Big Overhaul

As part of Improve My Game Jam 22 I revisited this project. While I learned a lot with the previous release, it was never as fun to play as I wanted. My goal with this new version is to add many quality of life and gameplay improvements. I also fixed a lot of bugs.

The most obvious change is the complete replacement of the main character. While I like the old character I feel that this one fits into the overall theme a bit better. This process took a while as the costume came from Daz Studio, was exported to Character Creator 4 where it was rigged to a character, then ported to Unreal Engine 5. I spent too long trying to get the right settings for the robe simulation but I think the results are good enough. I added the option to remove it in game by pressing Q. In the future it would be fun to have multiple costumes.

The first gameplay mechanic tackled was player locomotion. The original design was based on action adventure games like Tomb Raider and Red Dead Redemption 2. This implementation resulted in awkward animation blending and sluggish movement. So I started looking at 3rd person shooters like Fortnite and Rogue Company. 

The main difference was keeping the character rotated towards the action during combat. Locking the character to the camera rotation instantly solves many of the issues. I also reworked a lot of the animation blending and swapped out some of the combat animations to find what looked best.

I also wanted to work out why shooting felt so bad in the old version. While it was partially fixed by the locomotion changes I still felt like it could be improved. The weapon recoil system was an obvious weak point. The old version had a degree of randomness that didn't feel right. It was built to shoot slightly off center from your crosshair depending on how much recoil had accumulated. 

I still use the old recoil algorithm that I wrote for the previous version but now the bullets always travel to the center of the crosshair. Instead the recoil impacts the camera itself. This way it feels more skill based and less random than the old version since the player can manually adjust their aim to compensate. 

I also made improvements to my custom camera system to be more responsive to the player's actions. This involved adding support for additional movement modes and better blending. Camera management is particularly tricky in a third person game. My changes should mean that the player no longer has to fight the camera.

I also felt that the enemies were a bit unfair in the old version. They all used hitscan weapons with another element of randomness that just wasn't fun. So I added a whole new set of weapons that are all projectile based. This way the player can dodge shots and use their time abilities much more effectively. 

I also asked a friend of mine to write some new music. The old version was literally the music that comes with Unreal Engine. My friend sent me a few loops suited for different combat scenarios. Since I didn't have a music system in place I decided to build something that can blend and distort the music according to the abilities that the player has activated. It's pretty basic right now but it was a great learning experience. 

I also created a new economy system so that the player can be rewarded for their gameplay. Through defeating enemies they earn cash that can be spent on weapons found in the level. Headshots and ricochets also give a small bonus. In the future I might expand this but I'm happy with this basic version.

I also created the back end for a lot of smaller features like hit markers and damage indicators that were already supported by my 3rd party UI system. This helps make the game feel a lot more responsive than the old version. 

I updated the main level of the game to support these new features though I didn't spend as much time on it as I should have. I also didn't have time to work on the AI or do a final balance pass. Overall I'm happy with the current state of this project.

Here is the old version for comparison.