Skyler Martin

What it was

The final for my first Unreal Engine course, it was a culmination of a semester’s worth of UE practice: learning to whitebox with the in-engine build system, learning to use the marketplace to find and use polished assets, and learning to use its node-based programming system in conjunction with animations, ai scripts, and level triggers.

General Design

Given that the chosen theme for our group was horror, we originally wanted to go with the idea of sanity: a resource that would drain when not in pre-designated lit areas. This became problematic once we added monsters which hunt the player, so we decided to instead pivot into something similar to The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: pre-designated safe areas (light) that protects the player from the enemies. One thing we stressed throughout development, which became an issue here, was that the player needed to be shown these mechanics in an unobtrusive way. That being said, we decided the best way to do this was have a chase sequence in the first level that leads to a light, which ends the chase then and there. The second level built off of this, having patrolling enemies that the player could evade pursuit from by standing in the light. The final level was planned to have another enemy variant, but we ran out of time due to us all having other big projects to work on.

User Interface

Alongside programming and helping with the level design, my main role was to animate and implement the menu systems in the game. I animated all the menus, even adding some flair to the main menu title to fit the mood. While doing so, I even implemented volume systems, pause menu functionality, and fade outs to make them less obtrusive. I was quite happy with how it turned out, and I even created a mock-up for a different main menu which took advantage of the cinematic camera. Unfortunately, while it did go unused, it led to me learning more about the particle systems in UE to instead create fog for the new menu.

Programming

All-in-all, I learned a ton while tinkering with code. I spent several hours working on systems like a music track system, the chase sequence opening, the level loading and checkpoint systems, and the patrol and safe zone logic. It taught me a lot about Unreal Engine, node-based programming, UI animation, and general game design when it came to the lighting, player guidance, and system functionality.