As someone stepping into Unreal Engine for the first time, it has been one heck of an experience so far! I’ve managed to stumble down so many rabbit holes and this is a big part of why I haven’t posted anything in a few months.
I’ve jumped around from components to data tables; dynamic materials to procedural generation – and now GAS!
Speaking of GAS (Unreal’s Gameplay Ability System, not…💨), one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced so far has been refactoring my initial gameplay system (think healh, mana, spells/abilities) from using inherited floats to Gameplay Attributes and Abilities.
GAS is so extensible and there are so many way to accomplish something that it was extremely overwhelming getting everything hacked together. Especially as someone who had never touched C++ before!
This is where ChatGPT came in handy, especially for in-depth explanations of code snippets. Though, it still isn’t great at instructing you on how to translate code to Blueprints and would do things like make nodes up or tell me to create nodes that weren’t available in a particular context.
So I supplemented ChatGPT with the two highest rated GAS/C++ courses available on Udemy (#1 & #2), then skipped into the Blueprint lessons to see how to call abilities and modify Attribute values. That was an entire week’s experience that will probably be the subject of the next post (lol).
Okay, now let’s talk about the game!
The working title is REALMS IN RUIN. It’s a top-down, hack and slash, dungeon crawler RPG.
What a mouthful!
If you’ve ever played any of the Gauntlet games, Gate of Doom/Dark Seal, or Magicka then you might already have a decent idea of what the gameplay will be like:
You’ll pick a class and venture into sprawling dungeons to battle untold evils and avoid ancient traps all while looking for giant stacks of gold!
I currently have (4) classes created that match the basic dungeoneering archetypes:
- Paladin (Sword/Board)
- Wizard (Caster)
- Cleric (Healer)
- Amazon (Melee Damage)
Coming from an engineering background, I’m much more comfortable developing and building out systems than I am creating 3D models or textures. Which is why I’ve chosen a “stylized” (slightly cartoony) art style. There are an abundance of art assets available in this style, allowing me to get a cohesive look across the project.
I have plans to add additional character classes (I’ve got LOTS of ideas on this) and I want to implement some kind of player-settlement and/or building mechanic into the gameplay loop. Ideally, this will provide an additional gold sink and reason to continue running dungeons.
Something else I’m considering is forgoing experience/XP points in the traditional RPG-sense and instead using something like gold earned to progress your character in similar ways (i.e. purchasing skill upgrades, for instance).
Crafting, in some form, is also on the roadmap. Though I’m not sure how expansive that’s going to be since I’m not all that interested in adding any kind of resource gathering.
I’ll touch more on gameplay mechanics and level design over the course of the next few posts. I’ve got plenty to talk about!
If you have any suggestions for context, let me know!