General Overview
The bones of this game were created in GameDev.tv’s Unreal Engine C++ Developer Course under the Simple Shooter project. Upon completion of the course I took the bones and changed multiple sections of the game that I will list below.
Boss Room - Level Design
With the icy back drop of this area I felt like the map needed a room with more of an open windowed look. I used the materials found in the map pack to create this room with the purpose to be a battle area. I knew I wanted the boss to be larger than the player and be more melee focused, so the room needed to be taller and wider than the rest of the hallways.
Boss - Character Design
While looking for free assets I could use for bosses, I came across the paragon game characters. Blank fit the mold of what I was looking for in terms of character design and melee based attacks. Although the molten theme of him did not fit the icy map. Rather than scrapping this character I changed the color scheme of the lava materials to a cool blue, so that instead of lava flowing through him, he had an icy cooler feel to him. One of the things I would like to add to this character in the future is to create him crashing through the floor upon the players entrance to the arena. This would give the entrance a little more cinematic feel and make the character feel like he came from the core of this planet.
AI
Following the boss creation I felt that the generic enemy needed a little touch up. The AI now allows for the enemy to move around the room and keep firing. If the player is close to the enemy they will also melee attack the player and then move away.
Combat
The game started with only one weapon and unlimited ammo for that weapon. To start with I created an ammo system where the player will have a magazine that limits the rounds until a player reloads the weapon. Upon reloading the ammo is taken from the total amount given to the player on start. The second creation was the addition of an automatic firing weapon. This weapon has a shorter firing range than the first weapon and a larger magazine size to make it feel different. To make sure the player has a visual que of which weapon they are using, I also changed the color scheme so that the weapon looks more unique. The third addition I added to the player was the melee attack in case an enemy is too close and the player has no ammo to fire.
Camera and UI
One of the first things I wanted to change about the game was how far away the camera was to the player’s character. I also added a zoom function to focus in on the enemy. The UI also allows the player to see which weapon is currently equipped and how much ammo each weapon has.
