xqarcadegame

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Sound credits

Start theme: Filip Lawiki

Main theme: Sonny Watson

Game Over theme: Ray Robinson

Shoot sound: Oscar Cartwright

Damage sound: Reggie Mckay

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Progress report 2

This week I have created all the needed sprites and made most of the needed animations, and I have begun adding the sprites and animations into Unreal Engine. In the next week I plan to finish and add in all remaining sprites and animations, and include them, in the game, making any necessary tweaks to the code and actors as I do so.

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Progress report

I have done all I said I would in this week. I started work on the coding side of things and made good progress. Issues came up and I fixed them. I worked and reworked code to fit what I want and need for the game.

Next week I will start work on the sprites and animations for the game, and maybe implement what I can.

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Fixed some issues with the timers

After switching the time over to the character's event graph, a few other issues popped up concerning the timers I had made, the first issue was that the timers weren't updating properly, specifically the Best Time. It would have a delay and the Best Time would update the game after the best time was gotten. This was due to the update for it being linked to the keybind for entering the GameOver screen.

I fixed this by removing all the nodes from that string of code except the ones to recognise Q being pressed and enter the game over level. Then I built code onto the end of the code that sets the time, this code I built on also sets the best time, using the help of two variables, "Time Count" and "TimeDisplay".

What happens is when the Time Display is set, it will cast to Arcade_Game_Instance and set the Time to be the same as the Time Count, after doing this it compares the Time to the Best Time and if the Time is greater, the branch will read true and will continue on to set the Best Time to be the same as the Time.

I did have two more variables, "Best Time Count" and "Best TimeDisplay", that I used to set each other and Best Time, but in the process of writing this post I realised They added nothing to the end result and were just taking up space.

Player_UI Time:

Player_UI Best Time:

GameOver Time:

GameOver Best Time:

During the process of working out the kinks of the Best Time, I noticed it wasn't saving the best time in the game instance, and was just using the time. It turned out it was using the best time, but due to a mistake on my part I was comparing the Time with the Best Time Count variable I mentioned earlier, and since the Best Time Count only existed in the player and not the game instance, it was resetting every time the player loaded into a level and wasn't being saved. So I fixed that by having it compare the Time with the Best Time instead.

I game UI and Game Over screen:

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Started working on my arcade game

I started by repeating some of the steps I took in previous posts, such as creating a UI with a score and high score, adding falling items, complete with an item parent and item children, and making the Game_Manager and and Arcade_Game_Instance.

But I ran into a snag when I couldn't figure out how to get the timer I wanted to work. So after a couple failed attempts I decided to google it and found a very helpful tutorial video

which led me to making this:

From what I can gather, every event tick causes the custom event "Timer" to activate, which in turn sets the time count (a new float variable) to be what it was last event tick plus however many seconds have passed since then, using "get world delta seconds". Once that happens, it converts it to a string and sets the text I've put in the UI to that.

An issue with this however, is that is displays milliseconds, something I don't want.

Apparently this is an issue with the Time Seconds To String node.

After asking for help, I was shown the solution is this:

this "split" node is used to select a point in a text string and then decide what to do with it and the stuff to the left and right of it, in this case I decided to only print the text left of the bullet point the separated the seconds and milliseconds, so the milliseconds weren't printed.

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Game UIs

Sonic the Hedgehog has a UI very similar to what I want to use for my game. simple but clear, score and time in the top with lives at the bottom, with different colours and a pixelated style.

Alex Kid in Miracle World has a game over screen similar to what I want for my game, the pixelated text with a large "GAME OVER" in the middle of the screen, and displaying the score under the game over text. Although, I plan to also include the high score and one or two more statistics, along with maybe a sprite of the player character defeated.

The in-game UI of Super Mario Bros. matches well with what I want for my game, it lacks diversity in colour but it kays out the information in a clear, concise, and visually pleasing way.

The text font in Undertale is almost exactly what I want for my game, pixelated but very clear.

The UI of Galaga is also very close to what I want, especially with the placement of the high score and using multiple of the player character sprites as the indication of number of lives.

