[WIP] Project Frequency | Open World Survival Horror

[BioXide]

[FONT=Microsoft Sans Serif]Greetings!

This is a game I’m currently porting from Unity to UE4 to continue it’s development all the way till full release. The Unity version was made by myself except the 3d models, I did all the programming, conceptualization, level design, rigging, animating, etc, lol. It started off as a learning project to familiarize myself with programming in general with Java/C#, eventually once I started uploading videos showing the progress, people got interested, spent half a year and managed to launch a public pre-alpha. Presented game in a student project event at my college, everyone loved it, the staff paid my ticket to present the game in a game expo booth, had lots of people, presented in mainstage, multiple youtubers & pewdiepie played the game. After all that, I decided to go serious on the game, switched from Unity to the all-might UE4. That’s where this adventure starts!

What’s Project Frequency? [WIP]
Project Frequency is an Open World Survival HORROR, Co-op FPS (So much genres). Set on a post-apocalyptic scenario which doesn’t include zombies or an infection, hell/the purgatory/limbo/astral planes (whatever you believe in) has managed to infiltrate the internet and every network due to some frequency manipulations, they slowly started manifesting through technological devices, disrupting it’s behavior and emitting bizzare frequency sounds. Anyone exposed to these vibrations slowly becomes insane and unpredictable, some lash out in violent attacks, others resort to suicide and self-mutilation, they tend to have strong audiovisual hallucinations. Story unfinished atm, most likely to be explained ingame.

Features: [WIP]

• Non linear open world gameplay
• Multiplayer support up to 4 players or more
• Prioritizes horror, actual psychological horror and strong use of the atmosphere to provide the chills
• Visceral, fast and brutal combat with enough depth
• Old school games difficulty (limited ammo, lots of recoil on guns, limited saves, no handholding)
• And much more!

UNITY VERSION
Game Jolt - Share your creations…-horror/35966/

Project Frequency - Survive Gameplay

Unreal Engine 4:
Now that you know a bit about the game, 's what you wanted to see, UE4’s progress!

I’ve implemented so far (C++ and replicated with over 4 players)

• Sprinting
• Crouching
• Jogging
• The basic “template” to program everything for LOCAL/SERVER/CLIENT, all functions have to be repeated 3 times for them to work under all netmodes (Even in single player the game is built around networking)
• All the player stats replicated (Health/Stamina/Hunger/Thirst/Sanity)
• Basic RInterpTo melee system with physics (For now, till I get the player animations so I can switch it over to animnotify)
• 3rd Person mesh that the owner can’t see, with animations and blendspaces working

's a video of a quick playtest I did to see if all movement controls worked perfectly in a 4 player simulated environment.

- YouTube

's a pic of the stats working (Still unfinished, gotta sleep!)

's a snip of the sprint code so you guys can see how tedious the process is, I’m still a newb at C++ but it works and it’s similar to what the ShooterGame uses

Once I have my controls/stats working seamlessly, then I can focus on the interaction/combat and AI, that’s all for now, I’ll be posting progress as I move deeper in development, I love this engine!

• BioXide

[BioXide]

A bit slow on the progress but 's the newest update, I’ve managed to play multiplayer with 2 people on my PC. All variables (Health, Stamina, Hunger, Thirst, Sanity) are replicated and sync perfectly between all players, also all the functions that each player has works perfectly. I haven’t added finished the animations/aimoffsets so you can’t see where they’re aiming at or when they’re crouching. You can also apply damage through network, as demostrated by the fire blueprint, next thing on the todo list would be finishing the anim blueprint, add the aim offsets and work on the weapon behavior class, which all weapons will inherit from, providing a modular weapon system that’s fully customizable and flexible.

's the progress vid, any questions related to networking in C++ or anything in particular hit me up!

Forgot to say that the art team is hard at work and hopefully pretty soon we can start swapping the default unreal assets!

- YouTube

[BioXide]

Strayed off from the task board to implement a FreeAim system which resembles Insurgency/Red Orchestra’s gun feel, gunshots originate from the FireSocket attached to the gun’s tip instead of the cam’s position(0,0,0) (Special thanks to community member Ausiemandias for helping me out!)

- YouTube

And 's the code snippet/implementation for those who’re interested!

The way that I made it probably is not the most optimized method but it works for now

After declaring the functions/variables we implement them the same way we implement the pitch/yaw input.

