thon717-y2rapidprototyping

[thon717-y2rapidprototyping]

Knight Fight Prototype gameplay video

here is a short video showing my game, it is fairly simple with little features but i think it turned out really well

in the top left corner of the game you can see the blue texts, this is purely for testing and would not be used in an actual game, its only used so i can see what has taken place when something happens, this is the same with the red lines on the floor between doors

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Making a Dash with Immunity frames

To make a dash in unreal engine, you need to make a custom event. i have a flipbook set for this for when i create a dashing animation, then its as simple as getting the forward vector of the ball that i am spinning to, and launching the character by 15000 times its originial movement

to make the immunity, you will need another custom event, and we need to pair that with a boolean. booleans are either true or false so we name this 'is dashing' and we need to say when 'is dashing' is set to true you take no damage from anything, the print texts here and for the dashing are for testing purposes and will tell me exactly what is being executed

The code below will kill anything that i dash into, this is working because it is checking my speed and if it is above the regular move speed then it will know that i am dashing, and will gather everything i hit in the dash and will then be killed.

In the enemy characters code, we also break apart the damage nodes a little bit and add a branch and the boolean

the condition is if the player is dashing if it s true then no damage is applied, if it is false then it will do the damage code, ive put the invincibility event on the end of taking damage too, so you get immunity frames when you take a hit too.

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Knight Artstyle research that lead to my final design

I looked at a variety of different art for choosing the knight, this was where i started picking the theme of the game and i decided on 'knight fight' as it rhymes and is fairly catchy.

The Red circles are showing all the more realistic looking knight's. the look is based on size and proportion too, a fairly mighty looking knight was what i was going for with my art, but i think he looks pretty derpy for the most part. these pieces of art show off a variety of different work, so i have labeled them for easier viewing.

The Yellow circles show the more unhuman or cartoonish characters, these were good for finding a color palette to use with my character, specifically the small red guy at the bottom, he is very derpy and I really like his character design.

i chose a mix of these for my character and i think he turned out well, again looking gender neutral so nothing gets mixed up, i think that there is definitely room for improvement.

[thon717-y2rapidprototyping]

Goblin Artstyle research that lead to my final design

I took a look at a lot of different goblins to finalize my design, this is a little mood board that lead to me picking my design, color and attire

I looked at different coloured goblins here, red being a color that conveys anger but I decided that green is a better shade for a goblin, as they have a fairly swampy pallet overall, although red could be a good color for beady eyes or a big goblin boss.

I looked at more female looking variations of goblins to possibly add a bit more diversity into my game, i decided to go for a more gender neutral look, with no specific features that show a male or female goblin.

I ended up looking at more cartoonish looking goblins from younger age targeted games, these were good inspiration, especially the middle one, I really like the color of his skin and i based a similar color of it.

Looking at different styles for the goblins, based on height size and attire, i liked the shorter stubby ones because they seemed like more greedy and would be more aggressive, the small skinny ones are cool, i like the one with the little helmet and just his teeth sticking out, but i kept the teeth in with my final design.

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Asset Showcase 2

this showcase is for the enemies of the game, showing the sprites in closer deatil

this is the basic enemy, with a metal helmet and a little sword. i went for the goblin route for the enemies as they are fairly basic enemies in many medieval style games, such as clash of clans.

the speedy guy is much smaller and has a lighter head wrapping as armour, looking at it close up it looks like he is balding but it is supposed to be a small head cloth wrap. he has a little dagger that does damage to our character

the big tank was supposed to have a cone hat, showing that he is a bit stupid, but i went for a simple cloth cap. he will just punch you if he gets too close to you

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Asset Showcase

here is a small showcase of all the assets ive used, with some scrapped ones too

current used knight sprite

unused knight sprite, with a line mast cover and a much more grand plomb, I didn't use it because I think it looked like a chicken

the arrow, bow and crossbow

i decided to scrap the bow and just add a line to the bow to make it a crossbow simply for easier look and a more simple creation, if i had a bow i would have to make an animation of him shooting it with a crossbow

here is the floor and wall texture, i went with a dark dungeon theme to the game as it is a dungeon crawler, you are 'crawling' through a literal dungeon

[thon717-y2rapidprototyping]

Creating a Health System in my Dungeon Crawler

i decided to use the apply damage event instead of subtracting health, this allows me to choose how much damage i take, i decided on 5 health and the enemies will deal 1 damage

i used this, with a string of text that will display health and will show game over when the health runs out, i will make a more fleshed out game over but for now this is for testing purposes

and instead of immediately opening the level the moment you get hit, i changed it to use the apply damage node, and then it will destroy itself so you dont get hit over and over by the same actor

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Thinking of Concepts for my assets,

as the game is top down, I'm probably going to need to look at some games that have similar top down art to mine

The binding of Isaac has a lot of special items, but I'm looking at the little pedestal that these items are on

I like the idea of them being flashy and brightly colored, so I might look at some pixel art inspiration for the items I hope to add to my game

I like the different designs of all the knights in the game knight squad

they all have different names and slightly different suits, with different cultured and designs of their plumes, I could have a character selection screen, with these top down knights. when creating the character I will take these knights into inspiration, looking at their armor and plume

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Creating Enemy Variations

as we did with the floor, making a child actor, I decided to add 2 more enemies, the tanky and the speedy

I haven't altered anything as of yet, but i need to develop a health system and a movement speed system, to correctly hake these work.

spawning them in was very simple, i made an array in the enemy spawner item and called it character to spawn, and added the 3 values for the speedy normal and tanky enemies

i simply added this to the code that will spawn an actor, as well as the random node again to vary what enemy is being spawned

this will now spawn random characters, that as of now don't do anything, they are just a different color, i will add a damage system soon.

