About
Lost, jumping between worlds, you stumble upon something different. This island is bigger than the others with sentient crystals trying to block your way.
Make your way through the island, destroying hostile crystals and solving puzzles, but make sure you don't fall, or you will become another echo of the void.
This was our exam project made in Unreal 5 created during our last 9 weeks in school.
Character Movement
My biggest part in this project was working on the player movement and the bow. I had to learn a lot about how characters movement works in unreal but also how to implement animations. There was a lot of experimentation and testing on what kind of movement felt right and what kind of animations where needed. Going back and forth between different Ideas I think we ended up with really fun movement and a good looking character. Working with a character controller was really fun and something I would like to explore more. Experimenting with different kinds of mechanics and getting into procedural animation.
Bow Shooting
Creating the bow was probably the most fun I had during this project as it was really fun experimenting with different ways the bow would work. First, I made it so that the arrow would be rotated towards where the player was aiming to make it accurate. Secondly, I made the bow more or less accurate depending on its charge. I also added zoom to the camera to add to the effect. Then as the game transitioned into more of a platformer, I added the auto aim which if a target is within range and locked the arrow would instead be rotated towards said target. I think the bow ended up being a really fun mechanic and I have a lot of fun running around and shooting enemies.
Targeting
For the grappling and auto aim I implemented a function which would locate all the targets within range and view of the player. I also created the system to be modular so you could just attach the module to an actor and it would work without having to edit anything. This made it really easy to implement, especially the auto aim as the gameplay shifted to rely more on it. From this I learned a lot about how collision detection works in Unreal and how to create your own collision types. I also learned how the different types of traces work and how they should be used.
VFX
I also added most of the vfx to the player and the surroundings. It was not as straight forward as I thought it would be and I had to learn a bit about how animation notifies work. I also had to learn a lot about material manipulation and how to edit materials in real time. The trickiest was probably the recharge effect on the player after shooting a dash crystal. It needed to be timed correctly and creating an event for when to play the effect was a bit tricky. The grapple hand was also quite difficult as getting it to align correctly wasn't the easiest. Although using my rotation script from the bow I was able to achieve something I think look pretty cool.
Wanna play?
I honestly think the game is super fun and am really proud of what we have created. It's awesome running and jumping around trying to complete the level as fast as possible. There are also some hidden secrets scattered around for you to find.
Blueprints
As this was our first time in Unreal we started by working with blueprints. Then it seemed easier and less confusing working with just blueprint instead of mixing it with code. Anyway, I have copied my most important blueprints to blueprintUE if you would like to have a look.
