Just a heads up, There is some violence/gore in some of these videos. Viewer discretion advised!
The very first screenshot I took. At this point, I was using some marketplace assets for the level and Advanced Locomotion System for the player.
On June 29, 2020, I started a side project deemed Project Horror. I wanted to make a vertical slice of a survival horror game. There were a few reasons. First, I wanted to learn some new things within UE4 that I don’t typically get to interact with during my day job. Secondly, I just wanted to see if I could make a complete game experience. This is still work-in-progress, but I figured I’d start some posts chronicling my progress.
One of the first things I worked on was an inventory system. I was familiar with UMG, but wanted to expand my knowledge here, so I started building out the necessary classes for the inventory system and then the UI elements.
After I got the initial system setup, I added looting, added doors/keys, and inspect, a throw-back to Resident Evil games.
After I got the inventory sorted, it was time to start work on AI, which is another area I did not have much experience in.
After getting some basic AI in, it was time to tackle gore! Gore is fun (that’s a normal thing to say, right?) because it presents some interesting challenges. I had worked on gore stuff on previous projects (Gears series, Condemend 2) and it can be pretty difficult to get it looking decent. First, I turned off the AI in this test and just wanted to get some basic limb dismemberment happening, as well as spawning some VFX.
With gore implementation, also came implementing enemy health. The next step was to integrate back in the AI and add some additional details, like blood trails.
After I got that working well, I swapped the model for a zombie cop I snagged of CG Trader I believe. I re-rigged it (I think it came with a skeleton) and modified it so I could have it come apart. I also added a stomp move the player could do to finish off a downed enemy.
I picked up a player model, also from CG Trader, rigged it up, and started working on custom animations, which is something I am NOT terribly good at.
I had experience doing relatively simple anim graphs, but I wanted to try and do some things I didn’t have experience with. This test involved having different holster states depending on time passed during certain actions. If the player wasn’t aiming, the gun would be lowered. If the player was in the lowered state for a bit, the gun would then be holstered.
Then I started trying to figure out what the narrative might be for this complete game experience and building up a level to support that. I also picked up some new zombie models that I’ve not yet rigged up, but are shown in the video below. The environment assets are mostly picked up from the Unreal Marketplace. I don’t even want to know how much money I’ve spent on assets from the marketplace (Sounds, environment assets, VFX).
That’s all for now. I’ve been continuing work on the level layout, the player (been learning xgen so I can do a groom and have simulated hair), the player’s face rig, and more zombies/rigs. This brings us up to about a year and some change to get to this point, working pretty light hours, to be honest. I actually haven’t touched it in a few weeks, but am looking forward to getting back to it.