UE5 Soulslike

This project was made in three weeks during my Christmas break following a course by Unreal RPG Mastery. Through the course I was able to learn a lot about Unreal Engine 5 (such as the blueprint visual scripting language, modular programming, artificial intelligence, animation and much more). After completing the course, I used what I had created to make a greybox level following the workflow of a level designer. This was my first 3D third-person greybox. This semester I will learn a lot about greyboxing through my level design class.

Level Design

Process Work

With the limited assets that I found. I decided that I wanted to create a level set in a glacial biome and based around infiltrating enemy territory to eliminate the Frost King. I began my process by creating a mood board. I added images that matched my overall theme focusing on locations and color pallets.I then sketched out my levels based around required gameplay moments such as a lock and key beat, a mini boss battle, and the main boss battle. During this process, I created a beat chart that illustrates the gameplay beats and flow of each level. I focused on the teach, test, challenge approach for my combat mechanics and paced the challenge of my level with rising peaks and valleys.    

Greyboxing

I began the greyboxing process by creating a very rough greybox to get the scale and proportions of my level and various landmarks. Once the playtests met my expectations for how the level should play out, I polished it by cleaning up some out-of-place geometry and with a landscape that I could manipulate with Unreal's landscape tool. 





While designing the level I used various techniques to improve my level. The initial starting position of the player is a vista that shows the final location (the large mountain) and a landmark (smoke) to help guide them. I used a lock-and-key approach to block off a section until the player has collected an item. Once the section is unlocked they are rewarded with a thrilling mini-boss battle. I also changed the qualitative values of space to alter the challenge and experience of combat. Lastly, the elevated plane and large entrance at the foot of the mountain shows its importance.  

This entire level design process was completed in 5 days. 

Programming 

In completing this project and the UE5 course I learned a lot about blueprints and coding in general. The instructor put a great emphasis on modularity. I learned about encapsulation, structures, interfaces and using enumeration lists. I also learned a lot about AI behavior trees and animations. Even though the course taught me a lot, it was very flawed. As a result, I did lots of debugging and started to become very comfortable using the engine and its various tools.      

Takeaways