Touch of Death: A UE5 Game Demo
YEAR
2023
GENRE
Fantasy, Action-Adventure
LESSONS LEARNED
My goal with this game demo was to build Narrative branches, trigger cutscenes that push the story, and build larger environments. The challenges I faced stemmed from my beginner knowledge of Blueprint coding, while also attempting to learn an entirely new game style (HD-2D).
NARRATIVE DESIGN
There were a handful of Unreal Engine plugins I used, especially the asset called "Narrative 3". This component allowed me to easily create dialogue trees that would 1) need a prerequisite, 2) trigger an event and 3) start a quest. This allowed me to delve deeper into the Narrative Design aspects of the game demo.
BLUEPRINTS CODING
I coded, from the ground up, many useful tools that I used throughout the creation of this game demo.
There were a handful of Unreal Engine plugins I used, especially the asset called "Narrative 3". This component allowed me to easily create dialogue trees that would 1) need a prerequisite, 2) trigger an event and 3) start a quest. This allowed me to delve deeper into the Narrative Design aspects of the game demo.
I used Blueprints to code a main character that could move, jump, dash, and attack, all while being a 2D sprite in a 3D environment.
Similar Blueprint techniques were used to create Enemy characters. These Enemies were given a simple AI task list to follow, namely searching for the main character and attacking when close.
I used Level Blueprints to trigger cinematics, UI menus, and level transitions.
The most challenging code was easily using Hearts as a health system. There seemed to be only one tutorial anywhere online that explained how to do this, and the tutorial wasn't complete. So, I had to piece together what I knew, what I had been learning through separate tutorials, and finally found a way to make the health system work for me.