how that works out.

UE5 - Modeling mode & other updates

6.7.2023

Modeling mode in Unreal Engine 5 has a cube grid feature that allows creation of cube-shaped meshes on a grid. It is quick, easy-to-use for prototyping and creating levels. I created a small platforming state within an hour after starting to use it.

Additionally, I created an elevator platform that activates when the player steps in the middle of it. The designer can specify its top and bottom positions and it'll move between those.

The menu that shows at the end of the video clip is navigatable with the mouse cursor, a keyboard, or a gamepad.

UE5 Blueprint for checking the health thresholds. The switch on the right simply chooses what action the boss should take based on the chosen index from the first array.

UE5 - Boss battle

30.6.2023

A boss battle in an enclosed arena with some UI improvements. The boss AI chooses its melee attacks at random from a set pool of attacks and runs to either top corner to execute a special projectile attack after its health drops below certain thresholds.

For checking the health thresholds, I created a function that compares the pre-determined health percentage values to the boss' current health percentage. For some reason, the array used to check if a special attack at a certain threshold had already been used before didn't get any new elements saved into it. After some digging, I found a comment on Unreal forums that mentioned something about arrays within functions did not hold the information after the function had been completed. I guess the functions run as an instance then or something similar. Anyways, after taking the whole script out of the function it worked just fine.

UE5 - Combat

26.6.2023

A lot of additions since the last update. AI enemies, damage numbers, combos and a charge attack, more animations, pick-up healing items...

Most of the problems I've encountered have been with creating modular functions that can communicate with each other. Blueprint interfaces take care of some of those, but for example, attack hitboxes are currently tied to animation notifies which are having trouble accessing variables from other blueprints. One day I'll have it all figured out...

Another thing worth noting is that most of the Unreal Engine tutorial materials are for 3D games. While most of the stuff work just fine for 2D, there are still some differences like playing animations. Luckily there is a great plug-in called PaperZD that supplements UE's lack of 2D features.

UE5 - Basic animations

16.6.2023

After following some tutorials found on Youtube, I managed to create some basic animations and movements for the player character. The attack animations also include a hitbox that causes enemies to play animation indicating that they've been hit.