He from the pines is a first person horror game, where the player plays as a story book author, who ventures into the forest for inspiration for it's new book. This is the third game project in which I have participated during my time at Futuregames. We were a team of 12 members, 2 of whom were programmers. Since the other programmer's role was focused on the AI in the game, I had the responsibility of implementing every other system myself.
- I learned how to set up my own classes for various core components in Unreal Engine using C++ (PlayerCharacter, PlayerController, GameMode, PlayerHud etc.). Setting up the backend work of the game allowed me to have control over the game from the start of the main menu all the way till the game ends.
- I gained experience with Unreal's new Enhanced Input System.
- I also delved into learning and implementing level streaming . It allowed our team to work on our level simultaneously by separating some of the functionality from the art part of the level.
- I set up widgets using C++, which made the UI design and integration more efficient.
- I was also tasked with setting up and administrating our teams Perforce depo.
Overall, this project was a great opportunity to deepen my understanding of game development with Unreal Engine and C++, it not only improved my technical skills but also my ability to work well in a team.
Diegetic Interface
Since the setting of the game is that the main character is a storybook author, the team decided that it would be really fun to implement a diegetic user interface where all the menus in the game are found in the author's book.
One of our designers found a great plugin for this in the Unreal store and we decided to intagrate that into the project. This brought up many challenges during development because the plugin worked in a specific way. What I really liked about it is that I was able to dive into the plugin’s source code and tweak things so it completely fit our needs.
Although we might have spent more time on it than we originally anticipated, I still think it was a great experience.
Objective System
Since many other systems had to interact with the objectives, I've decided to implement this as a GameInstanceSubsystem. It keeps track of all the completed objectives, once all completed it triggers a sequence where the goal is to escape the forest if the player manages to do so the game ends.
The other interesting mechanic was tied to this was that some objectives hide things that are hidden from the naked eye. My approach was fairly simple on this. I simply subscribe to an event on all of the invisible actors which gets triggered by the Player immediately before and after the screen capturing. When the trigger goes off I just simply set the visibility on the objects.
Take aways
Working with Unreal on a game project was a great experience and it made me really like the engine. Similar to working with plugins, I enjoyed that I could dive into the engine's source code whenever I encountered a new system, allowing me to learn a lot just by exploring the code. It was a really fun experience. Over the 7 week period we had dedicated time slot with a mentor each week. With the mentors help I managed to gain a deeper understanding of Unreal's various systems and how to better structure our codebase.
In terms of soft skills, managing a heavy workload improved my time management. I learned the value of planning my day before jumping into coding, which made me more efficient. Working with a team of 12 people also enhanced my communication skills—whether it was voicing my opinions, holding effective meetings, or collaborating smoothly with my teammates.
