UE4 prototyping (AI)
Learning doesn't stop at school, I wanted to take this time to talk about some experiments and prototypes I've been doing after hours.
Stealth game prototyping:
Using UE4 I prototyped a little stealth game in the span of 3 days to expand my knowledge of the engine. I experimented for the first time with things like AI and particle effects. I added different objectives and learned to link them together and more.
Apart from implementing mechanics I also wanted the game to have some nice user feedback so I dove in to particle effects which I had never worked with prior to this project. As well as bringing over some things I knew from making "Sacrifumble" and the "Hydrolic" sci-fi level like camera shakes and running meshes along splines which I extended to particle effects. AI in Unreal Engine 4:
I mainly used pawn sensing for the AI so far. First using blueprints but I later took the same concept of patrolling guards to C++ since I'm following a course on C++ in UE4 by Tom Looman.
The pawn sensing component is able to both see and hear objects in its proximity which is ideal for making patrolling guards. The C++ implementation takes the hearing a step further in to a mechanic where the player can throw objects to distract the guard to be able to sneak around. The bots use the in engine navigation mesh to find their way to their patrol points. These points can be added in the editor and changed around. The bot will always adjust its patrol route to the patrol points it has (hard-coding them would be inefficient).
Another thing that is really interesting when I'm following these UE4 C++ lectures is to make the same assignments in blueprints and compare their performance. It makes it clear that learning C++ in the engine is important since the performance benefit is definitely there.
I'm currently looking into Unreal's replication system for some simple networking which is complete uncharted territory for me (for now) but it's quite fun.
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AuthorFlorian Gaeremynck Archive
June 2019
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