Character Control

Requirements:

• Create a player character with an appropriate and intuitive control scheme

• At least one NPC that follows a believable behaviour pattern

• At least one interaction between the player and NPC

  
  

Vision for the project:

My vision for this project was to create an assassins creed/hitman styled game. I thought the stealth animations that come along with games like these are really awesome and they look amazing. I also personally like the ancient Egyptian time period quite a lot, so setting the game in this era was something that I really wanted to do. After I had settled on both the ideas, creating the story of the player's character being an assassin who is commissioned to eliminate important figures challenging the government, felt quite fitting.

Production Process:

To begin this project, I created the locomotion blend space for the players character. I also added in some additional elements to the base locomotion, such as a foot IK rig that placed the feet on different levelled terrain, and an IK rig for the players head to look in the direction that the camera was facing. I also made it so that when the players character was turning, the character would actually lean into the turn, just to add a level of realism. Once these were complete, I added in some more complicated movement features and animations, such as the vaulting mechanic, that uses ray-casting to detect the length and height of the object that the player is attempting to vault over, and the measurements fit within the range that I assigned as the maximum distance, then the vault could occur. I also added in a crouch that changes the size of the capsule component within the player's character blueprint, as then the player can crouch under objects and gives some meaning behind the mechanic. A really useful tool during this process was UE5's motion warping, this helped me get the player into the correct positions for the animations to take place.

Once the movement was completed, I created the level design for the tutorial world. The next requirement that I had to develop was the AI. To do so, I created behaviour trees for them to follow. I also created navmeshes to tell the AI where they can and cannot move. Within my game I had two types of AI, a passive and aggressive AI. The aggressive AI used a sword combo attack mechanic that I created, that blends through the different sword attack animations until it is interrupted. There is a sphere trace on the blade of the sword that I gave the character which detects any collisions with the player, and if collision is detected then the health of the player is reduced. Both AI types had a visual and audible detection system as well, if the player was seen, they would become curious and investigate the area, and if they player made any noises then they would investigate that location as well.

My next step was creating the assassination mechanic so that the player could kill the AI. I created two types of assassinations: a quick but loud kill, and then a silent but slow kill which can only be performed if the player is crouching. I used a reference mannequin within the AI blueprint as references for the position of the players character during the animation.

To help guide the player and help them build an understanding of the controls of the game, I created a quest NPC. When you interact with each NPC, a quest relating to the upcoming obstacles will appear with a description, if you accept the quest then the quest details will appear on the players GUI and as each quest is completed, it will get checked off. I felt as if this was the best way to guide the player without telling them explicitly what to do. This system runs off of Object Orientated Programming and iterative loops, which made adding in the information really easy once the system was setup.

With all these features, I felt as the tutorial world was underwhelming compared to the mechanics available, and although the tutorial teachers the player the mechanics of the game, they do not get the freedom to use them. As a result, I created a world which matches the story of my game to allow the player to freely play the game.

Results:

I have not yet received my grade for this module.

This was by far the project that I was most proud of, I was over the moon with how the final product turned out. At the start of this module I did question whether I was over-scoping this project, however I managed to complete every feature that I wanted to and more.

All feedback that I gathered from my work was overly positive and the project was well received by play-testers.