GS Unreal Engine Final Project

This is an assignment for Games Specialisation while I am studying at RMIT. My purpose was to explore and learn about the UE5 engine. This project was an experimental one, although I created basic playability and a linear pipeline.

For players, the whole experience should be about 5 minutes, because players don't know the specific level design. I went through the level faster during the demonstration because every level design is still in my memory.

The inspiration for the project:

The inspiration for gravity conversion actually came from a game play demonstrated by Le Y in a class some time ago. He created a 2D space game in Unity at that time, where players can actively switch the position of the character in space, which is a mirror conversion. After the conversion, the gravity also changes. I want to create a 3D gravity conversion experience in the UE5 engine.

The paintball gun was inspired by the famous game Splatoon. But I also wanted my project to have some puzzle elements instead of focusing on shooting elements, so I made some transparent platforms. This also creates a space distortion or dream-like visual style.

Reflection on creative practice:

I completed most of the code construction in the previous assignment of this course, so I mainly edited the scene at this stage. While editing, I realized two problems:

First, I needed to create a linear flow, but I also had to consider the gameplay. I needed to use the paintball feature and gravity conversion to create some distinct areas.  Also, in the concept of the project, I wanted the entire level to look like a phrase or a letter. After some efforts, I completed this scene. Although it cannot be called exquisite, it also gave me some experience in level design.

Second, although my main work at this stage is focused on setting up the scene, I still need to adjust the code from time to time to avoid bugs as much as possible. The worst problem I encountered was that when I created the paintball related blueprint, I rotated the texture generated by the paintball by reading the rotation of the object that collided with the paintball. But I overlooked this when I was building the scene. I tried to adjust the code to solve the problem, but it obviously made my workload more. So I finally chose to rebuild part of the scene to solve this problem.

Reflection on outcome:

All in all, this project taught me a lot about Unreal Engine. Especially as a designer rather than a professional developer, the Blueprint feature was very helpful. I used to mainly use Unity engine, and when I first started using Unreal Engine, I often used to think of the operations in Unity. But after this project, I have learned the operation methods that belong to Unreal Engine. This provides fundamental support for me to mainly use Unreal Engine in future projects.

Credits:

https://maxparata.itch.io/voxel-desert-town

https://kaylousberg.itch.io/halloween-bits

Notes: If you are seeing this post by accident, I would like to remind you that this is just a trial project of my learning process. It is very rough, I would like to express my gratitude and admiration if you decide to download and try to play with this project.

Also, English is not my native language, my native language is Chinese. Please excuse my grammar. :)