We’re feeding the mouse input directly to the function, then we create an FRotator and add the Value(mouse input) to the corresponding angle, in this case, we need Yaw and Pitch.

We multiply it by the freeAimMultiplier, which lets us adjust how fast/slow we want the sway to happen, on the pitch we make the freeaim negative so it doesn’t become inverted.

After that, we go to the player’s blueprint and make a function to apply the clamp (For some reason I did this exact code on C++ and it didn’t work out, so I just made it on blueprints), then we call the function on the Tick.

And it should work perfectly, not the best system but it’s great for a first try, will try to optimize later on so I don’t have a Tick constantly checking to clamp my angles. Next thing in line would be to make the weaponbehavior system (trace system, enums for different types of “weapons” such as projectiles, single trace, multitrace, ammo, etc)

[BioXide]

It’s been a while since I posted an update, I’m working on the weapons/inventory system and I didn’t think it would take quite some time to finish. To add ontop of that, I left the team that was working with me on Project Frequency, which means that I’m by myself for now. I plan on throwing the kickstarter campaign soon to generate some $$$ and buy the assets that I need from the marketplace/freelancers. Anyways, 's some new pics!

[anonymous_user_daf42e8f1 (anonymous_user_daf42e8f)]

Surprised no one has commented on this.

This looks great and you’ve made a lot of progress in such a short time considering you’re a 1 man team. I wish you luck! I’ll definitely be following this project.

[anonymous_user_cbdc83411 (anonymous_user_cbdc8341)]

thanks for sharing

[Bee_M]

it looks great, the movements of the unity version were pretty cool, all u need is to get it all together! cant wait to see more

[BioXide]

Thanks for the replies! Much appreciated

's some updates:

I’ve been working on a beast monster in Zbrush, I don’t know what it is or what to call it, but it’s scary and I like it, I just let my brush take me where it wishes. I’ve already figured out how to generate the UVs in Zbrush and how to project all the details from the high poly version to the low-poly one which will be used for the game. Keep in mind I’m not an artist and I just picked up Zbrush a couple of months ago :P.

While working on it, I decided to do a quick test and did a simple retopology on the beast, which dropped the poly count to 10k and exported it to 3ds Max, to my surprise, everything went smooth, I proceeded to make the rig and apply it to the skin of the mesh.

The skin weights that are painted by default were slightly correct, so I have to tweak them till I get the deformations right. Probably I need to re-export the new mesh with added edge loops on the joint areas to provide even better deformations.

Also I did some basic animations for the knife weapon which work on UE4, but I’m still figuring out how to make everything work smoothly with the animation blueprints.

Doing a camera headbob system in C++, working fine for client/server, but I gotta keep tweaking the values so it resembles a walk cycle, instead of tremors going on haha

And finally, last set of pictures, I was having some fun with the PvP system of the game, you can attack with the knife and rifle, which removes health from players/enemies, working on client/server. There will be PvP in the earliest build possible but it’s not encouraged, you can accidentally damage or even kill your comrades, but that’s just gonna make your sanity skyrocket and make you prone to hauntings (Visualauditory hallucinations and other “debuffs”).

That’s all for today, I’ll be focusing mostly on trying to get a small playable build running to make a teaser for my Kickstarter campaign, which is being worked on, if the Kickstarter gets funded, I’ll have the opportunity to hire a team or pay freelancers do to all the art/animation related work for me, so I can focus strictly on programming and building the game, shortening the development time by quite a lot.

[BioXide]

Lots of pictures incoming! Wall of Pics!

Finally could get the UVs working, I managed to export the monster model to 3ds max and Unreal Engine 4, keep in mind the textures are a bit broken, the monster still needs lots of work from sculpting, texturing and rigging.
But it makes me happy to see it enter UE4 in a somewhat finished state, this is coming from someone who’s concentration is programming, so art is not my thing at all haha.

By the way, the map you see on the UE4 pics is basically the starting area from Silent Hill 2, I’ll be somewhat recreating the start of the game and adding old school references to the game, you’ll eventually explore the Resident Evil 1 mansion and the Silent Hill hospital, some small nostalgia additions to make old school horror fans happy smile.

[TechLord]

Hi BioXide. I’m a huge fan of FPS Games and I like the Story Concept. The Monstrous Flea looks great!

Using Melee Weapons in First Person can be a challenge, do you have any special plans for it?

[BioXide]

@TechLord;227947

Hi BioXide. I’m a huge fan of FPS Games and I like the Story Concept. The Monstrous Flea looks great!

