Project Leumen's Unreal Engine Journey

My first 30 days in the unreal engine are located down below. I am brand new to the engine, and while associated screenshots are missing you can just see what I've been working on over the last month below.

Hopefully at the end of every month I'll be posting something like this, sort of a dev log of sorts. Expect it to be kinda messy but it should still be an interesting read for anyone who wants to give it a look!

Oh yeah, I'm also working on a new short - I hope to have it released on amazon by the start of next month!

Day 1:

Practiced with Unreal Engine 5

Day 2:

Started working on importing meshes into the first person blueprint, using the existing empty mesh in the first person blueprint and ticking the box that states “Not seen by owner”

Day 3:

Started a FPS project

Imported Trophy Agent Fixed

Imported 3rd person content pack

Retargeted all animation sequences from the animation starter pack to trophy agent fixed

Swapped the mesh that exists in the first person blueprint (NOT THE ARMS, THE MESH WITH NOTHING NO IT) to Trophy Agent's mesh

Checked Owner no See so the owner does not see the mesh

After this I realized I needed an animation blueprint so he can walk/run/jump

I retargetted the ABP_Manny animation from the 3rd person content pack as ABPAgent1_ Prefix files

Jump animation was FUCKED until I unchecked “allow frame stripping.” I'm not even sure what that does.

> I did this by opening the animation and just unchecking the box. Now my character walks around properly, but I'm not even really sure how. I'm using the default FPS movement controller and I've completely deleted any third person input-related stuff I have.

Now using this ABP for the animations of the third person model....

ABPAgent1_ files are all just default unreal animations for the ABP_Manny 3rd person character, but I retargetted all of them to our Trophy dude for now. < --- All of this is irrelevant now

I need some damn music.

Had this error, “enhanced input subsystem not working on server.”

Fixed it with this: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/enhanced-input-subsystem-not-working-on-server/1474541/5

Thank god for the unreal forums.

Apparently there's no hasrifle boolean in 5.4/5.5 in the first person blueprint?

So I made a hasrifle boolean HasRifle?

boolean is basically just a yes/no question

I also had to promote it to a variable in ABP_Agent1_ABP_Manny (Horrible file name this will be getting renamed.)

We made a change to BP_Weapon_Component because HasRifle? needs to be set when the rifle is picked up from the ground right now. This will get changed later maybe? Regardless, this entire area is actually documented so I can read what each section does in the engine itself.

I'm following this tutorial right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBjMk3FDYGI

It states to change things in ABP manny. However, we are NOT USING THAT.

Use ABPAgent1's animation blueprint (ABP) instead.

Now to fix up some animations so when he picks up the rifle he actually has a holding rifle animation.

We deleted the IK rig because we're not worrying about foot Iks, same for the falling stuff attached to the bottom of it. Now we're working on a layered blend pose and referencing different pose caches.

The Pose Caching feature in Control Rig is used to save and apply animation poses at different times in the control rig graph. Any Rig Element can be cached into a pose and different properties can be accessed within the rig graph, such as curve values or transforms.

In the layered blend pose here we are adding the spine bone, this allows us to use the rifle animation for the top ½ of the body. > Mesh space rotation and scale should be checked.

Once I compiled here he kinda A-posed? Kinda but then his legs were weird. Apparently that's supposed to happen, I need to go into the animations and fix stuff. We are blending from the first spine bone up, so that's why the upper half is A-posing.

Now we're making a new STATE MACHINE.

In Unreal Engine 5, a state machine is a modular system within Animation Blueprints that defines which animations can play and when, primarily used to correlate animations to movement states like idling, walking, or jumping.

Basically depending on the state of a character (for example, HasRifle? For has a rifle or not) the animation can change and you can set it in the state machine.

From what I'm gathering, you can save animations like this:

I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate, but you make a state machine and then a pose with the same name. Whatever you edit in the main state/pose will be cached and can be used anywhere in the animation graph. We also had to change some logic in regards to how the mesh is applied when picked up – a branch with a true/false in the weapon component.

