**About me: **
So for the last 2 years I have been learning UE4 to try to figure out how i can start over with my dreams of create my game. My RPG Engine toolkit was the main thing i needed to port from a previous engine to UE4 to get started in my dream. Finally after some procrastination and tears I have my toolkit ported over with all the features created before and more thanks to the awesomeness that is unreal engine. This system was one that I needed since there is no tool that can five some out of the box functionality that i need to actually make something as complicated as a RPG. This was the reason I made this toolkit. In it is everything that i have learned since 2009 when i first made the decision to make a game. Breaking down things from games that loved, I started to create a list of features that I thought that were general enough to create a game with and at the heart of all the data i knew i needed a database to house all this data. From there I create the system I hope that can guide me to what I wanted to create. Along with this I wanted to share the things that I learned with anyone that needed similar functionalities. I also wanted to make it so everything was general enough that anyone could customize the code and database structure easily and quickly suit their needs. In the end I have this system that I hope to use for my game development and that I hope can help others take a big step forward in their creations as well.
**Demo Download: **
https://gumroad.com/l/BIOLQ
This is not a game, this is a playable area that shows off some of the features in the RPG Engine Toolkit. Feedback is welcomed/needed positive or negative. I will consider every feedback extremely important.
Feedback can be posted on the post here or on my facebook page:
This demo is playable with a XBox controller and Keyboard. Controls are included in the download content.
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My art is not the best at all. But here are some screenshots of the test level.
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**A Quick Overview of the Demo: **
Part 1
Part 2
When i activate the spell example my accident you can skip to 2:31 seconds to hear the rest of the overviews. Below you can find a write up of the BP/C++ objects covered in the video, for those who can’t hear anything because i fail to understand volume settings for game and microphone settings… There’s also more details below on the said objects. If my grammar is off I apologise in advance…
**RPG Engine Toolkit Info: **
This toolkit is designed for beginner to intermediate developers that want to make a role playing game. This tool is aimed at a database driven design for an RPG System, from character creation, event flows, item creation, etc. This toolkit provides an easy to use, and easy to customize interface and workflow to help others start their own RPG project.
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Features Overview **
RPG Database Manager
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Event flow creation for NPCs, dialogue, shops, triggered events, and zones. -
Create grade based character classes -
Create heroes using customized classes and set the games starting party. -
Create items with a variety of data types and mixed combinations.
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Create configurable weapons/armors
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Create spells and special attacks
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Create Monster Definition Data
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Create Summon Monster Data
– Note: Implementation example not available currently -
Create Monster Spawn Groups for respawnable monster areas.
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Add new map locations for other RPG Editor Elements
NPC Character Generator -
Create characters using different combination of morph targets
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Append shirt, pants, hair, and shoes to the base model
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Change body, shirt, pants, hair, and shoe textures loaded into texture template structures
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Add Custom Character templates to use your own character template models
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Random button to easily generate random characters
Implemented Examples -
Active Battle System (button mashing battle type)
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Item usage system
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One spell example
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Stat Leveling System
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Monster Battle AI System
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Party AI System
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2D Tracker Digital Map System
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Player/Party Interface System
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Battle History Tracking
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Night lamps automatically turning on based on the time of day
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One implemented vehicle: (Hover board)
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Saving and Loading System
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One example of a character melee combo
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Test GUIs Implemented
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Title Screen
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Game Menu with radar
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Battle Menu
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Pause menu
- Party Display / Equipment
- Items
- Map
- Hex Map 2.0 – Uses a hex grid to dynamically generate a hex height map of the area around you, as well as marking points of interest on the map.
- Options
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Save Menu
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Load Menu
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Inn/Item/Armor Store Menu
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Game Over Menu
C++ / BP Objects Details
AI Behavior
All AI is contained in a behavior tree. I do not use the standard usages of the behavior tree. I have all my logic in a state machine within a single service that is operated by the tree. The reason for this is to allow my logic to stay with in a realm that can be expanded by other users of the behavior tree. All AI work with a similar state types in case of overlapping logic that IE Moving to, wait for type of states… battle state etc. The AI States are as follows:
Init
- Initializes the AI flow based on configurations
Idle
- Does nothing
- Used for stopping the AI from doing anything while other operations happen
Waiting
- Waits for next action use by wander AI
Moving
- Processing moving activities
- Checking for enemies
- Verifying location
- Stuck detection
Pick Destination
- Pick destination logic based AI Type / Movement Type
**Chase **
- Processes enemy chase logic
- Leaving patrol area
- Verify target
- Check caught status
- Stuck detection
Captured
- When catching the target activate the decision logic based on AI Type and battle mode
Lost sight
- Resets logic from the chase or battle states and returns to previous handling
Battle state
- Process all battle logic
- Enemy selection skill usages based on AI Tactics
Follow leader
- Used by heroes to follow the main hero
- Scanning for enemies
Via point
- Use to be used for Stuck logic - May return
Point of interest
- Used to process interaction with point of interest objects
Follow path
- Used by patrol AI
Stationary
- Used by stationary AI
Event processing
- Use to be used to disable logic while processing events – May return
Get in attack range
- Used to get AI with in damaging range before using said skill
Battle Mode
Battle modes are what I defined as a RPG Game Types. Within this I have changed certain logical flows in the system to do different things based on battle mode this is to help cater to a more flexible system. The modes are as follows:
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Open World
o In open world party members follow the controlled hero around and battles are live
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Open Arena
o In this mode there are no following party, and battles happen in a monster capture arena
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Battlefield Active Battle
o Battle enemies are set by monster group ids set in the displayed field enemy
o (Not implemented currently)
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Battlefield Classic
o Old school turn based type battles.