[xqarcadegame]

3 games rated PEGI 12

Spirit of the North 2

Squirrel with a Gun

Dave the Diver

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Arcade Initial Ideas x 3

Idea 1

Type of Arcade Game

Top down 2D shooter, appearing to be moving but only because everything other than the player character will be moving downward from the top to the bottom of the screen

Game Concept

Both obstacles and shootable targets will move from the top to the bottom of the screen and the player must avoid the obstacles and shoot the targets to increase their score. The player will have free movement within the screen boundaries, but only be able to fire forwards. There will be no winning, only getting a higher score. Losing will occur when the player hits into a rock three times.

Theme

The game takes place on a body of water, with the player character being a boat mounted with a ray gun that erases the trash that floats towards it. The obstacles will be rocks the gun can’t erase. The game relates to cleaning up trash and pollution in the ocean and lakes and such.

Competitors / Inspiration (min. 3)

Idea 2

Type of Arcade Game

2D, side on view, stuck screen

Game Concept

The game will involve catching and/or avoiding falling pieces of food that have the potential to either harm or heal the player, but both kinds will grant the player points, with the harming food granting more points. The food will pile up on the player character’s plate that they hold above their head, and when the player pushes a particular button, all the stacked up food will be eaten. If the plate stacks up too much the game will end. The goal is to get as many points as possible without letting the plate get too full or your health get too low.

Theme

Food and hunger

Competitors / Inspiration (min. 3)

Idea 3

Type of Arcade Game

3D first person shooter. Movement locked to forwards and backwards

Game Concept

The game will involve shooting multiple enemies as you go forward through the level, each killed enemy will get the player points and the main goal is to advance as far through the level as possible. There will be one never ending level. The player will be able to shoot in 8 to 9 spots on the screen

Theme

Good health and well-being, the enemies will be zombies

Competitors / Inspiration (min. 3)

The arcade games Rail Chase, Jurassic Park, and Space Gun are very similar in gameplay to what I imagine this game being like.

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Animating UI

clicking on the button labelled "animations" will open the animations menu

clicking +Animation will add an animation

clicking +add and then selecting what you want to animate

clicking a plus on that and then clicking on what kind of animation is wanted

making animation, deciding on key frames, separating them to leave room for animation, and deciding how each frame differs

adding in code to the character's event graph that will make it start using the animation in the UI.

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I added a save game custom event to Game_Over and added some code that will save the player's high score

added save game to the other events so the high score will be saved when the retry and exit buttons are pressed.

added code to the character construction script that makes the saved high score appear by the time play starts.

added code to the replay and quit buttons to reset the score to zero once they're clicked

For testing I added an event for when the Q key is pressed that will take the player to the game over screen

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Made a new text box in the Player_UI and a new text binding for displaying the high score

created a game over level

Created a Game_Over widget

added a "Game Over" text box, a "High Score" text box, and a "Score" text box, along with two text boxes with copy pasted versions of the high score and score text bindings.

added some code to the game over level blueprint to show the game over widget on screen

made a pawn

added code to the pawn to make the mouse cursor visible in the game over screen

updated the game over screen to include retry and quit buttons

added on click events that will open the playable level again or quit the game depending on which button is clicked

set game mode at the end of the begin play string in the character event graph so that once the retry button is pressed and the player goes back to the level they're able to move.

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removed almost everything from a newly created project map and move the character starting point to 0, 0, 0, adjusting slightly to stay on the platform

removed the camera and jump controls from the character's event graph

removed the connection vital for forward and backward movement

Added and positioned a camera

In the level blueprint, added something to select that camera as the chosen camera for play

Gave the floor the tag "Floor", and Created a new actor

added a custom event called "spawn"

added code attached to the custom event making multiple spawn points for things to spawn randomly at

created an actor named "Item_Parent"

added a sphere to Item_Parent, made it the scene root, made it simulate physics, set the collision preset to custom and set all the boxes to overlap

made some code to make the actor destroy itself when it overlaps with the ground

back in the Game_Manager actor, set the class in SpawnActor Item Parent to Item_Parent

made a new game instance called "Arcade_Game_Instance"

added two new integer variables called "Score" and "High Score" to Arcade_Game_Instance

added code on to the end of the code in Item_Parent to adjust the score when an item overlaps with the player

right clicked on Item_Parent and clicked "create child blueprint class to create Item_Child_01, 02, and 03, then changed the materials for them to differentiate them from each other