True = the local player is picking it up, which attaches the mesh to the first person hands

False = the other players are picking it up, which attaches the mesh to the third person model those players are using

I opened the SKELETON mesh for the trophy agent and added a socket to it on the right hand, called hand_rSocket. Then I added a preview asset and attached it to said socket, just using the default gun for now. Didn't worry about making it too pretty as this is just a proof of concept.

I'm noticing an issue right now with the left hand – the wrist twists in on itself ,and it sounds like it might be an issue with the actual asset. Concerning. I'll need to take a look.

> MIGHT BE A WEIGHT PAINTING OR BONE ISSUE WHICH IS SOMETHING I HAVE TO HANDLE OUTSIDE OF UNREAL, WILL BE TESTING SOME FIXES TONIGHT<

Last thing – aim offset for looking up and down.

I'm not really sure how this works, but this is apparently the equation we need to get our vertical aim offset:

The division is based on the # of spine bones, which for this model is only 2. For more complex models, it would be more.

I then went into the animation blueprint and got this variable we made here, Pitch Rotation:

I used this to modify each of the 2 spine bones. The name of the spine bones differs depending on the rig.

So that top set of blueprints calculates the pitch we're looking at, then stores it in a variable. That variable is then used to adjust the position of the 3rd person mesh the individual holding the gun uses.

That wrist is still a problem. I'm gonna need to figure out if this is an issue for every single one of my low poly models, which it annoyingly looks like it is. I found a video that might have a way of fixing it, apparently in the control rig you can add “twist bones” and those are what you need to prevent that twisting wrist.

Day 3

Ended up restarting the project due to needing to do so much animation fixes it confused me. I really need to be better about naming files, and so I did that.

Basically redid everything.

Tomorrow I'll actually start doing more, like adding weapons and basic enemies. I changed all the file names. A lot of what I wrote above is now meaningless.

Day 4

Testing Accurig for rigging, adds twist bones needed to fix the weird “candywrapping” of the wrist on the trophy agent model. Still needs some fine tuning/polish, but we're slowly getting things done. I'll have to figure out how to add hair/tail physics for the guys and gals with longer hair/tails (especially for the shai race like Koteki and Animae.)

I also am realizing I need a separate rig that is just arms for any first person animations I do…which could be a problem. In fact I'm realizing making a first person game means that unless I make a “true first person game” I have to animate both the first person and third person models, which is so much work.

I've learned a lot in the last 4 days at least. I'll need to ask my modeler for the arms.

This also means any skins I add (for example the flip skin I want to add, the female trophy agent, Celeste, James, etc) will also need arm models. I should be able to get this done pretty easily I'd think?

While I get this commissioned/ get this worked on, I'm going to make a basic enemy.

Day 5

Made my first enemy blueprint, BP_SuicideSpeaker

Added a pawn sensing component to the blueprint and the skeletal mesh for the suicide speaker

I've never even heard of pawn sensing components, excited to figure this out

Added an onseenpawn command

Variable isseeingplayer?

Then I kind of stopped following this tutorial. I'm doing a multiplayer game, and the basic blueprints most tutorials do aren't gonna work. Looking at GameDevRaws making an AI guard tutorial now.

I'm learning about blackboards and behavior trees. You need blackboards and behavior trees for them BOTH to work. You must assign the correct blackboard to the behavior tree. A blackboard is basically a board of variables.

Ai on the whole looks to be a whole can of worms I'm not even comfortable tackling yet. I'll just keep what I did tonight in the game files for now, but it seems I have to learn more about game states and casting and other stuff like that before I even get into AI. I also need to get an AI controller, I think every single enemy will have their own AI controller? I believe?

Day 6

Watching videos on AI and how it works.

I hate how complicated this all is, it's making my head spin. But I also know if I keep at it I'll learn a lot, so I intend to keep trying.

Realizing my WEAPONS actually need a skeletal mesh…interesting.