o (Not implemented currently)
The idea behind this is to keep things similar and change the system based on desired subsystems
**
Battle Arena**
The battle arena is part of the Open Arena battle flow. When a AI catches it target in this setting it will spawn a battle area and goes into idle. The battle arena then takes control of the flow. The player is forced into control of the arena while battle prep is initialized.
During this time all enemies within the set area is captured and shuffled around the battle arena. The players party start position is the randomized. The arena does a FF7 style screen break as a battle intro then releases the enemies and the party AI to start the fight. Under this battle mode all experience, gold and drops are sent to the battle arena upon enemy’s death to be tallied at the end of battle.
Once the battle is over the hero is captured by the arena and then the tally screen is displayed for the end user to accept their spoils. After this the battle arena is destroyed and the player is set back to the battle start point.
Building Generator:
I have added the Building Gen Tool and City Path Builder to this kit. Its purpose it to take building layouts created in the database manager tool and load these templates into the editor to help build buildings using themed based templates. These templates house several building and furniture settings that will populate the building upon baking. Along with static objects the system supports the ability to switch a standard mesh into a smart object. In this example we have the doors replaced by a Blueprinted Door system that will open the door when within range. All objects baked are set as instance meshes for efficiency and all smart objects are bound to the main building so moving the building does not cause any issues.
Crowd Spawner / Points of Interest
Wandering NPCs will see out Points of interest, these points can be made from any type of object. The base object involves a POINode that the AI enrolls into. Once a free one is found the NPC navigates to the point. Once there full enrollment starts. At this time the NPC will enter mountain state where they play a mounting state followed by a usage animation phase. The Usage phase last until the desired configured time for usage ends.
After this the unmount starts and the NPC will leave the usage position and then return to an unenrolled state. The POI wait timer is set and that NPC can interact with anything for a set amount of time.
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Seek POI at a random change -
If POI is found get a free POI Node -
Mark node used and approach node -
Once at node Mount. -
Once complete enter usage mode. -
Once Usage timer expires unmount -
After unmount return to wander cycle.
Quick Note: The debug is enabled so u can see the active radius detection of the NPC Spawn
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Monster spawner**
The monsters are spawned in a similar fashion as the NPCs they will wander in the effective area and start battle upon visual detection. The Mob AI are using the Sense component with only seeing currently being used. If all a monster dies from this spawn sphere the spawn sphere will respawn them in configured amount of time.
Clutter Spawner
The Clutter Spawner is a simple tool that can stack objects on top of each other within a configurable range and height. There is also an option to override the material per spawn object.
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Waypoints and Zones**
Waypoints are used for seek points for zoning and teleports. They also can be used to guide NPCs and enemies from point to point in Path mode. The waypoints are searched by the name set inside of the waypoint for detection. The events that use these are the zoning trigger objects. The zone has two options based on settings. It can send the player to a given map using a map id saved in the database maps list. Or it can be manually set when zoning to the same map.
In this case the levels zoning area are marked by the gates. When entering the gates the zone trigger will first remove your mount then once off you can enter it to start the zoning process. Currently the waypoint name as well as the level streaming name is loading into the zoning info. The zone will detect the map name to make sure its loading a location within this current map, then it will find the level stream section that we are loading to and make sure that it is loaded before transporting to that area.
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Standard Treasure Chest**
This object is extended from the NPC AI BP. It has the ability to trigger events or just be a standard treasure chest. On top of this you can specify a list of required items needed to unlock a check be it a common key or a list of items. You also have the ability to select a list of items that the chest will give you and a drop rate for the items. This can give you the flexibility of rare item drops and etc as desired.
In addition to these you also have the ability to enroll a treasure chest into the database as a singleton chest. What this means is to only allow the treasure chest to be opened once. So the state of the chest will be reported and saved in the database. A chest that is not enrolled into the database is set to be a reusable / re-open-able treasure chest. Currently zoning from one area to the other will restore the treasure chest.
