[UE4] Isometric Souls-like Spellcasting-Diablo-esque Game [IMG/GIF HEAVY]
interpolator
Heya!
I've been working on this little thing on and off in my spare time!
The idea is basically to try making a isometric game like Path of Exile or Diablo, but focusing on the vertical movement, and the exploration that comes with it, found in the souls series. As most isometric games seems to be tied to navigational meshes and don't support vertical movement etc.
The focus is making it as system based as possible to minimize workload and being content driven. The spell system is the key feature, where the player slowly molds the two spells you choose at the start of the game into different tools. Where we expose as many variables and parameters to the player as possible, for them to play with.
So aswell as more standard parameters such as increasing spell damage by a %. We have stats that increase the amount of projectiles the spell casts, or number of ricochets. Aswell as % increases/decreases to speed, duration and so on and so forth.
Perhaps the player wants to stack speed decreases, which makes your projectiles move slower but doing more damage, effectively turning your fireball spell into stationary fireball mine!
Exciting times ahead of us, super fun to have a project on the side doing some scripting i Blueprint and animation and stuff, very different from what I do at work!
Here are some super dark and low-quality gifs!
Atmosphere Mockup sort of thing :
Some spellcasting :
We can go deeper (Ricochet, Fork, Pierce) :
P.S. If anyone knows how to resize gifs and images would be awesome to know how ^^
Replies
Reminds me of 'Below'. Will you go for Melee-combat as well or is it all 'bout them spells?
Just seeing all that magic casting and the potential what this project could turn into makes my FXfingers twitch
P.s. Save for web has been moved in CC to 'File', 'Export', 'Save for Web (Legacy)'
I had this weird illusion mindfuck moment where I realised the guy in the first gif was walking over a bridge over a chasm. I thought he was walking down a narrow hallway and that the negative spaces on either side were walls. Here's a pic to show what I thought I saw. Just a funny moment I thought I'd share.
@Connecta : Thanks, man! Yeah, Below was pretty much what sparked the idea for the art style for, I'm thinking about steering away from it as it's a bit silly how similar it'll look when I add more assets and detail, I think. Strictly Spells is the idea! But the system will hopefully be so flexible that there's spells that you can mold into melee-spells and have that playstyle, if you so desire!
@Lissner : Never heard of Nox before, I checked it out and it looks great, haha
@Christian Nordgren : Thanks, dude! I can't wait until I can start focusing more on the VFX and art side of things, got to nail them mechanics first ^^
@Oskar Selin : Thanks, dude! You guys' game looks awesome aswell!
@IlyaIvanovArt, Azzamat : Thanks! Works wonders
@kernersvillan, mon246 : Thanks guys, funny illusion ^^ I wonder how to do more interiory stuff with such a zoomed out camera.. hmm.
I tried to make local co-op work. Pretty easy in Unreal actually! Don't know if it'll be a priority but we'll have it in mind when developing the systems for sure.
And I'm trying to finish up a bunch of spells. ^^
Fireball!
Meteor Shower
Fireball with +24 projectiles and Ricochet modifiers
Love the art style a lot. Keep up the good work!
@Cremuss : Thanks! It's alot of fun xD The compression on the gifs are pretty bad, to keep a low size.
Here's some screenshots of my latest developments in terms of style etc
I'm currently making a pass on the AI and how the enemies work atm. Got hit by a really annoying bug in UE4 where child blueprints reset variables and components randomly. So most of my classes derived from the base Enemy class totally broke down
What's really fun about making a system based game is that I can play it like a high-skilled player would. Because of generated levels and drops etc. So it's really fun to develop it. ^^ Instead of polishing a traditional level, that you get sick of after testing a couple of times
I'm trying to keep it as a hobby project, but I can't ignore the urge to turn it into something I can release into the world at some point. So if anyone has any experience with that kind of thing I'd be super greatful!
Sorry if I bored you with too much text! Here you have a random picture as a reward for sticking through it!
It doesn't work flawlessly, but I've been able to play my infinite game-loop together with as many players as the server (My Computer) can handle
Super proud, and a big milestone in the project for sure. I had to rewrite and rethink a huge amount of the work I had previously done, but it's totally worth it.
I'm glad that I set it up this early in the project rather than later. That would've been a even more massive headache! I'm a bit worried that from now on scripting and QA will take more time and progress will be a bit slower when actually implementing features. But I'm in no hurry and the game will be more fun.
Sorry for just only typing stuff, I just wanted to let you know etc, I'll hopefully be back with more juicy art soon!
Thanks for bearing with me!
Hey folks! I'm actually getting kind of stuck on the art side of the game. I dunno if the low-poly smooth gradient look is interesting enough.
Like, if you'd payed 4.99-9.99 dollars for a game like this would you be happy with the graphical fidelity?
I dunno, just getting a bit doubtful.
I'd love if anyone had some ideas or comment on how you PERSONALLY would approach it!
I would think if you want to keep the geo-simpliscitic style (which seems the folks that have responded really enjoy) then adding additional and interesting lighting to your scene to highlight your geo would work very well and make things more interesting.
You seem to have a really great grasp on FX so even adding in some of these in areas to highlight features would go a very long way.
Such as the GIF you posted with the light coming through skull entrance with the 4 braziers is far more visually appealing imho.
I had a scene I did in NWO way back when and mostly all of the assets were the same color, tone, hue, which got confusing to the eye, after dressing up with some other stuff such as wooden beams and adding in light sources such glowing mushrooms, illuminated crystals and minerals, skylights with light rays coming down from possible collapses in the cave roof with hanging foliage etc. the levels improved 100%.
Just my suggestion. Keep with it though it's definitely improving as you continue to work on it.
Yeah, man, doing everything alone is rough haha. You bring up some good points, I think strong focus on vfx and lighting is good. In combat the game gets noisy and intense anyways, so the backgrounds being simple and readable is a good thing. How fun it looks in screenshots I dunno though, maybe I got to upload more combat screenshots ^^
Thanks!
indeed I agree it's totally a pain in the but going solo, but then again, you're your own boss
The combat looks really interesting and above all else if the game play is superb and really fun, graphics will come secondary.
Keep it up dude, I think you'll have a winner on your hands
MY PROJECTS NEVER DIE! lol