Equilibrium Project

My third project.

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Good News!

My character switching functions now.

Bad News:

Inputting my character animations is incredibly difficult.

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Adding a quit game function

First you need to go to the input section of the content drawer, then you need to select the actions folder and create a new one like this:

There should already be 3 input things in there, IA_Jump, IA_Move and IA_Look. To make things easier, name the one you have created IA_Quitgame or something along those lines to help you find it later.

Then we need to make sure that the value type is a Digital Boolean.

(It needs to have this one selected in this box.)

You then need to go into the IMC_Default section of the input folder and open it up. The menu will have this section called mappings.

You need to click the plus with a circle round it to add a new mapping. Then you need to map this mapping to respond to a specific button, I chose K since P is already in use pausing the game. Then you need to open up your third person or first person character and right click and search for your quit game action. You need to drag off triggered and just grab the quit game node by searching for it.

After you've done this, you need to return to the input mapping section of your code.

Drag off from the Add Mapping Context node and search for a Retriggerable Delay (I had to add a sequence first because of my score code) and change the length of time before it activates to 60.0. Then drag off from that node and get the quit game one again. Right click and search for Any Key, connect this to the Retriggerable Delay and you now have a functioning quit game button as well as an idle checker that will quit the game automatically when no buttons are pressed for a minute.

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Today's Goals: 19.01.2024

I want to finally finish the switching characters code today. That is the main thing I need to be able to do.

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Goals for the day: 18.01.2024

Today I want to be able to get the character switching to work. I have found a tutorial on YouTube but that only shows how to switch between them in a scene and I need the other characters not to be visible. I'll see what I can do.

Edit: I failed.

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Some animation stuff in unreal

In order to get this to work, you need to select the tiny diamond button with a plus sign next to the Y coordinate and that will create a keyframe. You then need to move the text box where you want it to go by adjusting the invisible slider in

TBC

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Level design background

Just started my actual level design. I found a scrunched paper png on google and imported it into unreal, then I made it a material and plastered it onto a cube.

I had to make it an actor as I ran into a problem of it rotating when the character did after attaching it to the player. I found a work around where I made it an actor and then gave it code so it would follow the characters exact position but stay the same distance away.

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Idle Animations

Idle animations for my characters

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GIFs of walking

Gifs of the lil guys walking

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Funky Colour Bleed

Did some weird stuff with the colours to make it look like this. Not going to use this for my actual start screen.

Made a gif

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Start Screen

I have no idea what this is it's completely useless to me considering that my game is about shapes.

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Suda51 games

Shadow Of The Damned - Literally the love child of Devil May Cry and Metal Gear Rising with My Little Pony colouring. I hate it with a burning passion. Metal Gear Rising came out after, I know. But Devil May Cry 4, a game that came out in 2008, is better than a game that came out 3 years later. It features some guy with a weird revolver that is placed in such a way it looks like his arm 90% of the time, with a rail gun he holds right where his crotch is in order to fire it.

Lollipop Chainsaw - This game is slightly better than the first. Mainly because this has more interesting aspects to it than Shadows Of The Damned. The girl you play as, who is voiced by Tara Strong, seems just to be another excuse for making girls overly sexual in games. This one is more my type of game though, a hack and slash with a chainsaw is pretty cool. Other than that it's an average zombie game with stupid dialogue.

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Character development

Early character development process! I'm going to make like a 1:1 scale one as it will be easier to animate and keep all my drawings the same.

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Changing the angle and height of the camera

What you need to do is select specifically the follow camera and change the height first, then the angle. This is because if you change the angle first it will end up changing the height on the same slant as the angle.

It will go up at the angle the blue arrow is pointing. If you change the blue value to about 500 then it's at the perfect height for a retro style arcade game. Now the reason we have to change the angle is because the camera doesn't allow you to actually see the character.

This is what you see.

Changing it to a -45° angle allows the camera to still see the character and what they are doing.

Now we need to turn the camera collision off. If you select CameraBoom and then look at the right hand side there should be a button that looks like this:

This needs to be off so it stops the camera getting closer to the player when it overlaps with walls.

Now to add a different type of camera.

In the blueprints folder, you need to right click and select a new blueprint class. Instead of picking the actor button, you need to go to All Classes and search for camera. You then need to select Camera Actor. Make sure it is not the Cine Camera Actor or it will not work.

Now we need to go into the code and do this:

In order to find the Set view target with blend we need to either turn off context sensitive or find the get player controller first. The rest of it is pretty self explanatory given the image aside from the Self node as this is a variable called Get A Reference To Self.

These are two different camera angles you could have using the fixed camera.

The first one is side view, the second one is top down.

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Changing the movement style to be more retro

Before we start, we need to disconnect both of the white connections so that it does not run.

After that we need to copy and paste something from the movement.

We need these two nodes. Now, in order to make this in a more retro fashion we need to find a new node called Vector Snapped to Grid. We then need to connect the Action Value X on the far left node to the In Vect Y part on the new node we found. You then put the Y one from the far left into the Vect X part. The only reasons this is opposite is because unreal does the axis wrong. Now we need to change what angle it snaps to. If you wish to have this kind of movement:

That is called 8 directional movement and to achieve this you need to change the In Grid Size to 45.

I you want the movement to look like this:

You need to change the In Grid Size to 90.

Now this is the difficult part.