AI Mob
Monsters can be spawned from a single instance or from a spawn sphere
using a Datatable loaded from the database using min and max monster level settings.
Only the monsters mesh and animation data and battle data is loaded and stored locally while in- editor. On Game State Begin Play all configurations for the monsters AI configurations and class stats are calculated.
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Configurable data in database**
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Monster Name -
Level -
Is Boss -
Monster Race -
Monster Config File (Monster Skeleton Mesh, etc. Can be expanded.) -
Drop Rate -
Rare Drop Rate -
Currency -
Experience -
Base Stat Modification (Atk/Def, Etc) -
AI Tactics (How the AI chooses actions in battle) -
Monster Class (Contains animation BP link and Stat Progression calculations) -
Item/Weapon/Armor/Resource Drop List (Also a flag for is rare drop per section)
None database configurations:
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Detection radius -
Walk speed -
Chase Speed -
Repair rate -
Wait time between movements -
Pathing type- Wander
- Patrol Point to Point Movement
- Stationary with animation
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NPC AI BP**
The NPC BP has two purposes, space filler as a crowd system and to serve as a point of interaction for the player, IE Store, or event starter, or Treasure chest. NPCs can be placed individually or can be Spawned via Crowd Spawner BP.
First, Crowd Spawners are used to populate a city with wondering non-interactive NPCs. The Crowd Spawner can spawn and despawn NPCs based on the distance of the main player from the spawn node. This is to limit used resources for UE4’s AI Manager. The NPC configurations for the Crowd Spawner is limited since the actors are filler.
None database configurations:
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Spawn Radius -
Wander Radius -
Number of NPCs -
Spawn Activation -
Radius Activation -
DebugMode. -
Wander -
Patrol Point to Point Movement -
Stationary with animation -
Event List
In addition to this we can also load an event list from the Database to select one or more events to attach to an NPC. Anything from Store events, to mission starting events, or just story driven banter. The idea behind the events is to drive most of the things you need for an event. Scattered around the introduction area you can find various NPCs and the event example that they have attached.
Lastly, NPC’s utilizes the Modular Character Generator. This gives you the ability to build character templates with a Base mesh/ Height Scale Range / Clothing Parts / Custom Morph Data and have them generate a random NPC from this. The Character template can be loaded into the NPC AI’s default blueprint data and when spawning a NPC the data will be randomly put together to make a unique character. On top of this there is a material system that allows you to mask out parts of character skin, clothing, hair, and armor that can be assigned random colors. Because skin is a careful choice you can sent the min and max skin tone range and the system will scale the color between this clamped range. Also while this ability has been used in the NPC object mostly the ability exist in the Monster and Hero structure as well to help randomize Monsters and armor type or to allow the player to modify skin, hair and armor color. There is very little work needed to get this working for those needs. The RPG Engine Toolkit has not implemented this but will make examples of this in the future via tutorial or future updates. RPGEventTrigger are also uses the NPC data but is an invisible trigger zone for events, with the other features removed.
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Cut Scene Actors**
The Cut Scene Actors BP are used to load the appearance of important actors and heroes configured in the database. This will load armor sets and weapon information as configured for each actor. One additional setting is the ability to load the heroes active armor set. This is located when the matinee reveals the actor in a cut scene. Also prior to the cut scene the visual representation of the actor is updated using the active data found in the party system object. Actors in the editor are for matinee purposes and can be used with all other features of matinee.
Hover Board
The Hover board is loaded from the player for test purposes. This is mainly here for experimental purposes for terrain traversal. This is a heavily modified version of some of the logic from the UFO craft in the 2014 tour demo.
I added the hover physics of this to be able to detect the ground level and apply upward force based on closeness to the ground. This force tapers off based on the approach to the desired height. This effect is similar to that of a magnet being pushed to similar polls. In addition to this once the hovercraft has entered a left the traceable range to the ground it is considered falling and thus will apply a falling impulse. This can be modified to apply an impossible impulse down to force the player from flying too high in the air from jump speed thrust.
Also added is the ability to pitch your craft up or downward. This can be used to thrust jump up or thrust down at the ground. Note to counteract you thrusting through the terrain the collision on the front of the craft has been made bigger to cancel out the collision detection checks.
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Spell Example**
The example spell can be configured to damage enemies or heroes depending on who uses it. Once spawned the data that can be set are:
· Spawn Radius (For projectiles birth location range)
· Show Damage Radius (Shows a impact radial)
· Damage Radius (used for impact calculations)
· Hit Warning Lifetime (Decal lifetime)
· Fire Rate
· Damage Heroes? (T) / Enemies (F)
· Draw in time (Used to determine how long to activate the gravity pull in effect.)
· Draw in Window (Time to rest before drawing in enemy target again)
All damage calculations are based on the main hero or the enemy caster. The one in the example currently uses the main controlled character as of now but can be used by any character as long as their reference is set properly in the object.
