MARAUDER-S

[bPatrik]

Hello UE Devs,

Let me show you what I’m working on for a few months now. It’s a game project where you control a ~3 floors high robot with devastating weapons, like plasma beam as main weapon, energy blast, poison gas and may be others later.
If you are destroying the cities and the population, first the police, later the army will come and try to kill you. You have huge power but it will be a challenge to stay alive.
I try to make the game fun but believable, I also want to use as much of UE’s destruction features in the game world as possible. I’ve already experimented with many things. I have prototype of destructible buildings, sliceable lamp posts, the trees can be burnt down or “poisoned” with the gas, cars can be blown up and humans can be splashed into bloodstains.
I’m learning UE with this project in my free time. I really like working on it, but I’m not a professional. I just had some modding experience with CryEngine 3. I don’t want to promise 100 things, I have many ideas but I want to keep it simple and finish it with the minimal I can be satisfied with. After that I can still expand it… So please take a look at the early prototype and if you have any comments, feel free to share it.

Everything is WIP, especially the robot itself. The game’s name is also temporary.

Destroy All Life (dev. name) - Game Development Teaser | 09 28 2024

Check previous updates and more info here:
Destroy All Life (wip name) Windows game - IndieDB
Destroy All Life (wip name) by KillingSpreeHUN (itch.io)

Do you like my project, progress?

• Interesting idea
• Good start
• Boring
• Lame
• What’s the point of it?
• It could be good but it’s not
• I love it!
• Other, i tell you in comments

[slam.js]

Cool idea, also would be great to shoot something explosive and to destoy things by walking into them

[PresumptivePanda]

Hi there @bPatrik,

Hope you’re well and having a wonderful week so far

As soon as I read " plasma laser" I just had to run to the video to check it out. I’m happy to say that the trailer was even better than my imagination. It looks impactful and just fun. I hope we get to see updates for this soon!

[bPatrik]

Update 11.08.2024 – 0.0006

This update brings some visual and sound improvements regarding your weapons, surroundings and some other small but important features, like the Plasma beam can’t shoot forever now. It uses energy, marked by a temporary bar. I was also thinking if it should use the same energy bar as the one for the shield but I step away from this idea, at least for now I felt better this way. Shield have its own. I’m also experimenting with other more complex materials/effects, UI elements, I’ve also started the remake of the Walker model but it’s not worth to show just yet. Check the full notes and the short summary video below:

Walker
• Added – Plasma beam now uses energy, so you can’t use it infinitely now, but it recharges quickly.
• Added – Plasma beam spawns burnt impact decal on ground and objects at every X distance.

Changed - Shield
o Changed texture again
o Material is now more dynamic (dynamic UV tiling between 0,8-1x size)
o Added Shield distortion effect

Changed - Energy blast weapon
o It shares energy usage with Plasma beam
o Added charging before you can shoot
Distortion effect
SFXs
Impact decal

Tree
• Added – Falling leaves when the tree is poisoned
• Added – Falling burning/glowing particles when the tree is burning

UI
• Changed – Default cursor hidden (custom stays)
• Added –Plasma beam energy bar

Destroy All Life (wip name) - 08.11.2024 dev. update

[bPatrik]

Update 01.05.2025 – 0.0007

A new year started with new opportunities and plenty of work ahead! I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year! I bring you today a mini update with a little extra.

This time the weapons got a little care. Check out the short video. It tells you more than what I write.

Walker

• Changed – Plasma beam’s burnt decal now also glows for 0.2 second.
• Energy blast weapon
  • new explosion effect (from simple grenade like explosion)
  • updated charging effect (with glowing blue shapes inside the distortion effect)

Destroy All Life (dev. name) - 05.01.2025 dev. update

Today’s extra… Experiments, research

• Dissolve material

Probably by looking at it, it looks more than what it is, but its “just” a material. Flaming edges melting the surroundings. It would look cool for large explosions of special weapons or for some kind of a wormhole, but currently it has its flaws.

Implementing it as something useful in game, requires a lot of effort. First of all, as I said it’s a material. There are no physics behind it. If you check the video carefully, the “melted” cars don’t fall when they only have 2 wheels left. Characters can’t walk through the missing part, etc. But it could be solved probably, with UE5’s Booleans (search on YouTube). Other than that, it requires every single material to be modified. I had to add a group of nodes and modify the type of the material on all 11 materials of this simple car model. I also had to change the windows from transparent to opaque for this test. Last but not least, it needs more detailed models. I mean, if you cut a car in halve, it looks bad if the engine is missing for example. I didn’t need to model it until I didn’t cut the car. May be there are other difficulties too, but it’s already a lot. So, no promises that this will make it into the game. May be in a limited way, or a sequel… (dreams…)

• Walker remodeling and research.

