“Space Lanes” is a Prototype game I have been working on to learn UE4’s Blueprint system, it’s far from being in any kind of real playable state, right now I just have a lot of the flight model work done, and noodled to death. Right now it work with both Mouse and Keyboard, and the Xbox 360 Controller. The Controls (for me anyway) play best on the Xbox Controller. I apologize that these videos tend to be kinda long.
Also Disclaimer, all the Art here is “Programmer Art” and not final, just art that I quickly put together so I would have something not stock to work with.
Eventually I plan to have a network of “Space Lanes” that connect the various points of interest in the Map where you go back and fourth from doing quests, like delivering packages, or clearing out Alien infestations, and battling Space Pirates. You play as a Down on your luck Space Trucker who in order to save his company must take back the Space Lanes from the clutches of the Rival Shipping Companies who are now controlled by various Pirate gangs who use them as legitimate fronts for their activities. Eventually I plan on giving it a Stylized 30’s Pulp Rag type vibe to it. Game play will hearken back to games like Decent, but also have a bit of a GTA vibe to it, as well as games like Full Throttle.
All the music and sound effects are temporary and came with the engine, and sample content,
I also wanted to say Thank you to all who have been posting tutorials and help on Youtube, here on the forums, and other locations I would not be even at this humble state without that immensely valuable resource. Again thanks.
Here are some other videos from earlier points in time in the process.
This looks really interesting!
I really like the style of your track system. It has long areas and shorter, winding areas. It would be neat if when traveling around the map you could catch some speed like in this video of F-Zero GX:
At one point very early on this was conceived as more of a racing game, and it still might work out that way, however right now the idea is that each place you visit is connected by these tunnels, which you have to travel through at high speeds, but once you get to where you are going, the game changes a bit to fit the particular type of quest/mission you are one. So for example, you might end up in a giant warehouse fighting Alien bugs, either from your ship, or on foot. So yeah I am thinking of having either sections of track that gives you a boost, or drops from killing space pirates that do the same.
Right now, my biggist issue is trying to get the BP splines to work with things like lights, and particles, as well as the mesh’s. What I would really love is to have instead of a Spline Mesh, have a Spline BP, so I can switch between all manner of BP setups as the track goes along. That would be ideal I think, but I have no idea yet how that would be constructed based on what I currently have available to me. I’m hoping that someone will be able to help me work that out by pointing me in the right direction.
Just a little update, changed out the ship being used for one I built in the mid 2000’s for offline rendering, The Materials aren’t set up really, so I just made it a Two Tone. This isn’t a design meant for this game, but it has a lot more detail than the previous mesh, so I thought it might be more interesting. It’s between 50-60k poly’s pre-triangulation.
Fantastic job so far Bookman. As Gigantoad has stated, I believe that being able to offer a third or first person view would be an awesome feature to have in this game. Keep up the great work and hope to see more in the future!
A first person view is planned, I just haven’t gotten around to mocking up a cockpit yet.
by the way here is another small update, a freind of mine insisted that I make the rocks easier to destroy, and I took a few moments to apply more materials to the ship so it didn’t look quite so odd.
Does anyone know of a good resource to help me out getting my BP spline track system more flexible?
I want to be able to add lights and particles, as well as additional track pieces both specifically and randomly as you travel along.
I don’t want to have to place each light manually, I want to create BPs that have all the lights and particles set up for that particular track segment, and randomly distribute them along the spline, as well add other random elements like obstacles.
However as far as I can tell I can’t see a way to do this yet based on what limited information I actually know about the BP spline tools. I am hoping that I am wrong, and my own ignorance is preventing me from making progress on this front.