For this, you need to get two absolute nodes. You then take Action Value X and put it into one of the absolute nodes. You do the same with the Action Value Y and put it in the other absolute node. Keep in mind you don't disconnect the X and Y Action Values entirely from everything else, just drag off the two points closest to the far left node. Now we need to get a Greater Than checker. We can do this by just searching "Greater" after dragging off from the absolute node. Then we need to put the absolute nodes in both of the green parts of the Greater node, you need to put the top one into the top green node and the bottom one into the bottom one. We then need a branch. Put the red node of the Greater node into the condition section of the branch. You then need to attach the true part to the left and right Add Movement Input node. You then put the false into the backward and forward Add Movement Input node. Then you're done.

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Mood Board for my project

Pinterest

Okay so, I'm supposed to produce three different game ideas for our brief however my brain doesn't work like that. I have become set on one idea and I'll give you as detailed an explanation as I can. What I want to create is a game based on an unbalanced society. The characters in the game are going to be squares, circles and triangles BUT the main character is going to be able to switch between the three (at least I hope so). I want my character to symbolize either gender and it's fluidity (the character changes like a gender fluid person's gender changes, making them feel stronger in different departments) or something I might choose to discuss at a later point. The basic idea is that they were born different from everyone else and are antagonized by their own people, leading them to fight against those who hurt them. In this game you are technically playing as the villain.

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Different types of Arcade Games

Classic High Score games:

Pac-Man

Pan-Man is a high score game where you play as a large ball with a pie cut mouth that eats tiny pellets while trying to avoid ghosts named Inky(cyan), Pinky(self-explanatory), Blinky(red) and Clyde(orange). You collect fruit as well which gives you more points upon collection. Power pellets are larger regular pellets which allow you to eat the ghosts and send them back to their starting point for a short period of time.

Space Invaders

Space Invaders is a high score game where your goal is to shoot waves of aliens which trying not to get killed by their projectiles. Quite a simple concept, you go until you die.

Qbert

Q*bert is a high score puzzle game where you play as a cute little orange guy. In order to progress levels, you need to navigate the pyramid to complete levels by changing the colours of the cubes to make them all the same. The levels progress in difficulty by adding enemies you need to expertly avoid.

Shooters:

Terminator 2: Judgment day (the arcade game, not the movie)

You play as a T-800 trying to save John Connor and his mother Sarah from a T-1000. The game takes you through John's childhood and further along in the past they launch an attack on Cyberdyne Systems to stop the creation of Skynet. The game has two endings, one saying you have prevented Judgement day (This only occurs if you destroy all of the equipment during the Cyberdyne Systems thing), or that Judgment Day is still possible (if you didn't achieve that.)

Area 51

Area 51 is an arcade game set in the military base with the same name. You play as a character who works in a team called the Special Tactical Advanced Alien Response (STAAR, I feel like Resident Evil took some inspiration from this because they have S.T.A.R.S which is Special Tactics and Rescue Service.) In this game, you fight aliens and genetically modified zombie soldiers. The game features an upgrade system to your gun where if you get hit by the enemy, your gun will return to the basic pistol.

Time Crisis

Time Crisis is a 3 dimensional arcade game where there is a unique feature of ducking behind cover to reload and avoid enemy fire. For this, they made a pedal on the arcade machine itself that toggles the hide function. The game has three stages, each stage has three areas and a boss battle. You need to complete battles in order to progress through the game.

Racing Games:

Daytona USA

Daytona is a racing game in which the player drives a stock car called the hornet and can pick from three different tracks which will give a different amount of opponents depending on the maps difficulty level. Three Seven Speedway is beginner, Dinosaur Canyon is advanced and Seaside Street Galaxy is expert. Adaptive difficulty is used, during your first lap it sees how good you are at the game and then the AI opponents will reflect it, if you have a hard time they will leave lanes open for you whereas if you are good the opponents will try to block you.

Crazy Taxi

In this game you race against time to take your customers to their destinations. You earn money if you get to the destination under a time limit and can do stunts to earn more money.

OutRun

In this game you have a set time limit to reach the finish line. The camera position limits your view of the road ahead and prevents you from seeing obstacles until they get close, meaning you have to act quickly to avoid losing the game.

Fighting Games:

Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat is a game for 1-2 players where you select a character and then fight to see who can defeat the other twice. The game is now heavily story driven but the old arcade ones had much less story and was more like the tower modes in the more recent games. This game was the reason they had to add age ratings to games because of how violent it is.

Street Fighter

Much like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter is a game for 1-2 players where you fight until someone wins twice. This game also has a story.

Marvel vs Capcom

Marvel Vs Capcom is again like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, however this one does not contain a story mode. You fight this game like the towers in newer Mortal Kombats (I think, I've not seen much gameplay).

Interactive Games:

Air Hockey

In this interactive game you play against a friend to get the puck into a small slit on their side. You use two special controllers of sorts that you knock the puck with to push it. Whoever gets more goals wins.

Basketball

Basketball machines require you to get as many points as you can in a limited amount of time, the more hoops you score the more points you get.

2p Machines

These ones are my favorite. You get 2ps and put them in two slits to try and push out prizes. There isn't really any strategy, but it's very enticing and makes you spend a lot of money for what you want to win.

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History of Arcade Games

These were very popular around the 1970s, especially racing games, and were mostly targeted towards teenagers at the time. These were situated in arcade buildings which are present at a lot of seaside places. I assume the buildings would have been more common in other places around that time as it was the only way to play them.