Event Modules
**Add Remove Party Member: **
Adds or removes a member from the party make up. If in Game Mode Open world this will also auto spawn or despawn that actor from the field.
**
Add Remove Items: **
Adds or removes items from your inventory. It is best to use Event Type: Check Required Item before removing said item from inventory.
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Add Remove Currency: **
Adds or removes currency.
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Add Remove Experience: **
Adds or removes experience, Note I only planned to use this to increase EXP but left in the ability to remove experience. Through there are several checks that you might want to consider before removing exp. IE downleveling.
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Zones: **
Zones Events work like the Zoning area mentioned before but is purely database ID
controlled. Where the database has a link for the following:
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Level Name (Region) -
Waypoint Name (Location Name) -
Persistent Level Area Name (Area Name)
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Sound:**
Play sound can be used to play and desired sound based on four types Gui, 2D, 2D and BG Audio. Currently only a GUI sound is played but you could use this to trigger a sound played on the actor in 3d space or even replace the environments music for mood change.
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Weather:**
Weather can also be executed with an event triggered. Currently I have no particles or anything built into the sky system for triggering weather changes. I just handle the event and continue automatically to the next event.
Event Enabling and disabling:
Event Enabling and disabling occur in the end of the event flow normally. This will enable/disable another event or itself. Map events are updated at the end of the of an event scene and are noted by a screen dim effect. The dimming allows NPCs to update their enabled or disabled state based on events. Some NPCs will auto hide based on events being disabled for their owning event stack.
**
Stores:**
Store configurations allows you to filter out item specific items to sell. Currently there are 4 types of items that can be sold, Items, Weapons, Armor, and Resources.
**
Inns:**
Inns will heal your party for a given cost per member. Also the cost increases per dead
member on the team. There is also a cost of time for resting. The cost of resting with an
injured party member increases the time advanced.
**
Movie:**
Plays a movie using the material, wave and media player links, has an option to skip video or not. Plays a movie using the material, wave and media player links, has an option to skip video or not.
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Saving:**
The saving system uses the database as a means of saving. As you are playing a good majority of things are saved to the active database. When you save all unsaved data is stored to the database file and gets saved as a save slot file. When loading a game this will copy the slot database from its slot location and make it the active database. The system also supports quick saves. This merely saves all data to a quicksave slot similar to the save. When using the option “CONTINUE” from the main screen the quick save data is what is loaded. Currently I have implemented quick saves anytime you zone from one area to another. But a simple call can be made to trigger this event to happen. As for the save event you have the option to allow load options to appear for saved games.
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Dialogue:**
The Dialogue System has 3 parts Dialogue message, choice, and item request checking. This will allow you to make a stream of events to make quest and such. The intro area event NPC has all parts of a fetch quest attached to it talking to it and selecting the right choices and bringing back the requested items will send it through its quest links.
Choice Branching:
Choices can be used for branching conversations and event progression, the system has an unlimited nested event branching setup for you to have branches in branches. As long as you set it up correctly you can get the desired results.
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Item Requirement:**
The check system can be used for checking your inventory for the required items for a quest and display an accepting or rejecting message based on if you have them in your possession. The system will also list the items during rejection to let the user know what items and their quantities are remaining.
Dialogue System:
You can set dialog, backgrounds, transitions, play sound FX, display on screen actors, etc.
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Image Location is used to place a 2D character image on screen. (IE Date sims style effect) -
Grey Out Background places a grayed out background on screen. -
Actor Cutout is the image that will be placed on screen using the Image location. -
Audio Cue Link will load a sound to play when this dialog starts. (IE: Voice Acting) -
Wait for audio states that you want to wait for the audio before being able to continue. -
Background FX have several transition that can transition into a background image or just -
effect the screen with certain effects. -
Background Image Link is the image that will be placed over the game for the dialog sequence. -
Character Emoticon is the image that will represent the face or body used in the dialog UI. -
Display Name is the name of the character currently speaking. -
Dialogue is the text that will display in the dialog UI -
Auto Flow ignores user input and makes the dialog for the current dialog auto play to the -
next event.
Time of Day:
Time of day can be triggered via event. This will advance time to a desired time.
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Matinee Trigger:**
Simply triggers the desired matinee in the map. Also has controls for making the matinee skippable as well as control weather the camera stays focused or not when pausing the matinee for other events flows to activate. Currently when you have a system of events you can animate the entire scene in a matinee and then queue pause events that will break you out of the matinee scene and allow other events to fire in between. IE dialogue or other important triggers for the scene.
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Battle Trigger:**
The Battle Trigger spawn’s enemies of a configured group at given points in the map. This can be used for a battle area grind event driven quest or just for a simple ambush. Killing all monsters in the event monster list will trigger the continuation of the event flow.
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