Is there a way to make a Text adventure style game with Blueprints, like a simple screen of text that can be interacted with (scroll with arrow keys)?

Development Programming & Scripting UI
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I have been trying to recreate the computer systems from the Aliens movies using UI elements, but I don’t feel that this is the correct approach.

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Hi,

If you want an actual old style rogue or pure text game you have two main ways I think :

  1. Make a HUD with just one text widget that takes all the screen. Make the text size fix and adapt the rest to the resolution. You will have to make everything in ASCII Art like in the old days and you should be able to do everything in the blueprint (but it can be a bit messy). You will pretty much have the rewrite a graphic “engine” inside UE4 because the map needs to scroll (if a rogue like) you will need to save the map (which will be pure text) and load it and more…

  2. Use as much as UE4 you can : use several text widget to not have to code your own windows manager inside UE4. Maybe instead of using pure text, use 2D tiles that are png of ASCII character so the “map” can be saved and loaded by UE4. But you will need to make things look really “consolish”, specially the scrolling of the map.

UE4 is not the best to do a full text game but it can work if you fake it with 2D tiles :wink:

I made a rogue like several month ago using C++ and no GUI, just the console to display.
I needed to write a map manager, collision manager (ASCII character are the object so they move on a 2D grid), windows manager (the map scrolls but not the text under it so they are actually two windows) and a lot more things.