[thon717-y2rapidprototyping]

Brainstorming ideas for my dungeon crawler game

i was thinking i could change the walls and floor to like a castle courtyard or maybe a dungeon, with a medieval knight theme on the whole thing i could base a lot around it.

new attacks

some kind or semicircle sword swing to knock back tanky enemies and kill weaker ones, this would take a lot of tinkering to make it balanced, based on size and how quickly you swing your sword

a bow and arrow 'gun' that has a fast projectile speed to shoot at slower enemies, having both an arrow and a sword will cater to both melee and ranged playstyle based on who is playing the game.

new item feature

I could add some special items to the game to make the difficulty scale I plan to add a bit more easy, based on how strong the enemies are

sharpening stones would increase your attack, as you can sharpen your arrows and your swords blade too

comfier boots would offer a higher walking speed, this would have to have a cap because moving too fast in a game is a massive pain for some people, especially when you cant control your character because you would just accidentally walk into enemies

better plates, an armor upgrade letting you get hit a few times before breaking and then not working anymore, this could be 3 stages and it could change the color of the armor your knight has

new enemies

adding a much slower tanky enemy will make the game harder as when you don't notice him, he will creep up on your and kill you quickly, these would need to have a bigger hitbox and be much larger, I could make it some kind of ogre to fit the medieval theme

small fast enemies that have very low damage and health, these would need to be dealt with first as they will dash towards you and would do a lot of damage, but the can be dealt with quickly.

bonus stuff, if I have time to do so

crystal ball, that adds a damage over time effect on your attacks, this could be poisoning, fire or bleeding. all the DoT effects would to the same damage, 2 1 second ticks of 10% of your weapons attack, for some bonus damage, I will make the effects work on the sword and arrow too. this will be hard to code but I think it would be really cool to make

special floors things like a cold icy slippery floor could make your knight slip about and not be able to move properly, this is a good idea but it would be challenging to implement.

this is a very ambitious project, with lots of ideas so I'm not sure how much would have to be scrapped or just plain up not work so I removed them

[thon717-y2rapidprototyping]

Brainstorming ideas for my endless runner game

I was thinking of making the aesthetic some kind of icy dungeon, with you being chases by a big icy dragon or something, i can have some kind of animation similar to the start of temple run showing the camera pan to the position showing a large icy dragon chasing you.

I could add some special obstacles, like slippery ice puddles that send you to a random lane with some kind of animations that show the character slipping or spinning around and you move to another lane, this could be improved by adding another lane to the master tile for a more fleshed out game. maybe some fire that the dragon has blown on the track, as well as the puddles slowing you down this fire could speed you up as you are trying to get it to go out, and you would be freaking out. some kind of fire decal or ice decal on the screen would be cool too.

I could also add some parts where the dragon goes infront of you, the time slows down and you need to spam click before you land in the dragons mouth, maybe some kind of animation where you throw stones or shoot arrows, something like that

one more thing that came to mind is the dragon could be the one making the obstacles like shooting big fireballs and sneezing the ice at the track, as he's trying to eat you. the icy floor would have to be fairly rare, as it can end your run pretty quickly if you hit an obstacle while you are moving into a random lane

I could also add an animation of the dragon eating you when you die, as the game over screen.

[thon717-y2rapidprototyping]

Polishing off the Dungeon Crawler

i have changed the colors of the walls for testing and the prototype is now complete, ready for further development

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Making the character Shoot and Look at the Mouse in a dungeon Crawler

making the character look at the mouse, you need to make a scene and call it pivot and make sure its at 0 0 0 so its centered

we then have to make this code here

it will show the mouse and it will track it, the ball shows what way we are looking

when then need to call this function in the event tick, so it tracks the mouse every tick, basically all the time

the ball is just to show where the mouse is looking, for testing purposes

[thon717-y2rapidprototyping]

Random Wall Generation in a Dungeon Crawler game

making random tiles is very simple, with an array and some child actors, all you have to do is make a couple child actors and decorate them however you wish

then you add the child actors to an array in the parent actor

then you add the rooms to spawn array with a random box and you plug it in here in the spawn actor, this makes the rooms spawn randomly, the more rooms that i make the more randomness and strange features you can add

here are the results, the staring room will always result in a blank room so you spawn correctly

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Fixing errors that i have made in my game

there was a lot wrong with the code, mostly about spawning the rooms in the wrong place and at the wrong height. this was fixed by unlinking the spawn transform Z axis and fixing the locations of the and values of the nodes, the rooms used to clip into each other and in strange locations, they now all work perfectly, now ready for random wall generation

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Tile generation In a Dungeon Crawler

this code is used for detecting when to spawn a new floor

this is needed to repeat 4 times for the 4 ways to go in every area

here is the master tile

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Creating movement in a DungeonCrawler

to make the movement we use a new node, the line trace by channel

This line will shoot down from the player and hit the floor. When it does this it will tell the player that we are in a particular room changing the camera so we can see where we are.

this also has to be added on the end too, a set view target with blend