I feel like it’s really important for the game to have a nice model for the walker with proper animations. I want to do the best I can with my current skills and with the help of some tutorials. That’s why I started thinking on what main parts, what systems the walker would need in reality, I started my little research with some of these parts. For example, the main weapon, the Plasma beam. For some it may seem silly, but for me it wasn’t even obvious if I should call it Laser beam, Plasma beam, Energy beam, Ion beam, Photon beam, etc.

Well, I didn’t pay deep attention to the differences between these earlier. After that I’ve checked some real-life examples, researches. Of course they don’t look anything like in the game, but there are medical and other use cases, experiments for plasma generators, plasma beams. I’ve checked what it looks like, how it could look on the walker. So now, I’m modeling these parts and then merging them all into one great walker.

(img sources: semanticscholar.org; researchgate.net)

[bPatrik]

Update 24.04.2025 – 0.0008

(Note: Things added or changed in this update, don’t necessarily mean they will not be updated later or completely removed, replaced)

I’ll let you get straight to the point, the update video. After that you can read more about the details:

Marauder 24.04.2025 dev. update

I’m proud to present to you the next big update after a long time for Destroy All Life, which is now,

MARAUDER-S

…it might still get a tag, sub-heading or something later. I think this name defines well the unit you will control. It is in connection with some yet to be implemented functions and also refers to a real-life experiment (it might need some googling to find).

The largest and most obvious new thing is in the update besides the name, is the completely new MARAUDER-S (or MR-S for short) model and movement.

It came a long way in terms of both modeling and getting a working dynamic Control Rig based movement setup. Well to be fair it took so much because Control Rig was completely new for me and I still have to practice Blender a lot. Also, as I wrote earlier, I was doing my research and getting ideas for the design. It’s still not final, but I have more ideas now that still need to be implemented.

From now on I expect to move on with the next things a little easier. We will see. I also want to work on some smaller things, level updates, enemies in the coming months.

Now let’s see the list of the new and changed things in today’s update:

MARAUDER-S (MR-S)

• Changed - The original placeholder mesh dumped and a completely new one was created with nice details
  • Turret
    • Added - Main weapon mesh with circling particles VFX inside
    • Added – Toroid formed VFX at the beginning of the plasma beam
• Changed - Old animations replaced with dynamic, Control Rig setup
  • Steps won’t slide anymore, movement is a lot smoother, especially at changing movement directions. Feet follow the terrain, so it can climb some stairs or hills.
  • Added - Step SFX
  • Added - Step VFX effect
  • Added - Step decal/footprint
  • Added - Walk sounds
  • Basic incremental crouch-stand stances (no limitations or anything yet)
• Shield
  • Added – Shell/bullet impact effect
• Fixed – Blast weapon explosion decal color (blueish tint removed)
• Fixed – Plasma beam aiming offset with manual patch, is now correctly calculated
• Fixed – Small optimizations

Civil car

• Added – window break VFX on damage
• Added – window break SFX on damage
• Added – Deformation when stepped on with the MR,
  • Note: It’s currently an animation. Maybe later I recreate it more dynamically, but it’s good enough for now. It worked the same way in BF3, an AAA game, so…

Human – Civil, Soldier

Small optimizations

External camera

Added – Possible to switch to other external cameras with TAB, for video recording purposes.

[PresumptivePanda]

Hey again @bPatrik,

Just wanted to pop in again and say it’s coming together beautifully. The MR-S just looks so darn cool. So glad you’ve continued sharing this project as you develop it. It’s so exciting getting to check in every now and then and see all the progress you’ve made Happy developing until next time!

[bPatrik]

Thank you! I’m glad you like it. I keep on posting

[bPatrik]

Update 09.07.2025 – 0.0009

Hello, UE devs!

A new update before my holiday is here. The most significant part is the remade and greatly upgraded grabbing system. It’s now working with the Control Rig based movement setup. It has a lot of new features and I think it just makes the game a lot more fun! It has one of the largest -if not the largest - blueprint logic graph. The Control Rig movement part also needed heavy modifications. Now I think it is worth showing, however it will still get some more fixes and upgrades later.

Besides the above, there are many little optimizations and fixes and also a few small new additions to the game. A basic main menu, SFX for cars, and some physics-related things. Now check out the update video below, and after that you can read all the details:

