**Switch **is a multiplayer-only first person shooter in currently in development using Unreal Engine 4. The levels are designed and built by the players throughout the match. Individual pieces can be switched to become transparent or opaque – effectively turning it into cover or a new way to traverse the level. This is best explained by watching our a few clips of playtest footage down below.
You will see the basics of switching as well as a few other features including Leap (high jump) and shield that protects the player while depleting energy from absorbed damage. We will talk about those systems in a future dev blog.
It reminds me of a game that came out a few years back… it had changing environments and all that… I can’t seem to remember the name though.
Anyway!
The game is interesting. It gives me a nice “Receiver”-ish feel.
Though I’m curious about the actual effects of the environment.
Are you thinking of making them timed in any way?
Like after a few seconds the world switches on its own or is it entirely up to the player(s)?
I’d love to see some guy above me running across a bridge and then see him fall because I took away his support!
Though that seems a bit unfair to him.
How exactly will you balance the game between players so things like above won’t happen?
Very interesting idea! I was experimenting with a map for UT(4?), which I’ve back burnered for a while that was similar in functionality to this, but not to this extent. I love the idea of dynamic combat maps that are constantly changing throughout gameplay so each game will never be the same twice. Perhaps after nearly a decade of shooters with static maps, we might actually see some good shooters that are fully dynamic Wink wink. I wish you the best of luck on your project, and I will surely keep my eye on at as it totally looks like something I could enjoy!
Hi Jason, we do have a lot of ideas on what we could do to control the switches - some different per game mode. Someone pitched the idea of having a “floor is lava” kind of idea making the entire game completely mid-air which could be a lot of fun! We’ll give that a try very very soon!
Yesterday we had a playtest where we added a rocketlauncher that would switch away objects in the blast radius (and does no damage to players) this meant structures could be broken down by shooting rockets the the bottom structures, causing a cascading effect which was pretty cool to see (and a player falling from his “safe” place as a result :P) One of the things we introduced to reduce the cascading effect is “permanent switches” these are the blackened tiles in the level and can no longer be removed from the environment. We still have some balancing to do on how many one player can turn permanent etc. We’ll have to figure that out during playtesting.
And thanks! Yes, Receiver had some interesting concepts going for it - definitely an interesting albeit unfinished feeling game
Thank you! I’ve always like the idea of having dynamic events and obstacles in levels. You see this more often in new FPS games (things like trains passing by as temporary obstable in BF4 or just making a lot of noise - temporarily blocking out any footsteps etc. for nearby players giving you a to rush up) and we’re pushing this with Switch.
Fantastic job so far ! I love the ‘Build on the Fly’ method you are using for your levels. Be sure to keep us updated as your progress along in the development of your project. I will be watching this thread with anticipation. Keep up the awesome work!
Did a quick test using Custom Depth (so many uses! ;)) to get x-ray working on a wall (and floor tile) we might be using this in the future. This was purely to make sure it could be done.
In case people would like to know how to replicate something like this:
The wall material is set to transparent (with opacity=1) so I can sample the SceneDepth and CustomDepth values. The playerpawn’s third person mesh is set to draw into Custom Depth buffer. I divide both depth values by a big number (as param to tweak the fall-off into white) and clamp the custom depth to 0 or 1 by using an If-node that checks if anything was drawn into the buffer at all (so higher than the largest possible depth value) the SceneDepth is simply added on (and clamped to 1) to the other value to add a nice fall-off.
Gorgeous environment!This may sound strange to some people but this is one of my favorite stuff i’ve seen so far build with UE4.
On the side note maybe you need to distinguish it a bit from Tron, it’s way too similar imho.Maybe mixing it with some some organic looking abstract shapes, even if they’re only in the background will help i think.
Hi - thanks! That image is a screencap from in-editor with some post-effects as a moodpaint (this was done a while ago before we had an backdrop in the game) and we’ve been hearing Tron reference a lot, and it’s definitely something we would like to get away from and turn it into a unique style that stands on its own. It’s something we will have more updates on in the near future and also something we want to continue to develop while straightening out the gameplay.
In-editor shot of a TDM level we’re working on at the moment. We’re experimenting with adding some additional solid pieces on match start to break line of sight and primarily focusing on getting the switch interaction as fluid as possible even while engaged in combat.
