Hey All! Working on my MFA in UE4

[jackhalfaprayer]

Good to meet you, fellow devs!

I’m working on my MFA in Digital Production Arts. Come from a fine arts/animation background and have always wanted to make games. Been learning cpp as well as ZBrush and UE4 the last 2.5 years or so. Finally onto my first indie game project. It’s gunna be a top-down shooter/2D platformer hybrid, kinda like Blaster Master on the NES back in the day.

Any advice on pawn/char swapping and game mode swapping is most welcome:)

Will trade art help for programming help.

My Artstation

[ConradG]

For switching between characters, you’ll want to handle input logic in the controller class so you can posses and unposses the specific character after spawning.

Good luck with your project. Nice artstation.

[UnrealEnterprise]

Your biggest challenge will be deciding whether or not to merge code from multiple characters / use inheritance. It may not be clear at first though (so just build quick prototypes). Historically Unreal Engine hasn’t been very helpful at helping devs migrate code between different classes such as different Marketplace character packs. So overall, if you can switch character classes without integrating everything into one, it should be easier. As regarding gamemode, its the reverse. If you can combine everything into one, things will be simpler…

[jackhalfaprayer]

@ConradG

For switching between characters, you’ll want to handle input logic in the controller class so you can posses and unposses the specific character after spawning.

Good luck with your project. Nice artstation.

Okay, cool! Will look into this. Thanks

[jackhalfaprayer]

@UnrealEnterprise

Your biggest challenge will be deciding whether or not to merge code from multiple characters / use inheritance. It may not be clear at first though (so just build quick prototypes). Historically Unreal Engine hasn’t been very helpful at helping devs migrate code between different classes such as different Marketplace character packs. So overall, if you can switch character classes without integrating everything into one, it should be easier. As regarding gamemode, its the reverse. If you can combine everything into one, things will be simpler…

Prototyping this week:) I think I have an idea that may work, keeping the side scroller separate via quick loading levels/maps. I will need the top-down shooter bit to eject a little dude that can run along the ground, thinking this will be heirarchy/socket. Then this little dude can trigger a side-scroller map to load. I’ll need to produce some sort of transition if I go this way.

Heard, re: game mode, this is an area I don’t know much about yet. Appreciate the input!