Using Melee Weapons in First Person can be a challenge, do you have any special plans for it?

Thanks!

Special plans as in what? The implementation of the code or the balancing aspect (gameplay)?

[TechLord]

@BioXide;227951

Thanks!

Special plans as in what? The implementation of the code or the balancing aspect (gameplay)?

My apologies for the vagueness. We’re discussing Melee weapon Implementation over . I’m curious as to what technique you’re using to implement melee weapon collision and damage. The raytracing technique appears to be popular. My plan is to use the same system for projectile weapons.

[BioXide]

@TechLord;227982

My apologies for the vagueness. We’re discussing Melee weapon Implementation over . I’m curious as to what technique you’re using to implement melee weapon collision and damage. The raytracing technique appears to be popular. My plan is to use the same system for projectile weapons.

I press Fire, checks what weapon type it is, if it’s melee, play animation and start a timer to delay the actual trace using the attack animation’s current time, in my case, the delay is coming from the struct holding all weapon info, which is 0.56, once it runs the function, it traces from the weapon location to forward vector. I can make it better by using a spherecast or bone-to-bone trace, but I still haven’t figured that out yet.

[TechLord]

@BioXide;227995

I press Fire, checks what weapon type it is, if it’s melee, play animation and start a timer to delay the actual trace using the attack animation’s current time, in my case, the delay is coming from the struct holding all weapon info, which is 0.56, once it runs the function, it traces from the weapon location to forward vector. I can make it better by using a spherecast or bone-to-bone trace, but I still haven’t figured that out yet.

Sounds groovy, you’re way further ahead in the R & D then myself and have more flexibility with C++. I find it interesting that you’re using the fire weapon code. My plan is to do similar, swapping out the gun mesh/animation entirely for a melee weapon mesh, emitting faster/shorter projectiles from the handle. At this point, all theory.

I like the whole idea about demons and the infinite number of directions one can go in with that theme. I’m keeping my eye on this one.

[BioXide]

@TechLord;228079

Sounds groovy, you’re way further ahead in the R & D then myself and have more flexibility with C++. I find it interesting that you’re using the fire weapon code. My plan is to do similar, swapping out the gun mesh/animation entirely for a melee weapon mesh, emitting faster/shorter projectiles from the handle. At this point, all theory.

I like the whole idea about demons and the infinite number of directions one can go in with that theme. I’m keeping my eye on this one.

I built a modular weapon systen which can hold different weapon types, but they’re all called from the same function, I use the struct to set all the different values between weapons. For me this is really efficient for whenever I wish to add new weapons or tweak existing ones.

Thanks! The current UE4 project doesn’t look great at the moment since I’m fleshing out the core of the game, but it will pick up once it’s on the Kickstarter phase.

[BioXide]

Implemented an ironsight mode for guns which is pretty easy to tweak and implement on new weapons and added a recoil system that implements random kick patterns in X/Y

Will be working with the implementation of a basic HUD displaying the player’s stats using the GUI style from the Unity version (Converting the values to display messages instead of the actual number being displayed)

[BioXide]

Animated the monster with a basic yet terrible walk cycle and now he can chase down our players, still haven’t done the class which will hold all AI info but it’s good to see that a simple pawn sensing component brings life to the thing.

[BioXide]

Did a small update video to update the fans in Youtube.

Project Frequency - First look at the Unreal Engine 4 version

[BioXide]

After days of gruesome trial and errors, I decided to put pause on the network side of the game and just focus strictly on singleplayer till I get a stable build which I can then work slowly to implement the networked features. So I decided to do probably one of the hardest things, the actual inventory system. Deciding how to actually implement it was the hardest part of this, should I use a subclass to represent the array? or just a regular pointer instance? I went with the pointer instance approach.

Basically all items are generated from the same class, which was made with a modular approach. Everything is provided to make the item when you inherit from the class, you choose the item type, and depending on the type, the UseItem function works differently. The inventory array (which is a pointer instance) takes only Items, but then how do you link a C++ array to a UMG button array?

I managed to link both arrays to work together, now all it needs is the logic in C++.

And finally, bought the zombie character from the marketplace using the money epic gave us for being subs, he already chases our player down, still gotta do the anim blueprint and then the AI class which both monsters will inherit from. Development is going at a steady pace now :D.

[TechLord]

Hey BioXide, looking real good. Any projectile weapons for monsters?