Took a look at the unreal marketplace (FAB) to potentially see about buying some documented material to learn more about how things work. I was advised to do this by multiple people. I need to learn how replicated AI works in games. Also messaged my modeler about getting the standard operators arms done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYgTnpcOONw&t=713s

I think at the 12:00 mark is what I need. Going to look over this after a short break.

Day 7

Started working on AI in BP_SuicideSpeaker

Bp_Suicidespeaker will be our suicide speaker enemy blueprints

We also set it to be possessed when spawned on map or on startup. This will allow the ai controller to immediately begin controlling him. We cast (essentially send the BP_SuicideSpeaker to the AI controller base/let them communicate) and then make it a variable. Annoying because I spent 2 hours working on this system, but it ended up not working (see below.)

Why do we make it a variable?

I believe this is so I can make more calls to the cast later. Making a function called “find enemy”

Alright well, that tutorial doesn't work for what I'm doing for some reason. Once again, it just keeps finding the client. It wouldn't even get past the loop and kept only finding ONE player, even when I specified to look for a CLASS. I have no idea why, as far as I know it should work. Piece of shit fuck.

Not sure what to do. Going to look into other tutorials. I might purchase some assets from FAB and just look at how the blueprints work? I'll see how much money I have after my date today, taking my fiancé out to eat this morning + I just paid for the living painting model so that'll be neat.

I might look into environment work next? Like I said, I'll see how much I have after my date today.

Day 8

THE ENTIRE PROJECT GOT CORRUPTED SOMEHOW.

None of my stuff will open, nothing works properly. So I have to restart.

I need to figure out a way to start just working on backups instead of on the project itself to stop this happening.

Okay no, false alarm. Not corrupted, but apparently a folder rename fucked EVERYTHING up. Good news? I mostly fixed it. Bad news? I'm still struggling to get these first person arms working. I'm literally back to where I started after 2 hours of work.

I'm going to be honest none of this is as simple as I was hoping. In terms of the arms I think I just have to get the skeleton totally redone for specifically first person animations. I don't know, maybe I'll try to run them through accurig myself?

I think I'll also have to figure out how to make control rigs within unreal...which will also be it's own process. I'll be doing that tomorrow I think, I have to learn that for animating anyways outside of game development.

Likewise, my focus this week is to get weapons working. Shooting, at least. Melee maybe. We'll see.

I think that's where data tables are going to come in. So this week I have two goals:

Learn how to make a few weapons with different properties

Learn how to replicate their firing

Learn how to start getting animations for reloading together

I might honestly just stick to third person, as first person is going to require so much more animation work it's insane. But this leads to other issues, some solved and some not.

Solved

>Detailed chara models (we have plenty.)

> Weapon animations are much simpler

> Arm animations would be unnecessary

> Tutorials covering third person replication are far more widespread.

I could also just do a ton of third person stuff and then add first person near the end of development when I'm more comfortable with unreal.

Unsolved/Problems

> Camera issues – this game is going to be in a lot of enclosed spaces AND multiplayer.

Really that's the only reason I wouldn't want to be using a third person camera. It's literally just camera issues due to the nature of the game. At the same time, we could compensate for this by making levels larger? Like that's honestly not a MASSIVE issue. Think dead space or resident evil with a couple more action mechanics.

I think I'm gonna do it. Toggleable first person with no fps animations that just locks the camera a little in front of the head, too. I think that's SUPER easy. I could also do a “true fps camera” but I'm not really sure how I feel about that. Makes aiming hard.

Taking a break tomorrow though because The Helping Hand is supposed to release! So I need to reread the novelette and make sure it's at a place where I'm at least not entirely dreading releasing it lmfao

Day 9

After yesterday's break I'm back working from the ground up. First thing's first, messaging a 3d artist about the environment design...

Now that I've done that, I'm reimporting the unreal engine 4 trophy agent into the engine, setting up my third person blueprint to use the trophy model (using ABP from the default manny – retargetted the ABP to the trophy agent again...) and now I have the third person character basically fully working already.

