I believe my partner may have posted this for our game Antiquis, but I’m posting it to see what you guys think. Like for comments and feed back on your ideas to add or preferences for direction to develop to. I’ve only spent about 3 days working on these mechanics, and the modular piece sets only about 5 hours. And honestly I am very dissatisfied about how underdeveloped it is. But that’s why its a WIP. So before I advance it too far, any ideas or features you’d like to see specifically in there, for those of you who love building survival games?
Dude, that’s pretty cool. I like it!
That is so awesome 
Yeah, we would definitely love to have some input on this, guys. Feel free to comment or at any of the links in the video.
This is very cool Mahelyk system looks very intresting and open for creativety and diversety.
It looks to me that it may be a bit of a lerning curve to it but thats just fun.
One thing i have to say is the UI is a bit off putting.
Don`t get me wrong i understand its a WIP, but in my own opinion the less UI the players needs to deal with the better.
Thats my 2 cents.
Keep up the great work it makes me want to strive for something better as well.
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I’ll keep that in mind. I’m considering having the two separate systems. One simple one for casual players, not many menus and easy. That’s the modular set branch. But then for the manual one, there are so many options for the advanced controls for customization there may be more. I tried with no menus, but with the amount of pieces to pick from, opening and closing inventory becomes a hassle. And for length, the shortcuts help when going from 8 ft to 2 ft and the unit of change is in inches. So I guess right now its more for me to have access to everything. I’ve considered making a better version, but the content and mechanics of the building will increase 10x, likely in ways I don’t even have plans for yet. So I guess I plan to wait until its all done to try to make the most streamlined system I can. Though it will likely be two different versions for the player to pick from.
-Mahelyk
The simpler the UI with less screen clutter the better the game will be.
Looks great! One of the things that can help players in construction is highlighting “connection points” and doing a bit of snapping to key points, like the ends or middle point of the object. Like when you place the boards, snapping to the allowed plane is already there but then you still can move it horizontally freely. My guess is that in most cases user would want to have boards next to each other so snapping them to each other as a default might make sense.
May I ask you how your system works? Do you have a pool of construction parts which you spawn as separate static meshes or all of them are attached into a single “construction” object?
I’m trying to figure out what kind of architecture is needed to achieve something like this in Unreal.
My partner is currently filming some UE4 tutorials over advanced inventory systems right now but I can answer your questions and address your snapping concerns.
Obviously certain things do snap, such as the posts to the connector nodes and the likes, but for the most part the manual building branch is meant to be freehanded. The building mechanic is very young in development and this system was built specifically to revolve around player freedom so that they can build what they like. To be more specific, this system will allow players to build chairs, tables, stairs, shelves, etc and if I’m being completely honest, other games that don’t have freedom like this feel extremely mechanical and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. If you watch the middle part of the video, there is however a blend between manual building and prebuilt so players can have perfectly made walls and then still build off of that if they wish via the connector nodes. So, I hope that my answer is satisfactory for you.
Now on to the building system:
- After the game is out, we’re putting out exactly how the system works.
- Yes, the manual building branch has static mesh BPs, but if you watched the end of the video you will see large fortifications…and those are set pieces that go through a code chain that can tell if the player has enough of the required materials and then switches out the current set piece for an upgraded one. These types of pieces are for the city building mechanic and NPCs will be interacting with them a lot so they can’t be as open as the player building system.
We’re going to try to post some more videos of the game’s progress after we get back from Pax South, so keep your eyes open. 