I clicked on the cog in the blueprint menu then ticked "Show Inherited Variables" allowing me to see the variables from the Item_Parent actor. Then I assigned each child its own value.

in Game_Manager, made a new variable called Actor Array, and made it an actor array type variable

added three elements to the actor array, one for each Item_Child

added code that integrates the actor array variable into the Game_Manager event graph

made new widget interface called "Player_UI"

added a box and text block

created text binding for the text

added code to make the text display the current score

added something to the end of the begin play string in the character's event graph that makes a widget and adds it to the viewport, the widget being the player ui

added code to Item_Parent to update the high score when it is beaten

To be continued due to a limit on images per post...

[xqarcadegame]

Arcade games

Arcade games are short games designed to be addicting, with a scoring mechanic that encourages replaying them over and over to get a new high score.

There are many, many arcade games, with a wide variety of choices, but the main thing they all share is the replay ability and scoring systems. I'll be looking at 5 arcade games and what they're like.

1: Super Punch-Out

This game involves moving from boss to boss, continuing to fight until you either get a game over or beat everyone in the game. Each fight has a timer and a number of points the player is able to get, which encourages the player to continue playing the same fights to get the best score, as well as continuing to play after a game over to try and progress as much as possible.

2: Galaga

A very well known arcade game, and for good reason. Galaga involves shooting at flying enemies while dodging their projectiles. The game continues on until the player dies, making it very replay able and this encourages players to continue playing to get to as high a level as they can, while also trying to get their point count and accuracy as high as they can.

3. Pac-Man

Pac-Man is another famous arcade game, and another that goes on forever if the player doesn't die. The goal in this game is to survive for as long as possible and collect as many points as possible while being chased by enemies. The maze-like layout to the game and the AI of the ghost enemies means no two runs of the game will be exactly the same, adding to the replay value.

4. Donkey Kong

Like the others, this game functions with scores to encourage replays, and it features exciting time sensitive gameplay to keep the player on their toes. Despite it's already unique layout, this game involves multiple levels with their own layout to keep the game more fresh and add to the rising difficulting while playing.

5. Street Fighter

One of the more unique games on this list, Street Fighter is a two player game, while still having a single player mode. Playing two player, the players will control one of two characters each, and fight each other utilising button and movement combos for various attacks. The single player mode will have the player fight a series of computer controlled enemies. The replay factor here is mainly in the two player mode, as players would directly compete against each other in the game, instead of just taking turns and comparing scores. This method is a lot more engaging for both players involved.

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Making inputs and cameras

The IMC_Default data asset is where the buttons for inputs are decided.

making an input action then pressing the little plus next to Mappings in IMC_Default, and selecting the input action as the new addition, then choosing the buttons for them

in the character blueprint event graph

snapping movement to a grid. has issues in that it won't allow any input to go through unless it's exactly within specified parameters.

Orthogonal movement, essentially the same thing as snapping movement to a grid, except it's much smoother, which makes testing easier. The downside is it can only work for 90 degrees, only allowing four directions of movement, while the above method can work for any rotation.

one method for having a top down view is a set camera above the player, but this doesn't work if a camera set in one spot independent of the player is wanted

made a new actor for a camera, and added a camera to the viewport

Set View with Blend requires a player controller to work. This makes the camera automatically become this one instead of the one in the character's viewport.

manually targeting self as new target

positioned the camera above the map

view while playing

code making the camera become active when the player character enters a specific box added to the camera's viewport

multiple cameras activated when each corner of the map is entered, and deactivated when their corner is exited

the player character doesn't activate a camera if it spawns in it, since an overlap has to begin, and starting inside of a box doesn't start an overlap, despite actively overlapping it. so I put the character just above the box so they'll fall into it just after spawning.

Blend time makes the camera transition to the next camera over time, 0 is instant.

This is all very useful information that I expect will be vital for the next game I'm going to make.

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PEGI ratings

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WWF carbon footprint