Advanced Turn Based Tile Toolkit [Submitted - Large Images]

Community Marketplace
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EDIT: The toolkit has been released! I’ve started a new thread here.

Finally the blueprint I’ve been working on for the last few months is on the Trello voting boards: Advanced Turn Based Tile Toolkit!

My aim is to make it the best starting point possible for making your own turn based strategy games in Unreal Engine. If you’re planning to make the next XCOM, King’s Bounty or Final Fantasy Tactics I hope this blueprint will give you all the basic tools you need and save you months of development time. I’ve spent countless nights working on this blueprint and am planning to add several more features after the initial release, available as free updates.

This is a game genre that I’m passionate about, and I want to see lots of great turn based strategy games be made in UE4 in the coming years. To explain the blueprint in more detail, here is the description from the marketplace Trello:

"*This blueprint provides all the basic components needed to start making your own turn based strategy game. The grid based path finding algorithm includes options for variable movement cost and diagonal movement, and runs fast even on large grids. The system supports both square and hexagonal grids.

Top down camera controls are included for rotation, panning and zooming as well as smooth pawn movement using splines. Levels can be built directly in the UE4 viewport, where you can easily add your own meshes and drag and drop levels in minutes.

Basic artificial intelligence is provided, giving computer controlled pawns the ability to navigate grid maps and attack enemy units. Customize pawns by changing their speed, damage, range, AI presets and more. A visibility system using traces lets you determine what tiles a pawn can see and which it can attack from its current position.

All grid math is calculated independent of any meshes, making you free to display levels however you want. Everything is done in blueprints, making customizing the system possible even for non-programmers.*"

If this is something you would like to see on the marketplace, please throw me a vote on the Trello boards here. Ask any questions you may have below and I’ll try to answer them as soon as I’m able.

New tutorial videos:

UE4 - Advanced Turn Based Tile Toolkit Tutorial - 1 - Setup:

UE4 - Advanced Turn Based Tile Toolkit Tutorial Two (Return of the Ts) - Customizing the grid:

Video of the blueprint in action:

Screenshots:
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If you want to see some of the steps I took in making the blueprint look through my old Work in Progress thread. Now that the blueprint is on the Trello I’ll be posting future updates in this thread.

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EDIT: The stuff I mention in the following post has been added since I wrote it

Here’s some of the stuff I’m currently working on. None of this is guaranteed to be in the initial release, though in that case I’ll try to add it shortly after release.

Movement costs on node edges:

This allows for new ways to customize terrain costs more precisely. One of the biggest uses is having thin walls between tiles, which is demonstrated in the video below:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=S0kfUxpmS5c

Height Differences:

Allows the pathfinding algorithm to work on non-flat grids. In conjunction with movement costs on edges this could create dynamic movement costs based on elevation. The video below shows my current height implementation which does not use height information to modify movement costs:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JDxGG2z2LWM

Prettying things up:

My modeling and texturing skills aren’t that great (though I’m working on it :slight_smile: ). I still hope to include a demonstration scene that’s a bit more visually appealing than my current low-poly hex island. Here’s a video demonstrating how the system might look if it makes slightly more use of UE4’s graphical power. This video uses assets from the Couch Knights demo and will therefore not be included in the release:

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Just voted! Really want this :smiley:

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This would be great for my maze game.
You got my vote :slight_smile:

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Voted … **** fine job. Looking forward to this one. 8-}

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Looking good, +1! :slight_smile:

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This is awesome! I would definitely get this.

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Looks good!

You can use assets from Epic in your marketplace products. You just can’t use assets from other sellers though.

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Thanks for the kind words, everyone :slight_smile:

@ order66: I thought so as well, and I included the last video posted above in the initial marketplace submission. I was told that I couldn’t use that video because I used assets from the Couch Knight demo, and that the only assets I could include from Epic were the ones in the starter content (their answer was a bit unclear, but that’s how I understood it). My submission was significantly delayed because of this, and I agree With you that Epic’s guidlines seem to suggest that assets from the free samples are fair game. They should probably update the submission guidlines to clarify.

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Waiting for this too !
But what will be the price ?

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Bravo! :wink: This will save me a lot of time I’d rather spend in other aspects of my game, I’m definitely going to buy this.

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Ok, I’ve added a new feature! I’m pleased with how level creation directly in the viewport currently works in my system. However, placing lots of separate actors in the scene can have a pretty big impact on performance for large maps. Because of this I’d assumed that you’d have to use some sort of procedural level generation blueprint using instanced meshes for larger maps. However, I never found needing two different level creation systems to be entirely satisfactory, so I’ve added a way to convert static meshes from actors into instanced static meshes in the viewport using construction scripts. The performance increase is substantial, and everything works seamlessly. Instanced meshes can also be converted back to actors if you want to make changes to the scene.

Below is a video demonstrating this new feature in action (pay attention to the fps counter and jump just short of a minute into the video if you’re impatient :slight_smile: )

Good to hear! It will priced close to similar items on the Unity Marketplace.

Yeah, I’m hoping it will be a real time saver for a lot of people. I was hoping someone else would make something like this when I started out using UE4, and I only begun making grid based pathfinding because no one else seemed to be at the time. I’m glad I did now, though, as I learned a ton :slight_smile:

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Looks like you are almost there Monokkel - It was just added to QA/Legal/etc.

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Nice … looking forward to this one. 8-}

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Huh, well how about that. Seems like all cards with twenty or more votes skipped the line. Still haven’t heard from Epic, though, and with the number of cards In Process I can imagine it will still take a while before they have the time to review it. I’ll take this as my cue to stop adding new features for a while and focus on polishing and commenting what I’ve got.

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Seems like a good idea. Looking forward to buying this :slight_smile:

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Getting very close to release now, and I’m making sure that everything is intuitive to set up and understand for new users. Setting up the blueprint in a new project is now as easy as dragging the grid blueprint onto the viewport, selecting and placing your meshes and that’s it :slight_smile: Below is a video showing the result of adding it to the realistic rendering demo. I think that adding a turn based strategy game as a board minigame within a larger game might be a fun diversion for players, and this video shows one possible way of achieving this :slight_smile:

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lol, that is pretty sweet. Reminds me back when I played second life you could play board games within the game like that.

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@Monnokel: I have “scripters” chomping at the bit waiting for this. The team has basically changed the direction of the game just to use this pack of yours … we can’t wait. 8-}