Gamedev #1: pilot project
The first game i made using Unreal Engine
A summary of methods and tools
used to make a simple game
Hey everyone, this is my first blog of what im doing and are gonna do in the world of game dev. As you all know this is a very rough path and long journey and I want to sometimes talk about my experiences in failures and successes. I might turn this into a podcast at some point but for now lets summarize it to couple of small episodes.
Ill explain the general story of the first game I did. Sepehr 1.0 (for PC)
Download Sepehr 1.0 Here
Sepehr 1.0 was the first experience I had with Unreal Engine which i was just figuring out “what is what” in this massive ocean of tools and systems. I wont take your time with the gameplay video ( if you are curious its in my Youtube channel) this is the trailer:
As you see its pretty simple. You need to find the last 8 elements that are the only live things in the remembrance of earth in order to sit under a tree and think about what was this earth before robots! (made with UE04)
Unreal blueprints
I started learning blueprints with this course (im not advertising I’m just being honest with what I like)which was pretty great for a starter code. My background is architecture and I do not know anything about coding. I have a full time job so I learned this only after working hours and weekends to be able to manage this. Blueprint was literally the key for me entering this market with so much confidence since I want to focus more on the Art side of video games and blueprint helps me figure out the code in a shorter time to spend more time on the look and feel of my projects.
You might have heard this already but im gonna repeat it: Use Assets! (with the permission of the artist as a purchase or a contract) copy right is very important
if you want to make a game you cannot make everything from scratch. it will take years to make the simplest games. If you are starting with an engine like Unreal/Unity you are already accepting to work with premade code. You need to use assets. just think about it:
A game: A world + you (player) + story ( or a logic) + other things behaving in the game (NPCs). All of these 3 need to work out together(Code wise and look wise) to make a successful game. Each one of these has branches of different details. There is a reason that about 700 people work on one game. Each of these sections take a lot of work to make a single game and as a solo or a small company you should take advantage of stores like the MarketPlace.
sketchfab is another great one with a lot of models… ( Epic owns this now)
definitely changing the assets in a way that fits your environment is goal here since there is no way multiple assets are gonna fit in one game aesthetically. I had no background in character design thats why I purchased this cute robot as the protagonist of my first game. This way I could focus more on modeling the environment. As you can see I made a different skin for Sepehr to have its little brand and feel of the post human kinda dirt for my context. I used photoshop and Substance painter for changing Sepehr’s texture.
Ok now that I have my hero. the next thing is the animations. thankfully this model had the basic animations that saved me a lot of times. My first game was simple I only needed walk + jump + death animation and it was all included. so good on that. now a simple grab flower system and a health system are easy things to learn from tutorials and Unreal-learn page is also pretty good. so I added those and Volla I have my third person hero ready to go!
Unreal Ai system
now the real challenge is I needed one robot to escape from its leash and surprises Sepehr:
learning the Ai logic was a challenge for me. as I mentioned not a background in code was a real weakness at that point and I couldnt find a specific tutorial to learn it fully so I generally grabbed it by watching hours and hours of unrelated tuts! not fun
overall this guys system was simple. He just hears Sepehr getting close! he breaks out of his shell and start following the robot mesh. His vision updates per second so he will follow you if you start running away. when he is close enough to you he will damage you with a single attack animation and that causes health decrease. Thats it. but he has a weakness and thats water:
So I made little pods that makes you go to First person Mode and notice the rain and the enemy’ si afraid of it but based on the playthroughs by different people I realized that these were not that obvious: a lot of people missed it. my fault
he cannot follow you because it rains…
Unreal Landscape
this was also an amazing tool with so much options that I could use many realistic brushes.(again made by talented artists with their permission to use in public). I didn’t need to for this game because it wasn’t following the realistic approach and a simple landscape was enough. so just some minor touches to make organic hills and dumps. since its gonna rain!
And at the end I added a couple of broken trees as my main context of a post apocalyptic earth without any color. again using assets with look modifications. And now this is the moment when I, as an Artist, can tell my story and gather all of these talents and direct them towards my brain waves!
A lost soul of human inside a robot trying to find elements of life while running away from evil robots and interact with a weird boxy rainy landscape. From cubes that shy away from you behind trees, to the ocean of them you need to pass both levels and find this beautiful ending with lights and colors.
Music
I asked a talented friend of mine for making the soundtrack on his own just knowing the concept of my game and Aran came up with a beautiful piece of electronic. He was just in the middle of a huge project so he managed to boost my game with a beginning song which I got so many complements for. My game needed 3 different songs to work together so my friend designed the first one and I found 2 other songs with another musician with their permission.
Sum up…
ok to finish off for now I enjoyed this project a lot in case of learning so many things about my tool and what I want from it. As a first game I was pretty proud of the number of people who downloaded it and contacted me about it! Matt Aspland a great youtuber tried it on his game jam and enjoyed it.
so lets talk about the GOOD, the BAD and the UGLY here and move on…
Sepehr 1.0 Weaknesses
first lessons: make a game so people can see it! some parts of my game were so dark because I was not having full control over baking my light so thats lesson one! damn
the moving boxes part were too difficult for some people that I could’ve managed a difficulty mode.
the game couldve been smaller in file size that I fixed with an update
rain pods that most of the people missed.
using a beautiful Persian name that no one can relate to as the name of the game. Everyone thought I miss-spelled Sphere…
Sepehr 1.0 Strengths: ( based on other people feedbacks)
A simple story with a good background music to chill
a well made environment. creepy/cute
A free game
enough challenges as a short 10-15 min experience
A cute protagonist that people felt related
A satisfying ending
lets continue with full power. Ill talk about my second game in the next blog. hooray