The annoying thing about this to me, however, is I'm not really learning how the movement component works. I'll get to it soon.

Making a new game mode base. Apparently the game mode base by default is not actually a good idea. We need to use the game mode base that you can find by actually SEARCHING. Game mode, not game mode base. You must also use Game State, not game state base if you're using game mode, as if you use game state base and game mode for example it will break. You either need to use both with the “mode” ending or both without it. Apparently without it is better for multiplayer according to this tutorial.

Learned a bit about playerstate. It is apparently good for holding things which you need to pass to other characters.

I had to convert my energy weapon static mesh into a skeletal mesh. I'm not even sure if this is gonna make much of a difference, but I can't put static meshes in the viewport as far as I can see – I can lock it to the hand however if it's a skeletal mesh.

Also learned if I control+a all my changes and hit new keyframe at frame 1 of an animation it will change any changes I made to the skeletal structure (like twisting or moving bones) to make animations look better with specific character models.

Did the same pitch rotation stuff above but made it multicasted.

Did a server call custom event and a multicast event, then hooked it up here.

DAY 11

Changed the cast in the BP_CharacterBase_TP blueprint to cast to my multiplayer controller.

Today I added a temporary aiming blueprint withing BP_CharacterBase

This came from this tutorial (the blueprint keeps going)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR81TqmZd-4

Basically, I'm moving the socket component on the BP_CharacterBase whenever a player hits the right mouse button. The timelines you see in the below screenshot are essentially the “playing” of the sliding in and out (making it look smoother instead of instantly snapping.)

I then move the camera boom forward by 100 units to get closer to the shoulder while aiming. When the button is released, the camera returns to 0 (which is where it started.) The 75 75 are the y and z for where the camera always sits.

Confusing but I think I get the idea behind it. I'm not really sure what a lerp is?

Purpose:

Lerp is used to create smooth transitions or blend between two states of a variable, such as colors, positions, or other numerical values.

So I assume this also helps smooth out the “animation” of the camera sliding in/out. Not 100% positive, seems similar to a float but not sure. For now, knowing that I can use lerp to transition values smoothly is interesting. I wonder where it's applicable and where it isn't. It requires a third value apparently to actually work properly. I assume that's where the timeline comes in?

I'm starting to try and figure out EXACTLY where to actually put blueprints.

It seems like anything that ONLY your character/the specific player cares about and doesn't need to be replicated it can just be on the character. So for example, all of this stuff regarding zooming – since other players will not see you zooming in (yet, we may eventually make zooming have a separate animation in which case that WOULD have to be replicated) everything is on this single blueprint.

We're going to make a simple linetrace “shooting” thing next, preferrably in the next 30 mins before it gets to be around 7am and I need to take care of stuff for the next shift here at work. The thing about this is it will be spread out across multiple places, notated here:

BP_CharacterBase

We're going to set a line trace from the socket I just made on the energy weapon 1.

We made two new trace channels in project settings.

Bullets - >Duh

Decals - > Blood splatter fx and other stuff

DAY 12

Started working more on adding fx and decals when shooting, such as noise and blood splatter

I'm going to have to make or find assets that work for this project. Might just look for a kind of red spray for most of the leumen environments, since the walls bleed when shot.

I did this by making surfacetype customs in the project setting by typing in “surface” in the project settings search bar. I'm so tired today idk if I'll get much else done. Environment artists keep ghosting me so I'm gonna spend the rest of tonight looking for a new artist to take on what we need.

Day 13

Today I think I'm working on actually reading the linetrace I set up on day 11.

This get socket transform event here (which I actually ALMOST figured out alone!) gets the location of the muzzlesocket and plays a temporary effect (obviously unfinished) that fires from the muzzlesocket on the energy weapon currently. As of right now it just sounds and looks like a regular rifle, but eventually it will shoot projectiles made of blue lightning. However I have to look into making particles to get that done, so this is what we have for now.

