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[Ordnas]

Hello everyone! As a personal project in my spare time I’m developing a prototype of a first-person action game, project codename is Citizen Pain.

Here is a prototype on enemy mechanics. In the video I show some of the progress I made last month:




- Added Lunge attack, triggers as a running attack;
- Added Wild Swinging attack, as a follow-up to Lunge attack;
- Added Hit Blocked Stun, a state in which the enemy’s hit is blocked by the player;
- Enemy Hit animation;

This month I started making a greybox of the first map. I was inspired by the Boletaria level from Demon’s Souls, trying to understand how the gameplay mechanics are integrated into the level design.




I’m probably more than halfway through the planned level. I finished the second tower with the stairwell, and I had quite a bit of fun putting in areas with columns, torches to illuminate and guide the player, put in various props like barrels and boxes as obstacles and to make the room more interesting, and even a couple of balconies.

I will try to post updates weekly!

[Ordnas]

Also this month I plan to continue the level greybox.

I am building the second part of the level, where it will rejoin the starting point via a shortcut. I think I've gotten better at greyboxing. I'm hurrying a little bit and probably I am a little less consistent with the placement of props (barrels, crates etc.) so some rooms may seem a little more empty.

When I finish the greybox I'll have to place enemies and to set some traps, it will be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to it, but for now I have to focus on finishing the level.

[Alain]

Cool, I'm looking forward to see what traps etc. you come up with!

[Ordnas]

Cool, I'm looking forward to see what traps etc. you come up with!

Thank you for the interest! I hope to show it as soon as possible

[Ordnas]

Level greyboxing this room, is quite large.

[Ordnas]

The map got quite big.

[Alain]

Looking good! How much would you say is done greybox wise?

[Ordnas]

Looking good! How much would you say is done greybox wise?

Thank you! Next week I plan to finish the first draft of the greyboxing, and then I expect the rest of the month (at least) to iterate on the level design and enemy placement (including some traps). I can't wait to finish greyboxing, it's fun to place cubes but I missed working on the gameplay part.

[Ordnas]

Last stair tower in the map, it will be quite high, lots of stairs to place.

[Ordnas]

This past week I continued the greybox level design. I got to the final stages of my greyboxing, where all I need to finish is the boss room, and then I'll move on to iterate on the layout and enemy positioning.

I had fun making a very large hall with columns, made a bridge, put a last tower with stairs where it takes you back to the beginning of the level (and to the boss area), and place the usual lights to guide the player.
Also in Unreal Engine thanks to Lumen is very convenient to be able to see the bounce of lights in dark areas right away, without having to do the usual slow bake lighting of static lights.

I also had to move a whole portion of the level to get the last tower to be near a particular area, but the fact that each room is a Group actor (each room is a group of walls, floors, lights and props), moving each room is like moving Lego blocks, it's very modular, and it took me just 5 minutes.

[Ordnas]

And with the boss room I’m done with adding new rooms. It will be time to start placing enemies.

[Alain]

Sounds great, looking forward to see some more enemies in action!

[Ordnas]

Sounds great, looking forward to see some more enemies in action!

I hope to show it soon! 

[Ordnas]

I had to fix the stairs because the AI can’t walk on the stairs (when I had started greyboxing I had made them too high).



Navmesh fixed!

[Alain]

I just realized that you are also in UE. Man, I have been tweaking the navmesh in my game for literally years and it is a never ending story. I assume you are in UE5, maybe improvements have been made to the system by now.

[Ordnas]

I just realized that you are also in UE. Man, I have been tweaking the navmesh in my game for literally years and it is a never ending story. I assume you are in UE5, maybe improvements have been made to the system by now.

Yes, I also use UE for my project! Honestly, I don't know if it's improved in UE5, the projects I've worked on in the past didn't have Navmesh in particolar complex area, or I did not have a Navmesh at all (in driving titles for example), so I've always been comfortable with it so far. Maybe this project is the one where I'll make more complicated use of Navmesh?

What problems did the Navmesh give you for example? 

[Ordnas]

This past week I continued with greyboxing level design, completing the boss room.

I started placing enemies in the map. To test the mechanics of the enemies, I am recreating the Boletaria level from Demon Souls. I put in Navmesh and redid some stairs, as they were too tall and narrow and the default Navmesh would not take them (I made them at least 100cm wide and 0.25 high). I positioned the enemies and tweaked their sight radius (some enemies should not trigger from a distance, so as to catch the enemy off guard for example).

Next step will be to create destructible props so it can hide behind various things (enemies, secret passages, traps etc.)

[Ordnas]

Destructible, I add a fracture, to be blown up with a Field system when you hit it with an attack.

[themabuffet]

This looks super cool, it reminds me of kings field, looking forward to seeing the progress of this one.

[Alain]

Nice update, looking forward to destructible stuff

I just realized that you are also in UE. Man, I have been tweaking the navmesh in my game for literally years and it is a never ending story. I assume you are in UE5, maybe improvements have been made to the system by now.

Yes, I also use UE for my project! Honestly, I don't know if it's improved in UE5, the projects I've worked on in the past didn't have Navmesh in particolar complex area, or I did not have a Navmesh at all (in driving titles for example), so I've always been comfortable with it so far. Maybe this project is the one where I'll make more complicated use of Navmesh?

What problems did the Navmesh give you for example? 

In the beginning, my issue was working with a navmesh on completely procedural terrain and if I remember correctly, instanced static meshes also posed a problem when interacting with the navmesh. But that was years ago. Recently I added structures that the player can build themselves, which also caused me some headaches. Once I got good results for the navmesh on player created structures, it had become worse in other places I wasn't looking at. The problem is that I have no way to quickly fix something by changing the level geometry, because of that whole procedural nature of the game.