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Hello Community.

This is just another “Hello. I am new and I need help getting started.”-Thread.

So. Let’s get started.

My alias is Smuf McFudel and my design history reaches back to the first Unreal Tournament game. Sadly, it ends there too.
I have created several levels for LAN gameplay but quickly moved over to design assets for levels because free geometry
design back then was buggish. With a close friend of mine I started working on some smaller Mods; from different guns with
different damage values to something more complex like a meelee-only mod, with different combo attacks depending on the
timeframe of the actual animation played, partly animated, but never coded out.

My interest in art switched to writing music, rap & vocals over classic music and gaming tunes, he continued making maps
for all kind of different games like Sacrifice, Dawn of War 2, Heroes of Might & Magic 5 and Portal 2. Today, he is into
orchestral compositions and writing stories and I am basically back at square one interest wise. That’s why I am here
and that’s enough of me.

Let’s talk games. Or to be more specific, let’s talk my game.

The concept is almost done; majority of Characters and their abilities, Level themes, Quests, Story.
I will make a Jump n Run, fake 2D (3D World, fixed camera) childrens game.

Now there are some holes to fill.

  1. The Visual Style.

I was always a fan of Cel Shading and the looks of XIII and Borderlands, but I absolutely fell in love with the look of
the stylized demo in the 4.2 release: https://www.unrealengine/blog/new-release-stylized-demo

So, can I just load up the demo, delete it’s content and create my own to create a new map?

  1. The Characters.

Due to design decissions I will not be able to work with pre-set characters, so I have to create them on my own.
That requires a software decision, so it’s either Blender, Maya LT or 3DSMax. Money is not an issue because as a student
I can get a 3-year-autodesk-license for free. Can I create and animate with each of these programs? Can UE4 animate?
Anyone willing to animate for me in exchange for the same 5% Epic gets in aproximately 1 year from today?

I want to create human like chracters with basic clothing, nothing too complex like flying coats or so but I dont want
pants and shirts look like glued to the character.

I don’t know Blender at all.
I don’t know Maya LT at all.
I knew 3DSMax (Version 3 or 4 back then) to the point where I was able to create furniture like chairs, couches or
bar-counters with drawers and cupboards.

What do you use/prefer, and why use this instead of something else?

  1. The Mechanics
    If I am informed correct, UE4 comes with a basic 3rd person character who can already walk and jump. If so, awesome.
    Some additional things I need would be the possibility to jump through something from beneath and then be able to
    stand on it, to jump back down from there through that platform to land on the one below and for now, be able to just
    grab on the platform above to climb on it.

Am I right to assume that the climbing part is something that needs to be set in the playable character while the
jump-through-stuff needs to be set in the platform object (to not collide with the groung level to fall through the
map eventually)? Can all this be done with blueprints? Has it been done with blueprints and can it be found somewhere?

  1. The Technic Behind

For clarification. This is planned as a PC Game. However, if things go smooth, why not realease on consoles and mobiles
aswell? While I understand that controls for mobiles need to be as simple as movement plus 2 action buttons at ,
I want to know if there are things I need to be aware of when building the PC Game that makes transition to other
releases easier, like; storing and accessing variables in a specific way or something like that. Or do all gamepads work
equal to the point that this game is playable with a Saitek P220 and an Xbox controller.

  1. Levels to a Game, Auto-Saving, Manual-Saving and other late-development stuff

Basically, is this late-developement stuff? Can I just make levels at this point in time without worrying about the
technical funtionality of the product? Or do things like a global coin counter or so need specific names or variable
types? Is manual saving in levels done with blueprints? Auto saving the overall game progress?

  1. Sound

Can UE4 handle .mp3 / .wav ? Does UE4 handle sounds in different (I hope it is the right word) tracks (or lanes)?
Concept is; While the level is active play audiotracks 1 and to 2. If a power up is collected (like a star in super mario)
play sound 3. If the character holds forward for more than 4 seconds play audiotracks 1, 2 and 4. If character is at
position y>300 play 1,2,5 and so on and so forth. Done with Blueprints or totally not the way it works?

  1. Random Stuff

Can I mix camera angles? Like have some maps side-scrolling and some maps top-down?

I guess thats it for now, colon, right parenthesis. Thanks in advance and most likely see you tomorrow.

Smuf McFudel from smackgd.

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  1. You could even just take out the post process effect that is doing the magic. But remember that it is so stylized also because the assets are liek that.
  2. Yes, each one works. And epic just donated blender for 10k to get better fbx support, and itegration with ue4.
  3. Yes you’re right.
  4. Don’t really think about consoles, unless you will have a big success. It’s hard to get on consoles, and it costs a lot.
  5. Yes, you actually just save all variables you need, and load them up again later when loading the saved game.
  6. Yes I think so. And yes, you can do all this. It’s just playing a sound when some condition is met.
  7. You can even change it midgame every 2 seconds if you wanted.
    Good Luck! :slight_smile:
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1–Yes, you can use the marketplace downloads to learn how to do similar things, part of a stylized look will depend on your assets as well though.
2–Those student licenses of Autodesk programs can’t be used for commercial products, if you intend to sell your game you have to get a commercial license. Also, if you plan on getting other people to help, figure out a good fee to pay them rather than a royalty percentage, you can pay them from the royalties you make after the game makes money, but don’t do just a percentage take for people.
3–Blueprints are a way to setup gameplay, it’s a visual scripting tool.
4–Most things are a graphical difference, mobile does things the most different. For controllers, it supports the Xbox controller, but probably not anything else, you’d need to add support for specific controllers yourself if you want the game to support them. That’s a more complex programming type deal.
5–You can create levels just fine, if you want things to connect between them then you have to figure out how that data gets passed between them. Saving is entirely dependent on the game, since what information needs to be saved is going to be completely different between games. The process to figure that out would be like figuring out how to save information, then how to read information, and then how to apply that information.
6–I haven’t messed with audio at all
7–Of course, you can do anything completely different from level to level.

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:stuck_out_tongue: Another moderator post (, now you also have to post something ^^)

  1. when you like to use apex for your cloth -> use 3ds or maya, because blender doesn’t have an apex plugin (you can do it with apex sdk, but it will probably cause some problems)

&list=UU5QZZ_DKXnROnELID_-oBIg

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lol…I was actually going to post first but i was too lazy to read the whole post. :stuck_out_tongue: But i agree with everything you guys said!

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Thank you.

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So, what is the difference between moderator and super moderator? :wink:

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Nothing ^^ -> they just “forgot” to change it for every mod :stuck_out_tongue:

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That means they’re a really great moderator

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Yeah, there is no difference.