Dev Log #001 Echo's of Salvation

This is my first attempt at a dev log for my first university project in Unreal engine. So to start off ill catch you up on what the game is supposed to be about.

---

Game Design

The game takes inspiration from movement shooters and will be played from the first person perspective. We are taking inspiration from games like DOOM Eternal and ULTRAKILL to put movement and combat mechanics at the forefront of the gameplay.

The premise of the game is that you play as a robot built to destroy an alien covenant that has taken over the surface of the planet and forced what remains of humanity to live in floating cities above their massacred planet. The player upon spawning is fired from an incubation chamber in one of these cities onto the war torn landscape to destroy anything in its path. The robot will salvage parts from its enemies to give improved combat and movement abilities that will aid its slaughter. When the enemies overcome the player all these parts are lost and a new robot is released in place which creates a unique gameplay loop where the player can pick up the parts they lost on the body of their deceased predecessor and continue the battle.

Each battle will be designed to be a sealed arena on a larger linear map where the player must use the level design to outmanoeuvre the enemy and defeat all the waves within the current arena to progress. The player will also encounter boss battles that have unique combat which the player must understand and learn to overcome with each attempt. Upon defeating some bosses the player will be rewarded with new abilities and weapons.

I have made a game design document that is still being worked on and ill probably attack it to my next blog post.

---

Current State of The Game

So I decided to prioritise the character controller at the start of this project as I want the fluidity of the game to be top priority to create engaging movement mechanics. I've started off with some basic ground movement using a state machine that allows the player to walk, sprint, crouch, jump and slide in any direction. The sliding is going to play a big part in the movement for this game as it allows you to build up momentum on sloped surfaces which can be carried through bunny hopping. The player can also double jump to help them reach higher surfaces and will also help when I have added wall running abilities.

I have not decided which abilities the player will spawn with and which they will gain through gameplay but I think its easier to just make all of them and then restrict which ones they can use.

Currently I'm working to fix a bug in which after the player has jumped after sliding they will get stuck in the ground and need to change the movement state to be able to move again.

Here is a short video demonstrating the current state of the player controller.

That's all for this post. Sorry for the short nature of it but my idea was to make a short intro to dev logging and hopefully make this into a regular thing.