MITCHTURNERDEV
Sun Wukong
This is Sun Wukong, an RPG game where you swing around and fight as the monkey king to defeat his evil clones! The goal of this project was to create a fun mechanic and see what I can make around it. - In Unreal Engine 4, I made the swinging mechanic using Blueprints and decided I wanted to make a game around it, similar to that of Spider Man. - I wrote and maintained design documentation throughout the project. - I made different strength AI, using animation blueprints, blackboard, and tasks with assets from Paragon. - I made the pickups using Blueprints. - I made the UI for the game to show health, stamina and pickups. - I blocked out and made multiple levels for the game. - I made a combo system for third person melee combat using animation blueprints, Blueprints, and animations from Mixamo. - I made the swinging mechanic for the game using Blueprints, and knowledge of physics within Unreal Engine. - Using the video editing software DaVinci Resolve, I made the game’s trailer. - I added health and energy pickups. - I made collectibles that could be collected throughout the map. - I made a melee combat system utilising an overlap box on Wukong's staff to determine if it would deal damage, or block damage. - I made a sliding mechanic which would send the player sliding down waterfalls. - I made a spring jump mechanic to help players reach higher areas. - All mechanics, pickups and AI were made by me using Unreal Blueprints.
I explored multiple different options for the game, deciding between first and third person, what I wanted the game to be, and eventually stumbled upon the idea of a swinging monkey king in the forest after seeing the asset on the Unreal Marketplace for free. From here I researched Sun Wukong in Chinese folklore. I decided that creating a project with the idea of accurate folklore would be difficult and adapted the knowledge I had gained into my own story. For this project, I wanted to create a melee combat system. I got basic attacks down and wanted to be able to chain attacks together to create some fun feedback. The project went well, I achieved what I set out to do and learned a lot about newer features that can be made using Unreal Engine. The movement for the character felt really nice, both running and swinging, however the animation for the swinging could have been improved by making the character follow the direction of momentum when swinging. Sun Wukong was a fun project, but not without things I didn't like. The AI needed to be further developed but worked as a very basic enemy to fight. The second map I created was desiged more around running around instead of swinging. I would have created more segments dedicated to the swinging itself. Another feature I'd have liked to have added to swinging is only being able to swing in certain areas / on specific grapple points. This way it would have prevented players from getting out the map as easily (without the use of a lot of blocking volumes) There's a few things that I would have done to improve this project, but the time I took to make it were really enjoyable, and I was happy with the result.