Honestly I think both of these blueprints are going to end up ENTIRELY reworked once I start getting the inventory system done. This is the definition of simplicity. Still trying to figure out how I actually want to do the weapon/item system. I'm thinking each player has 2 active slots they can choose to bring stuff in with, then maybe they all have a flashlight and data collection kit by default. I think adding a third slot for picking up important non-data related items might work the best.

The way this works properly is I actually had to go into the PHYSICS asset of my character I'm using (in this case the trophy character) and set it to body.

Learning about the applydamage node. Which can be used to apply damage to a pawn that was hit. I'm going to stop here for the night, but it looks like different damage types should be easily created.

This means we can do our ethereal/physical damage differentiation I wanted to do, potentially a third damage type.

DAY 14

I have created a multicasted/serverran replicated set of events for taking ANY form of damage.

I then created the variable Player_Health in BP_CharacterBase for player health pools.

This blueprint here subtracts health from the overall pool when a player is hit.

Note that this is not replicated. I think for the full game I may have to make this replicated.

Actually I'm just going to make it a replicated variable for now but won't be passing it through to anything like the playerstate yet.

Also made boolean Alive? This is true by default and is for whether or not a player is living.

Made a temporary bloodsplatter decal.

Learned about replicated actors. Any replicated actor on the server will show up for everyone in the game. Normally we want to spawn this on the server and not the multicast event.

Note: On the tutorial they did a whole thing for headshot damage called “set applied damage.” I did not do this as headshot damage is not going to be a thing on players and again, I'm fairly certain I'll be redoing basically all of this soon anyways.

I also made a crosshair widget. The tutorial says not to put the crosshair in the blueprint for the characterbase. Instead, put it in my controller. This is because the character will get destroyed and we don't want to keep spawning more and more of these widgets, each players only need the one.

On eventbeginplay we create the actor which has the crosshair blueprint, but first I need to check if localplayercontroller. This ensure it is ONLY EXECUTED LOCALLY.

I'm using the ontick command to spawn the crosshair. Shockingly got it working first try with help from the tutorial – it looks like we grabbed variables from the BP_Characterbase to make this work – specifically the stuff related to taking damage/being hit. I'll be so honest I'm not even really sure how this works, but it works well and I think I'll keep it for now.

Also my blood decals get WAY too big. Gonna need to look at the scaling for them tomorrow.

DAY 14

Changed defaultpawnclass to none in world settings. This is so we can spawn players with the gamemode.

Learned that ONLY THE SERVER can interact with the game mode.

Added respawn logic, so now when a player dies after 3 seconds they respawn. This was a little complicated and required I make the gamemode interact with the player controller using casting.

I'm going to look into buying some blueprints from FAB specifically to unpack the projects and learn how they're done – specifically for AI and for inventory systems. I think I can figure out everything else on my own or via tutorials, but I'm having a super hard time finding tutorials for AI for example that seem applicable to me.

I bought an AI system blueprint thing, it has documentation which should help.

Kinda wanna get this boss system: https://www.fab.com/listings/abfca0df-328f-4108-9eed-1134ad77648e

But for now, I will spend tomorrow going through all that documentation to start trying to unpack AI.

DAY 15

Tonight I'm messing with the AI stuff I bought from the unreal store/FAB. I made a second test project with everything I've done so far named ATEST_ProjectLeumen.

In this project I changed the HealthPlayer to CurrentHealth.

I managed to get the AI to follow players around, but health and everything else is going to be a little more annoying to set up. I'm thinking what I'm going to do is set up weapons/inventory first, THEN work on AI.

This means I can get my player character basics fully done (as well as any items/collectibles they can harvest or pick up) before working on the next step – fucking hell, this shit is complicated though. There's SO MUCH TO LOOK AT and this blueprint I bought uses interfaces and other things I've never even heard of. Gonna need to do some more research.

