VIDAL TÁRRAGA GUILLÉN
Metälbörn
First Person Shooter Game made in Unreal Engine 4 as Degree Final Project
Metälbörn
Metälbörn is a first person shooter game made in Unreal Engine 4 by a multidisciplinary team of 5 programmers, 5 artists and 1 game designer (11 months. September 2021 - July 2022).
Unreal Engine 4
In this project I was focused on gameplay development. I made the four weapons of the game with their respective projectiles and charged shots. Along with this I made the object pooling systems for player and enemy bullets, as well as the firing and reloading systems. I also focused on profiling, sound features, animations, HUD and particles.
What I did?
Implemented features
Weapons
To make the weapons I have created a base Weapon class that is in charge of making those methods valid for all the weapons, such as firing and setting the bullet pool. But above all the common variables, such as the damage to apply, the maximum distance the projectile has to travel, the delay between shots and the speed of the bullets. After that, the four child classes in charge of the specific functioning of each one, especially for the charged attack. These four weapons are a shotgun, a rifle, a crossbow and a missile launcher. They are attached to the character as a child actor component so that they can be interacted with from within the character. I've also implemented the system for normal firing, charged firing and weapon switching.
The charged shot of the weapons is clearly superior to the normal shot, so there has to be a punishment for the player. That's why you can't overuse the charged shot, if you keep the charged shot too long, you will get a warning via HUD that the weapon is overheating and can get stuck and hurt the player. If this happens, the player will not be able to shoot or change weapons for a while.
Because I made the weapons I also took care of integrating their respective animations for idle, running, jumping, shooting, shooting loaded, weapon overheated and reloading. I was also in charge of integrating the particles and decals with the shots.
Rifle
The rifle is the simplest weapon, a weapon that fires projectiles consecutively. If the attack is carried out loaded, the fire rate, i.e. the speed at which it is fired, is higher, so you fire more bullets in less time.
Normal shot
Charged shot
Shotgun
To replicate the effect of shotgun pellets, instead of launching one projectile, 40 mini-projectiles are launched that have a small random displacement with respect to the origin of the bullet. In this way the visual effect achieved is that of a set of bullets dispersed in a cone.
Regarding the charged attack, the player simply holds down the charged attack for a period of time and based on how long the player has been holding down the attack, a burst of shotgun shots will be launched.
Normal shot
Charged shot
Crossbow
The crossbow works like a sniper. It has a shot that is lethal, can cover the greatest distance and, logically, has the longest delay. When using the charged shot, a zoom is produced by changing the field of view of the camera, thus imitating a sniper's scope. When shooting with the loaded attack, the bullet will pass through anything and can kill several enemies in one shot.
Normal shot
Charged shot
Rocket launcher
The missile launcher is arguably the strongest weapon in the game. To begin with, when the projectile hits, it emits an area that simulates an explosion, dealing damage to enemies in that area as well as pushing them, so it doesn't require much skill to kill.
For the charged attack, a scan of the nearest enemies is performed and a maximum of three enemies are chosen and then a homing missile is launched at them. But how does this happen? First, when the attack starts charging, the enemies in the level are obtained, then it is checked if the distance between the character and the enemy is a reasonable distance, it is checked if the enemy is alive and visible, i.e. not hidden behind a wall or an obstacle. Finally, check if the enemy being checked is on the list of enemies set and add it to the list of enemies to which the guided missile will be launched. To give feedback to the player of this event, there is a component widget inside each enemy that turns orange when it is being analysed and turns red when it is selected for killing.
If by some event, the player points away or moves looking at other enemies closer to them, the list of enemies being analysed will be reordered.
Finally, when the enemies are selected and their component widget is red, the missiles are launched and by modifying the velocity of the projectile movement by giving it the direction of where the enemies are, they end up hitting.
If the missile launcher does not find any enemies, it will launch a burst of normal missiles.
Normal shot
Charged shot
Projectiles and object pool
To prevent enemy and player bullets from spawning and being destroyed when they hit, a pool of objects, in this case bullets, is used.
Therefore, at the beginning of the game, a bullet pool is spawned which creates all the bullets to be used in the game and deactivates them, i.e. its components are deactivated, the particles are deactivated, the mesh is deactivated, the projectile collision is removed and it is hidden in the game.
These created bullets are separated based on the type of projectile, as there is one type of projectile per weapon. These bullets are then stored in an array corresponding to that type. This way the player or the enemy when shooting, instead of spawning a bullet, takes the first bullet that is available to be used and places itself at the origin of the shot and then activates and performs the normal bullet behaviour.
This makes the game perform better as it does not require a large number of bullets for everything to work properly, and also avoids problems during the game as there is no destruction of objects.
Music features
Since the game is about a war between two musical genres, something interesting had to be done with the music. So we decided to put both techno and heavy metal music into the game. All the songs are divided into two layers, a base layer and a more epic layer that reinforces the base layer.
What happens is, while the player is walking around the city without confronting anyone, the heavy metal base layer plays. The enemy zones are represented as if they were street parties, so as the player approaches an enemy zone there is a transition to the base layer of techno music. Once you enter the enemy zone, the second layer of techno music is activated, so the player feels with the music that he is in a very action-packed and frenetic part of the game.
If the enemy zone is successfully conquered, the two techno layers will fade out while the first and second heavy metal layers are activated to let the player know that the techno party is over and heavy metal reigns.
crossfading
Crossfading
Although the change is not very noticeable, as many changes have been made regarding the effect, but I also implemented that many materials could change regarding the tempo of the songs.
