Test Center Game

I made the test center using UE5 as a project to develop my Blueprint and C++ skills. The aim was simple, to create a game using blueprints and then convert those blueprints to C++. I managed to create a number of game elements and combine them to make the basis of a puzzle platformer.

Turret BP

Exit Tube BP

Turret Projectile BP

These are some of the gameplay Blueprints used in the demo above. They detail how the turret and exit tube function. Other assets are handled entirely in C++ such as the push buttons and the doors that open on trigger. I have followed a system of designing in blueprint and creating the final asset in C++.

Frosted Glass

Player Highlight Post Process Material

Water Shader

During devlopment I found I wanted and needed a number of materials to facilitate gameplay or storytelling objectives. This lead me to create these materials for the test center. The first is a frosted glass material that obscures what is behind it. The second is a post process materials used alongside a post process volume to highlight the player when they are behind an object, this is invaluable for a fixed perspective game. Finally I created this water shader to create a game element that would kill the player and be an obvious point of danger.

Character Anim BP

Character Anim State graph

The player animations were something I particularly enjoyed setting up as I have not spent a great deal of time around creating characters before. I created and animated this character myself and then using a combination of C++ parameters and the animation graph I have made it possible for the player to jump, move and pick objects up.

This Space Center Game Demo and Presentation was made as a media piece for use in presenting to games development students in an interactive way. It also serves as an observable way in which you can incorporate games development and thinking in to anything you may end up doing whilst in education.

Space Center Presentation

Spline Pipe Creator

Sliding Door Setup

Presentation Keys Setup

PPM cel shading

Presentation media material

Enemy AI Sight

Game win/loss

Enemy BTTask

BTTask Move To random location

Enemy Behaviour tree

Bomb planting mechanic

Bomb priming set up

As you can see, despite being simple in nature, this small demo game requires quite a lot of set up to get running.

I created multiple blueprints to control various game factors. To start I created the controls for the presentation as this was the core function of this demo game. This was relatively simple, I created a video playlist and the ability to control which video was playing within that playlist. Next I attached the playlist to a media texture which I finally placed on a mesh in the world.

Second to this I used a premade character from unreal engine and added the function to prime bombs thus creating the players end goal. This was as simple as having a bomb asset that when the player overlaps can be 'primed' changing the material and updating the UI.

The final component are the enemy AI. They needed to be able to patrol the space center and move randomly around it. A feature that I managed by creating a behaviour tree and subsequent behaviour tasks that I could set ahead of time. Once done I created a patrol asset which can be listed for each enemy and patrolled between. Adding an AI sight sense and forcing the lose condition should the enemies spot the player is the final step.

Aside from this I also created some post process materials, Niagara FX, and other assets to fill out the world and give it a unique look.