Day 16

Alright, I give for now – time to work on weapons instead because this AI stuff is a lot and there's a really good weapon tutorial on YT for an easy two-weapon system.

While I'll have to change this as I want players to have 5 slots in total for items (due to wanting some form of collection/harvesting mechanic for stuff found in the 13th floor) it will be a good start.

Created these for now (they look different now, I imported the trophyrifle and trophypistol.)

The names are pretty self-evident, except the pickups and pickup bases.

ATM this is a two weapon system. Primary weapon and secondary weapon pickups have their own children, and the BP_Pickup Base is a parent of the aforementioned blueprints. Sounds complicated/looks stupid, but it's not. I did a bunch of busywork getting these together, but more or less just made variables I can change.

Now I'm making a new input action for interactions, something I needed to learn to do anyways really badly.

I'm also doing all of this in a copy of my main project just in case it messes stuff up badly.

This is also finally teaching me about INTERFACES! I made an interface and injected it to my BP_Characterbase. I stopped after doing this for the night because it started making my head hurt. I think I understand this generally – I'm also making a weapon pickup system using the advanced input system, and being as I really need to learn more about the advanced input system this is fantastic.

In fact I think I'll also work on adding a small dodge at some point. I want to learn more about the advanced input system, I'll probably do that after I set up weapons. Trying to figure out where I'm gonna set the fire event, I think it should be inside the weapon blueprints – but how do I actually call it? From the character? I would ASSUME I call it inside the character, then cast to the weapon blueprint...but that only works if there's only one weapon. Maybe if I cast it to the blueprint CLASS since all the weapons are children of the bases? Not sure, we'll be doing that tomorrow.

I'm also super conflicted in regards to if I'm going to follow through with...any of this? I might just delete this project and then recopy the main files and start over. The reason is simple – I feel like using datasets would be better then doing this strategy with all the individual blueprints and enumerators. But I don't know, I need to look more into this.

DAY 17

Today sucked and I pretty much screwed up everything I was working on in my new project. Frustrating, but this is why I was working on a separate file.

I'll be perfectly honest I think I'm overwhelming myself with all the stuff I'm trying to do. I need to come up with some sort of workflow.

I think I'm going to make a whole new project and work on making sure I can simply improt the AI package I actually paid money for on the unreal store properly. THEN I'll add the inventory system with weapons and items. I think that's a good idea, but for today I'm taking a break. Got nothing done but broke everything lmao

In fact no break, changed my mind – I have an hour left, let's start getting the next version of the project at the least set up. I have documentation to help me after all.

Set up the project again, reimported ALL of my animations, imported the AI system and the animstarterpack from the unreal marketplace. I am going to start with my base BP_ThirdPersonCharacter, completely ignoring EVERYTHING previous to this point. Do not even bother looking back at any of your notes from day 17 future flip unless it's just about “what is x thing and what can it do.” Your variables beyond day 17 are (probably) going to be completely different. Again, for future flip since this log is also for myself. As annoying as this is, this is game dev and stuff has to get changed sometimes.

DAY 18

Looking through a bunch of tutorials here on youtube right now for weapons and inventory systems. Trying to pick one that looks good. I found one that might work from a really small channel, but the audio quality is REALLY bad on it. However, it's a simple 5-slot inventory (which is what I need.)

My biggest concern is implementing weapons/usable items into this as I'm not really sure how to do that, and it also uses data structures which honestly kind of scare me as I've heard they can entirely brick your project.

Alright, I think I've made my decision – I'm going to semi-follow the multiplayer weapon system (to a degree) but I think I'm gonna purchase an asset from FAB that looks similar to what I want just to dissect it and then slowly make my own version for my project.

I'm really having a hard time finding tutorials that do even close to what I'm looking for. I want an inventory system that pulls out the weapon/item when you select the slot. I'd like a viewable description on each item.

So it's time to get workshopping, watch as much as Ican and learn as much as I can.

DAY 19

In a bit of a rut regarding progress, annoyed with myself for not knowing enough.

