[WIP] [UE4] Runeblade - Bachelor's Capstone Project - Advice and Critique Appreciated

JMBraley

Hello everyone! Our group has been working hard creating Runeblade for our Bachelor's Capstone project and I've now decided to post some screenshots in hopes of getting some advice and feedback from the community. We're really hoping to make this game look and play as good as we can and we only have another 8 weeks to get it to that point. Please, be absolutely honest about anything that could be done to improve the project.

So, a little backstory, Runeblade is a top down, ARPG / Rogue-like being developed using UE4 by a team of three (2 artists and 1 programmer). So far we have procedural generated levels, random item drops, an action-oriented combat system and some working but pretty simple AI. Most of the assets have been modeled, sculpted and textured but there are still a few that need to be taken care of. Here are some screenshots of what we have working so far:

We're rapidly approaching our deadline and appreciate any advice / critique / feedback that anyone can provide. Thanks for checking out our project so far and I'll be updating this thread with progress in the coming weeks.

JMBraley

In the past week since I first posted on the forums, our group has made huge progress towards Runeblade. Huge thanks to Romain Durand (https://polycount.com/profile/discussions/RDurand) for helping us overhaul our lighting system entirely. We've also finished up 99% of the props and item models and textures now.

Procedural Level Generation:

Current Alpha Build Playthrough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gusM5d0DTHQ&feature=youtu.be

Currently, the next big step that is in the works is reworking the walls and floors to replace the flat planes that we currently have with some models that provide a little more depth to the environment and match better stylistically.

As always, if anyone has any critique, advice or feedback, we're always looking for ways to make improvements.

JMBraley

Here are some screenshots with the new walls in place. Next step is to update the floors.

Carabiner

In the youtube clip you posted, at like 0:48 for example it's nearly impossible to see the characters when they're in the darker/not lit areas - both the player character and the enemy character you fight. Could they have some sort of fake rim lighting or light effect on them so they're easier to see?

JMBraley

That's something that we're actually working on currently. We've tried adding in a point light within the character blueprint but then we have the issue where it's illuminating the character as well as the environment and it looks awful. We're trying to figure out a way to add illumination around the character (and the enemies) so they're a lot easier to make out. We're also going to be adjusting the strength of the lights themselves to be a bit brighter and illuminate those darker rooms a bit more.

If anyone has any suggestions for how setup lighting around the character without directly having it affect the character feel free to share your secrets!

Olingova

Hi!
Looking good so far but definitely you could use some things to break the tiling on the floor!!
I can think about two options there: vertex painting to blend other texture (dirt or moss) or just decals maybe? (water or other).

JMBraley

Olingova said:

Hi!
Looking good so far but definitely you could use some things to break the tiling on the floor!!
I can think about two options there: vertex painting to blend other texture (dirt or moss) or just decals maybe? (water or other).

We're currently working on a new set of floor tiles that will hopefully look a lot better! We just ran into a few issues with how our wall segments were created so now that we've made it over that roadblock we're fixing the floors.

Problem: Corners were shorter than the wall segments which messed up the tiling for our new modular floor system that we're creating.

Solution: Fix the corners so they match the size of the walls and fix the tiling. This just means rebuilding all of the rooms....again.

Carabiner said:

In the youtube clip you posted, at like 0:48 for example it's nearly impossible to see the characters when they're in the darker/not lit areas - both the player character and the enemy character you fight. Could they have some sort of fake rim lighting or light effect on them so they're easier to see?

We managed to get a light under the character that works!

JMBraley

After some extensive bug fixing and troubleshooting we managed to get a build working and we've posted it on itch.io!

https://jmbraley.itch.io/runeblade

We're hoping to get some feedback through playtests and the playtest survey so if anyone wants to take a few seconds to play the game and fill out the survey we'd appreciate it greatly!

Olingova

I really recomment to simpy use decals or vertex paint some other texture on the floor with thoses kind of view, it's the number one priority to make the ground texture tiling less noticable. Good luck!

JMBraley

For a long time we've been attempting to figure out the best way to approach the floors and we've been massively over complicating the process. After hours of trying different methods and researching techniques we realized that we can use a simple alpha mask to hide the sections of the floor that are outside the playable area. So now that we've figured that out (I honestly don't know how it took us this long) we're going to be moving forward and tweaking the floors a lot. Here's the current plan of action:

1. Create masks for each room type
2. Create a new brick texture for the floor that matches the style of the walls and other props
3. Look into using dynamic tessellation to give the bricks some volume
4. Figure out vertex painting to add damage / puddles

We'll be uploading a new build to itch.io shortly that has the actual models for characters and enemies as well as gameplay tweaks and bug fixes. Once that's done I'll be posting some updated screenshots here.

Thanks again for everyone that's checking out the project and leaving feedback, It's a huge help!

JMBraley

Here is where we're at so far with the floor:

In order to create the new floor texture I re-used the previous floor bricks from my other floor experiments and brought them into ZBrush to create a new tiling texture. I also used the bricks to create a version of the texture that was completely broken and cracked since I knew I wanted to use vertex painting to be able to create unique floor textures for each room. Once I created the textures in Substance Painter using the smart materials I had previously created for the walls, I brought the textures into Unreal and began to create the floor material.

Here's the graph of the material:

Once the graph was complete, I decided to use turn it into my master material and then create instances for each room so I could plug the individual masks for each room into the instances and hopefully save some performance.

JMBraley

Here we are at the end of the road. Today was our groups final presentations for our Bachelor's capstone project and I think they went pretty well. We've uploaded our final build up on itch.io if anyone wants to download it and give it a shot: https://jmbraley.itch.io/runeblade.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that stopped by and checked out our progress or provided some feedback or critique. It's been more helpful and motivating than you could imagine.

JMBraley

Here's a link to the final breakdown of assets and beauty shots on ArtStation if anyone is interested: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/eGVBb

EliasWick

Looks very cool, glad to see someone creating a game in unreal instead of using it like a rendering engine!

Olingova

Nice! Happy to see the evolution of the floor looks like a solid material! Good job!