(WIP) - Ninja Arcade

I started this project in the UDK. It was a project driven completely by Kismet. It was my attempt to squeeze any available power out of Kismet I could find. It worked out extremely well but had some serious limitations, as you can imagine. So, then, UE4 was released and I had to make a decision to either port it over or not. Having spent just under a year and a half on the project already. So, looking into UE4 a bit, doing another small project to get comfortable with the new tools and more specifically, Blueprints. That convinced me that it’s worth the time and effort to essentially rebuild the game from scratch. So I started to work on it about a month or so after UE4 came out and really haven’t looked back.

Since I posted my UDK progress fairly frequently, showing my Kismet setups and stuff, I felt like I should post something to show my jump to UE4 and really, how successful that has been so far. So this video shows my game play progress. Everything done with Blueprints of course. It’s very much a direct port over but with some more extended mechanics that just weren’t possible with Kismet alone. The game currently feels fairly smooth and responsive and I’m constantly tweaking and finding ways to make it feel just right. I’m of course a huge fan of the Ninja Gaiden series which I feel has the best fighting mechanics. So I use that as my inspiration. I couldn’t hope to match the complexity but I hope to match the smoothness and responsiveness.

So, the video is recorded in my game play test level. Mostly I wanted to show the possibility now of having many enemies to fight. It’s something new to the project, accept for having moved over to UE4 of course.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pjea37Y12PI

– UPDATE –

Just adding the demo link here, to the first post, so it’s easier to find.

Ninja Arcade Demo v0.01a

– UPDATE –

Ninja Arcade Demo v0.02a - My 2nd demo. Though still considered an early pre-alpha demo, it is more representative of what my game is all about. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Ninja Arcade Demo v0.02a

– UPDATE -

Ninja Arcade is now available to buy over on https://itch.io/ I hope if anyone decide to check it out that they enjoy it. It was a really fun but really challenging project to work on and I learned a lot by making it.

Here’s a direct link.

Ninja Arcade Released!

Very cool reminds me of assassins creed combat keep it up.

You have a solid game base, looks good, perhaps others colors than full grey and some jump attack down , some wall jumps.

Great work so far. It feels very much akin to Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Blade, among other titles. I haven’t seen many projects so far on the forum that are focusing on melee / close-quarters combat, so very nice to see that accomplished in Blueprints!

Thank you for the replies.

The grey map is just my test map, there is certainly more color in the actual game level. In my old UDK videos I showed a bit of that already. I’ve rebuilt most of it and I will show the UE4 version probably soon. If I do another fight recording I will do it in the game level… :slight_smile:

As for jump attack straight down, I do have that, I actually realize I did not use it properly in that video to see, but it’s in the game right now. Wall jumps… well. I’ve had that in mind for a while but I don’t want to implement that unless I use it for game play, and right now, I just don’t have space for it. I’m a one man team and I can only bring so much in this game. It’s certainly a difficult one to pass on, so it’s not 100% out, but it’s not 100% in either.

Nice Obi…you beat me to showing off my game and it’s similar to yours…so I’ll be for sure watching the thread…Looking forward to all the cool elements of your game coming together…Great stuff…

Awesome, President, looking forward to seeing what you’re up to.

Thanks again to everyone for the replies so far.

I’ve decided to go ahead and post a short video of a really small piece of the game level. It’s pretty much the area I’ve shown in my UDK videos before, but this rebuilt in UE4 of course. So, anyway, not much to say about it specifically.

I can’t convey any game play tweaks through a video but I have tweaked and refined the attacks a little bit more. It feels better now. There’s a balance there between control and animation and it takes sometimes many iterations to find that balance. I’m fairly happy in general with results so far, but it’s really an on going process. I just keep tweaking until nothing bothers me anymore. Some stuff kinda works in multiple ways and for some there’s a fine line there where it either works or it doesn’t.

Anyway, here’s the vid…

Very nice, interested in seeing where this goes. =)

Great work Obihd! Great work on the animation of the ninja. Be sure to keep us updated as you progress with your game. It is definitely one of the top WIP so far!

I second that. Keep up the good work.

Thanks guys, really appreciate the positive feedback.

Awesome mele combat system.

Wish I have something at least 10% like that for mele :smiley:

Looks good :smiley:

You should definitely add some sound, would add much to the atmosphere!

Dude, that is SWEET! Very nice! Everything just looks and feels right. I was checking out your youtube stuff – do you still do everything in Max? Seems to be the tool of choice for one-man-bands.

Thanks guys, again, thanks for the positive feedback.

order66, I think about sound a lot sometimes but there’s just so much more important stuff at this point. Sound makes a huge difference for sure. I will get to that, some day… :slight_smile:

Syntaks, I use Max, don’t know what else to say… :slight_smile:

Have you thought about doing a video series on how you built everything in UE4? Time consuming, I know, but man it would be super useful!

I have considered it yeah, and I might still do it.

The only thing that kinda worries me about it is that I don’t want my videos mistaken as tutorial videos. But I might do it and try make it clear that it’s purely for interest sake, it’s not tutorials, and see how it goes.

ahhaha awesome and beautifull.

How did you made particle with model objects when character strikes an ennemy ?

Thank you.

So, for particles I have two different systems for the sword impact effects. The one for enemies is real simple, it’s a particle system that is a component of the enemy pawn and then just enable it when damage the enemy. I did this to get more accurate display of enemy getting damaged, since the sword does actually do the damage in the attacks, I actually fudge that a little bit with the jump attacks and so I needed a reliable system for that.

The other system is slightly more complex but completely accurate to the sword impact. It’s a general effect system for the sword. I fire a line trace down the blade and on hits I get physics material for different effects and spawn them on the trace hit location. So stone or metal or whatever else, when struck, produce their own effects and it’s based on where the blade actually touch the surface, thanks to the trace.

I can use the trace system on enemies as well, and in fact I did for a while but like I mentioned there I wanted more control over how particles spawn on enemy strikes, so I changed to the first mentioned system. But the cool thing is you can still see some sword on sword impacts, you get the sparks since the sword is metal, the trace picks that up, if you happen to strike across the enemy sword.

For player effects it’s the same as the first system. They are components of the pawn, both the blood or blocking sparks effects and I just enable which ever is appropriate. So that’s also completely controlled like that. The enemy sword do not have it’s own effect system. I don’t think it’s really necessary and probably overkill.

Greta job, some quality stuff here.