MARAUDER-S - 09.07.2025 dev. update

MR-S

• Fixed - Character blueprint optimizations and large-scale reorganization (to make it clearer and faster)
• Fixed – Control Rig graph optimization (Turret rotation was unnecessarily in a loop with legs)
• Added – Clamped the turret pitch between -40° and +50° so it can’t look under itself directly or straight up into the sky.
• Fixed – Line Trace under cursor will now ignore the MR-S itself. So, the turret rotation will not go crazy when the mouse is right on it.
• Fixed – Dummy damage effects, size and position (sparks, fire, explosion, flying wreck meshes). They were way too big and positioned incorrectly.
• Actor Grabbing system converted for the new ControlRig setup and updated
  • Grabbing Widget circles spawn above grabbable actors, when:
    • Ctrl key is pressed and held down
    • Actors are already in the grabbing area
    • Or getting into the area
    • They are from either car, human or barrel classes (and more later)
  • Widget circles follow the grabbable actors when they or the MR-S move
  • Widgets get removed when
    • Ctrl key is released
    • or they get out of the grabbing area
  • Grabbing Sequence - automatic
    • Step -1: Calculate the closest grabbable actor automatically. Manual selection will come later. Grabbable classes are cars, humans, barrels currently. Grabbing humans is only theoretical for now as they die instantly when they get close.
    • Step 0: Calculate which is the closest leg to the grabbable actor.
    • Sequence Step 1: While holding down the Grab button (currently V), it raises the selected leg, to prepare for the attack
    • Sequence Step 2: Attack. Moves the closest leg to the closest grabbable actor.
    • Sequence Step 3: Raise the actor with the leg.
      • You can move it around your MR-S with the mouse. Its movement is limited by a maximum and minimum distance from your MR-S’s center point (so fixed on the surface of a larger or a smaller sphere, or freely moved between the two)
      • By holding down Ctrl along with the V (grab button), you can raise your grabbed actor even higher or lower it with the mouse wheel. Min-Max height is defined.
      • If you release the grabbing button at this phase, the actor will be dropped where it is.
      • In this step while you are holding an actor you can press and hold the Left Ctrl, then use your Mouse wheel to modify how high the actor is held with the leg. The modifier has a high and low limit and a narrower for when the actor is held right above the MR-S. During this the MR-S character stance modifier (which also uses the Mouse wheel) is blocked.
    • Sequence Step 4: With a short left mouse click, it moves the raised leg a little closer to the center of the MR-S as it prepares to throw.
    • Sequence Step 5: It continues automatically, moves the leg forward and throws the picked-up actor in the direction of the cursor. The further the cursor the larger impulse added to throw. Also, the leg movement is interpolated quicker.
    • Return sequence: Leg returns to the original movement cycle path. The path is calculated even if it’s grabbing an object - just not used - but this way it can continue the walking as it should.
• Changed - Fire Plasma beam. It now requires the player to press and hold for at least 0,5 sec before it fires. Later I will add charging effect, but now it’s also needed because of the Grab sequence as it uses the same button (left mouse button), but with short click to throw the grabbed actors.
• Changed – Plasma beam SFX now loops when fired for a longer time (I will also have to modify the sound file itself as its currently noticeable where the track ends/starts)
• Added - Dummy dead position
  • Body height lowered, all movements locked (previously, nothing really happened, besides that the health bar showing 0, and a little basic VFX)
    
    

Car (Sqoda Octane) – All variants (Civil, Police, Military)

• Added – Damage is received when falling from great height or something is thrown at it. The larger the relative velocity and the mass, the larger the damage.
• Added – Optional engine sound, set individually per car. Starts at game start and stops when car is destroyed.
• Added – Optional car alarm sound, set individually per car. Starts when damage is taken and stops when car is destroyed. SFX’s pitch changes as damage is taken.
• Added – Hit/crashing sound was the same volume at any conditions. Now it depends on the damage taken. Higher damage, higher volume.
• Fixed – Blueprint optimizations, less usage of Event Tick.
• Added – Basic, Add Force based movement. If it’s enabled on a car, force is added in the direction of the closest, pre-placed waypoint. When the waypoint reached it seeks for the next one until there are no more on the level. The car can be destroyed, pushed, grabbed, etc during its movement. It will stop following the path above a minimum damage threshold.
  
  

Police car

Siren SFX added. Stops when car is heavily damaged or destroyed. SFX’s pitch changes as damage is taken.

Human – Both civil and Soldier

Fixed – Blueprint optimizations. Unnecessary Event tick usage is removed.

Barrel

• Changed – Physics related parameters.
• Added - Damage is received when falling from great height or something is thrown at it. The larger the relative velocity is and the mass, the larger the damage.

Heroes Square

• Changed - ■■■■■-like statues to soldier statues
• Fixed – Collision problems
• Fixed – Destruction has received a small fix

Container Turret

Fixed – Several blueprint errors

Bush

Fixed – Blueprint errors

Human Exit Point (waypoint where civils are running to)

Fixed – Exit point’s collision is now turned off.

Human Walk To Point (waypoint where civils are walking to when they’re chilled)

Fixed – Walk To Point’s collision is now turned off.

Level1

Changed – level temperature color. It’s not so warm and yellowish now.

UI

• Basic main menu added
  • Can be opened with button 0 (temporarily, as ESC also quits the UE5 Editor’s viewport)
    • Pauses the game, while its open
  • Reload level button
  • Select overall graphics settings (low, medium, high, ultra, cinematic)
    • It also displayst the current setting
  • Quit game button

General

• Game updated to UE 5.6.0 – latest engine release
• A standalone test build was created. Looks fine so far, even on an older Surface laptop.

[willthoven]

This looks so good! I get some Destroy All Humans vibes but without the satire or goofiness.