Spring/Summer Project 2023

Before this project, I had been working with a team on an FPS project in Unreal that exclusively used blueprints, so I wanted to do something that gave me new challenges. I decided to start a third-person project in Unreal Engine 5 focusing on building mechanics in C++. 

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At the beginning of this project, I spent time learning a good workflow for Unreal and C++ and then creating basic movement and camera mechanics for a third-person project.

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Once the project got more complicated, I began developing a component-based action system for characters I had previously made for a different project. I designed this action system to work for the player and enemies using a manager node to activate and change actions. 

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Further into the project, I began using an asset from the Unreal Engine Marketplace for creating procedural worlds at runtime using premade tiles. While this process created unique levels, it created a problem with navigation for enemies. Since I generated levels at runtime, the nav meshes I had previously used didn't work anymore. To solve this problem, I had to figure out how to dynamically generate a nav mesh as the player moved around the level.

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Another area I spent much of my time learning during this project was animation blueprints. I took advantage of notify events to simplify syncing gameplay events to animations and used custom notify states to sync animations, gameplay, and UI that happened over an interval.

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During this project, I learned a lot about working in Unreal Engine, creating mechanics, and prototyping projects. Alongside this project, I wrote a blog about what I was working on and my thought process going through this project and it's a great way to see the changes that happened along the way.