I'm going to be purchasing another set of blueprints, this one for an inventory, so I can really start taking it apart. For now I'm going to start working with the AI blueprint stuff I bought. I'm not sure how all of it works, but tonight my goal is to just get a working “zombie” that will follow you around without just using the base zombie.

I got damage working using the AI bases, what this means is I can at least make basic zombie AI now pretty simply. Gotta get some new animations I think and work a bit on the attack animation...I think I need something that lunges forward more.

Really didn't do much today because I decided to spend some time editting my website, but now that I have this basic system set up I think I can really start working with the AI now.

DAY 20

Figuring shit out by myself slowly

Made a layered blend per bone that's at spine 0.1. This for some reason means any animations I play on the character are only playing above bone at spine 0.1, and I've used it for a temporary hit animation. Small issue, however, is I'm not sure how this would work if lets say I need to have multiple different animations that are all capable of playing at DIFFERENT bones. I guess I'll get there when I get there, but for now this is a good starting point. With the AI module I bought I now have, at least, workable infected once I retarget all of the animations.

DAY 21

I basically spent an hour and a half just playing with this fleshoid enemy I'm working on using the AI behavior stuff I bought from FAB. I'm slowly starting to understand how the AI behavior FAB thing I bought works, even if I don't understand how the actually blueprints function. This means I can at least get some simple enemies set up to work on weapons and the like.

Right now, it can follow, pick a player, lightly slap them for 10 damage and lose sight of them when they run around objects. It's not perfect AI by any means, but it's a start. This behavior system I bought also looks like it can be easily expanded on, for example adding tags like “Fire” and different damage types.

This was actually insanely easy to set up though and now that I know how to I can pretty much make any simple roaming AI I need to. Anything more complex will, unfortunately, still require more know-how...but I think I can expand upon the current system.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and fix my physics assets so when the ragdolls ragdoll they don't look so jank.

DAY 22, 23 and 24

I purchased another blueprint pack instead of working on the ragdolls to start streamlining the equipment and inventory of our characters. The blueprint pack has a 40+ minute video explaining everything and is REALLY helpful, and I feel like I'm actually making real progress now.

While I don't understand how all of this works, it's letting me start making tangible gameplay now instead of just sitting here staring at blueprints wanting to kill myself.

This thing comes with a ton of pre set up data tables, components and other things that add special functions which help streamline the process of making items. It's also EXTREMELY customization, and I can create entirely new UI's and functions for it pretty easily.

I still have to code all of the item data individually (which is great, it will help me learn!) but now I can start slowly working on getting items into the game.

Likewise, the fleshoid is almost entirely working – ragdolls are bad and the hitboxes are VERY bad, and since I have no gun I can't do damage/test damage on it yet, but I'm slowly learning. I think by the end of this week I might have an actual weapon and weapon pickup to use on this bastard.

Day 25 and 26

Today and yesterday (I forgot to write yesterday) I worked on animation stuff regarding the inventory system. Good news! I figured out how to play my animations only on the upper body. Bad news, I need new animations because my current slash attack one distorts the model.

I ended up learning about the animgraph and realized that if I want to play something on the upper body, I physically need to make sure it's in the write slot so it'll play on the upper body. I had to make a new animation slot, named it upper body, then changed the animation “slot” in the actual timeline of the montage itself.

Day 27

Learned that you need to make sure that your slots are grouped properly in the animation slot section of the animation window (where you physically view animations and their timeline) to call them within the animation blueprint properly. I now have a VERY crappy sword swinging animation just to use temporarily to test things.

I deleted what I've done in the equipment even in BP_ThirdPersonCharacter and I'm going to go through this video and figure out how to set up different animations for each type of weapon I have.]

I'm also realizing for every single weapon I'm going to need a different animation blueprint which I can set the character to change to whenever they pull out that weapon

...which means each character will have like 10 animation blueprints, which is fucking insane, but it's the only way I can think of handling it

So far the equipment I want to make, and I'm starting with

>Unarmed (Super easy to get)

> Sword (I have a shitty animation for it, no stance)

> Dual Swords (this has a ton of issues, including needing to figure out how to mirror the mesh onto both hands.)

