New Game-dev. Holding myself accountable by starting an ongoing devlog. Long-term goal: Colony Ship RPG. Short-term Goal: Develop a little mini-game (gamelet) where I can walk up to a NPC. I plan on posting once a week on progress.
and start a brief conversation with some choices / replies gated by skill checks. Currently all UI is via debug streams. Eventually, I will add an actual dialogue window instead.
Devlog #2 - [Gamelet1]:grey-box colony ship RPG”
Week #2 - Steady Incremental progress.
- Added delegates and listeners for conversations (Dialogue Updated & Dialogue Ended)
- Added a rudimentary dialog window for the conversation
- Added a simple Attribute Skill Check
- Updated replies to show Skill Check Percentage Chance.
- Refactored the previously hard coded conversation using debug output into another Listener on the Dialogue Delegate(s).
- Started a rudimentary inventory system (not yet finished)
Week #3 - Finished Gamelet1.
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Finished the rudimentary Inventory system
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Created a PickupComponent to support picking inventory items off the ground and storing in inventory.
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Added Dump to Log (debugger) support to the inventory system
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Added Inventory Component to Player Character class
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Made various changes to game system to sup
port picking inventory objects off ground and putting them in the PC’s inventory
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Created a inventory cube that could be picked up off the ground and added to inventory
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Added Save / Load support to the dialogue system
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Added Save / Load support to the inventory system
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Created A Game Instance Subsystem for inventory changes to survive in the World (outside of the player character). Added my GameInstanceSubsystem to the WorldSubsystem object
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Made various changes to the rest of the game system to support save/load and to destroy objects (currently in the world) that have actually moved into the players inventory (load game state).
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Tested entire system end to end (dialogue, skill-check, pick object off ground and put in inventory, change attributes, re-test skill-checks, save/load, verify attribute changes, verify dialogue changes (based on attributes), verify inventory changes (objects get destroyed in world and end up in players inventory).
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Definitely not perfect but a good start in learning to write a game
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Accomplished main goal of Gamelet1 (rudimentary dialogue system, rudimentary inventory system, save/load world state – attributes, dialogue, inventory, etc.)
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Ready to figure out what to learn in gamelet2 and design that new gameplay and then start implementing it.
Devlog #4 - [Gamelet2]:grey-box colony ship RPG"
Note: No Image to show as Gameplay hasn’t fundamentally changed yet, still working through Game Flow State Machine design and implementation…
- Finished Gamelet1 - Rudimentary Attributes, Dialogue, Inventory, Simple save/load
- Started Gamelet2 - building on Gamelet1, improving game by adding game flow state machine
- Started by understanding how to pause, quit, save/load in UE
- Decided that I need to have a Game Instance class instead of a Game World class for supporting state outside of levels (World)
- Wrote initial ColonyGameFlowSubsystem class derived from GameInstanceSubSystem
- Designed rough Game Flow State machine (States, Triggers)
- States: MainMenu, Playing, Paused, QuitGame, etc.
- Triggers: Death (Player died), NewGame, Continue, Key, Quit, etc.
- Refined Game Flow State Machine (added Actions on Transitions)
- Actions: Pause Game, Resume Game, Save Game, Load Game, Continue (Load most recent game), etc.
- Wrote Initial State Machine as static table of Transition Rows (OldState, Trigger, NewState, Actions)
- Wrote HandleTrigger(Trigger) method using Transition Table to implement Game Flow represented by State Machine.
- Added actual pause/resume mechanics to game flow (trickier than expected)
- Realized that complicated states can fail, rewrote Game Flow to deal with failed attempts to save / load / etc.
- Refactored HandleTrigger to call RunAction() subroutine (giant switch statement) for each requested action.
- Added Save Game to game flow
- Still need to refactor LoadGame into BeingLoad, OnBeingLoaded() to keep UE constantly running.
- Still need to write several actions like MainMenu, NewGame, Continue, etc which eventually resolve to calling OpenFile(…) on the appropriate level.
- Still need to test throughly
Devlog #5 - [Gamelet2]:grey-box colony ship RPG
- Added ability to Restart and apply the save
- Continue & Load now reload the level first and then apply the save
- Broke old LoadGame into 2 pieces BeginLoad() + OnMapLoaded() to prevent breaking correct game behavior
- Added level name to SaveGame functionality
- Figured out how to Connect Claude Code to the UE Editor through the editor MCP (using port 8765). Tested the connection briefly to do a rename, a spawn, an undo, and a commit
- Tested edge cases of game flow: load with no save file is refused cleanly. Death → Continue reloads properly.
- Rewrote old ColonySave(), ColonyLoad() methods into thin wrappers around the new game flow state machine. Deleted about 100 lines of now duplicated logic in the process.
