With this project I started by learning smaller mechanics to use in blueprints that would later go into my level. The first of those mechanics was a widget blueprint for the UI that showed the health bar. Within the graph of that blueprint, I added a function to update the UI as the players’ health changed. I then got to work on the next mechanic, a blueprint that looked like a spike and would cause damage before pushing the player back. For this I used cones to create a spike in the viewport of the blueprint then I added a collision box so that I could use Do Damage in my blueprint. I then implemented a timeline to animate pushing the player back from the spikes.

The next part of the project I spent on building a turret that shoots at the player when they are in front of it. I set up a collision sphere for this and used it in my blueprint to have the turret shoot when the player is in ‘view’. This part of the project, as well as the other parts above, were guided by the instructor. However, for the next section of the project I was left on my own to work through it with some optional supporting resources and a Discord server to ask for help in. The first challenge was to make the turret follow the player while shooting at them to create a more dynamic experience. This was difficult at first, as I played around with the normalized vectors dot product in my blueprint and the conditional logic. After several hours testing and researching, I nailed down the conditions and dot product which gave me a working turret.

From there I started to create my own spells for the player to use, as per class instructions. The first one I created was a healing spell which I felt was needed right away, as the player could potentially take a lot of damage and need a way to recover. Creating this and connecting it to the UI was simple since I just needed to do the opposite of what I did with the spikes earlier in the week. The next spell I decided to tackle was an ice blast spell for the turrets to allow the player to run through the projectiles if they were too fast. This proved to be more difficult than I initially thought as I worked through making the blueprints communicate. After a lot of testing and iterating I was able to get the turrets projectile speed to slow down when getting hit with the ice blast spell by using a cast to the turret blueprint within my spell blueprint.

With all those mechanics and blueprints in place I started working on my level for the final project. I created three zones for the player to traverse, solve and use their spells in. The initial inspiration for the levels came from creating a prison cell for the first zone. I had the player start in a confined area and gave them a spell to start off that would destroy walls. In the class we did go over how to create a destructible wall for the player, however, we didn’t make any visual changes. Since it was early in my level I wanted to add a visual indication that the wall was destructible. I had to do some research to figure out how to create the visual indication on a blueprint I already had created. After figuring out the steps I needed to take I found material that looked like a crack on fab.com. After importing it into my project I added it to the viewport in my destroyable walls blueprint. I then duplicated it and added some more in different spots to give the player more visuals. This was a fun learning experience for me as I put into practice what I’ve been taught throughout my college experience.

The next thing I started to tackle was creating each zone to make it challenging but not frustrating. While keeping in mind what spells I needed to implement and have the player use in each zone. My design relied heavily on the focal spell in each zone and then in the last zone I focused on using all three to make it through the end of the level. This project taught me a lot as I learned to quickly build a level that showcases certain mechanics. The highlights of my experience for this project include learning more in depth blueprint communication, learning how to use material from fab.com in a project and learning how to use logic and math to create desired results for objects in a level. To see my level in action as I explore and talk about my experience check out the YouTube video above. (Titled “Jesse Freckleton Gameplay DES1”)