> Rifle (I think I can nab some rifle animations super easily for free from the FAB store or even lyra, I need to make sure I can use lyra animations in commercial projects – if not time to look at FAB.)

> Baton and Magitech Blade(Can probably just use sword animations?)

> Spear/Stick/Large Prod

> Pistol (As seen above, can probably grab from FAB or lyra?)

> Thrown items

> Consumable Items

> Syringes

> Data collector

Just as examples – now to be fair, some of these my be easier than others. Like consumables, syringes an data collectors all might be able to share one animation BP but have different animations. We'll just have to see, it's going to take time to set up.

After I get the four basic weapons done (sword/baton, rifle, pistol, energy weapon to test different “damage types”), I'll be setting up all our consumables and items...which will take a while.

Day 28 - 30

Welp, it happened – got scammed by an AI artist and completely fucked out of like 200$.

Thankfully, I caught it after really looking at meshes and got a refund – but this was almost really bad, I'm avoiding using AI in ANY of these game assets.

It's actually frustrating how hard it's been to avoid AI usage for game assets, it's become so normalized many freelancers rely on it. I don't mind if it's being used to ADD to a work, but when your topology LITERALLY FLASHBANGS ME WHEN I HIGHLIGHT IT that's kind of a problem and looks to me like you just plugged an image into an AI generator and hoped for the best.

Anyways I'm suicidal – spent the last 3 days working on finding new artists and art assets, got currency semi-working, and now I'm waiting from a response from the creator of the FAB inventory system I'm using in regards to a couple functionalities. I can't get these goddamn stances working for the life of me and I'm not sure why since when I debug it's saying the stance is being set. The node I need just isn't displaying drop boxes to actually input the animation blueprints I need, which is REALLY odd since I think it should be.

I could ALSO just be stupid.

Day 31 – The End of Month 1

Kind of I guess, this is sort of my wrapup of my month 1 devlog.

Tonight I figured out how to finally get the blend spaces working for each equipment type. I had to unhide the BLENDSPACE pin in the blendspace in my animation blueprint. That was it.

I also made a temporary 1d blendspace (1d blendspaces only go in one direction, and in this case I'm using the speed of the character to dictate how the animation changes/blends) of a running with rifle retargetted animation to use. I have to figure out how to have the character use different idle poses, I'm assuming I have to set up the ABP's “idle state.”

WHICH I JUST DID AND IT WAS SUPER EASY. Super glad I figured that out. Just gonna need to make some changes to the way things line up, but this should be everything I need for starting to test ranged weapons! This still needs some work since the animations are a bit jumpy between transitions, but I think this should be doable.

Now, I can work on weapons and other fun stuff freely. I think for just a month of work this is a good start, but things are going to take a lot longer then I expected.

Day 32

Today I finally made my first set of 100% unassisted code off of all the various systems I've been working on. I used the variable currenthealth to check for the health of an enemy every tick and then when they die, they drop items using the AC_Lootcomponent and AC_Inventory component I've added to them from the inventory system.

Making progress on vendors as well. A lot of this rudimentary stuff I think I can more or less just get in place, now it's a matter of starting to actually make the rest of the game's systems and things like weapons.

I'm also starting to set up damagetypes, specifically as of right now:

Physical

Magic

Energy

Day 33

I updated a ton of blueprints, including adding damage types using the project settings and a bunch of other things. Combined the code I made yesterday for inventory/loot dropping and put it at the end of event takeanydamage + dealt with the associated logic.

Tomorrow I'll be making new weapons (probably 2-3) and go from there. One magic, one energy and one mixed damage type weapon (maybe on the alst one, not sure about that one.)

This is going to all be posted on worldwalkeruniverse.com today just to show how things are being worked on, but this is a great start!