- Read through the UE engine’s damage path: ApplyDamage → TakeDamage → OnTakeAnyDamage. The engine delivers damage, and you own the health.
- Designed and wrote UColonyHealthComponent: base max HP is persisted and effective max HP is derived, and damage calculation goes in front of the component.
- Gave my main player character (ColonyPlayerCharacter) a health component, added a ColonyDamage() test command and added an OnDied listener that stops the player’s pawn’s input and movement. Initially broke the game by ignoring all input but figured out how to do it correctly eventually.
- Renamed all character getters to be more consistent, now all Get{Name}Component().
- Tested character death by calling ColonyDamage() repeatedly until dead. Verified death broadcast message and OnDied() listener stopped character input and movement.
- Added Health component to Save/Load game.
- Tested - Damage, save, load, verified HP restored. including loading after death which resulted in a living character that could move again.
- Next Week - Create a grey-box enemy that I can fight with and inflict and receive damage.
Devlog #6 - [Gamelet2]:grey-box colony ship RPG
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Learned a little about how timers work.
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Implemented my first Enemy class (AColonyEnemy)
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Not every smart, just attacks the nearest target in range, does damage through ApplyDamage, and destroys itself on death.
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Has a Health Component, attackes every 2 seconds, filters characters to only Colony targets who have a Health Component as well, only attacks the nearest target (simulating a melee attack).
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Wrote a ColonyAttack command for testing attacks on the command line
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Updated Heath reporting in debugger to name their owner for better tracking and bug fixes.
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Created a Enemy_Grey in environment that has the ColonyEnemy class and a health component. Gave him the Quinn mesh but no movement, animation, or anything else yet.
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Tested: Attacking using ColonyAttack (got to be quick), killing enemy, and being attacked (and dying). Found a couple of bugs and fixed them. Getting killed correctly pauses the game.
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Added the ColonyAttack to the left mouse button for much more rapid attacks.
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Wrote a ColonyDespawnComponent for tracking characters, enemies, inventory, etc. that are no longer in the world.
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Despawn Component has a DespwanedId and a MarkDespawned() method. Automatically generates IDs from owners name but also allows hand-typed overrides.
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Rewrote inventory system to use Despawn Components instead of the older approach.
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Rewrote Enemys (ColonyEnemy) to use Despawn components on death.
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Updated Save/Load system to save Despawned ID’s as part of World State.
- Save ID’s to save file
- Load Despawn ID’s and destroy all matching objects in the world from the world.
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Tested: Tested that saving before killing enemy and reloading brings enemy back to life. Tested that killing enemy first and then saving and then reloading results in enemy not showing up in reloaded world. Tested that picking up inventory object saving and reloading results in inventory object no longer appearing in world.
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Next Week: Writing a rudimentary game over screen on death and hopefully starting a rudimentary Menu system to avoid having to do game flow from the command line (current situation).
Devlog #7 - [Gamelet]:grey-box colony ship RPG
Short week. But here is what I got down. Going on vacation over the week-end so next week will be short work list as well.
- Updated Character Death and Enemy Death to work with the overall game flow
- Character death pauses game (Game Over state)
- Enemy death (adds enemy to despawn list and destroys enemy object)
- Logged deaths and despawns to make sure it’s working correctly
- Created ColonyGameOverWidget - has support for “Continue” and “Quit to Menu” buttons and behavior.
- Added a helper function to Get() to return ColonyGameFlowSubsystem object which is used else where in code to help track game flow.
- Added the GameOver Widget to the Player Controller as it owns the UI.
- Switches to UI input with a cursor
- New levels start with game input in the correct state
- Added new UI (UMG Layout) elements in Unreal Editor
- Canvas, Vertical Box, Slot settings, anchoring, and justification
- Added “Continue” button and “Quit to Menu” buttons
- Tested new “Game Over” dialogue
- Walked up to enemy and let them kill me
- Game pauses, “Game over” Dialog shows up, “Continue” reloads most recently saved game
- “Quit to Menu” doesn’t do much yet as we don’t have a menu system yet…
Next week - start writing a rudimentary Main Menu for the game. Rewire “Quit to Menu” in game over" dialogue to go to this menu.
Devlog #8 - [Gamelet2]:grey-box colony ship RPG
Another short week
- Implemented a main menu (new game, continue, quit) dialog
- Added a menu level
- Added a MenuWidget to my Player Controller
- Continue button is grayed out if there is no save game
- Tested functionality all works correctly with Game Flow
- Implemented a pause menu (resume, save game, load game, quit to menu)
- Added a PauseWidget to my Player Controller
- Load game is grayed out if there is no save game
- Tested functionality all works correctly with Game Flow
- Next Week
- Minor cleanup
- Final PIE testing of All Game Flow, Enemy Combat, Main Menu, Pause Menu
- Final Standalone testing (see above)
