And here's Ludum Dare Entry Number 6 (and probably my worst one yet)!!
This time, instead of going with my usual engine choice of Unity, I decided to try and make something in Unreal Engine 4 (using Blueprints because of time constraints plus I suck at C++).
I decided to make a game where you play as a giant monster but in a first person view (i.e. everything looks smaller compared to you). Unfortunately, I had quite a lot of trouble trying to get stuff to work in Unreal Engine 4 (since I only had about 2 weeks of experience of it) so I ended up having to reduce my original scope in order to submit something playable on time (In fact, I was nearly on the verge of giving up on the jam).
In the end, I ended up with a rather generic move and shoot at stuff type of game although to be fair, some of the targets can be hard to hit since after all, you're a giant monster (which is kind of hilarious in hindsight if you think about it). It's not what I had envisioned in my mind and chances are, there's quite a few bugs (plus it looks a bit rushed) but at least it's sort of playable.
Only Windows builds are available at the moment unfortunately (since I don't have a Mac to build on that platform plus the instructions for packaging a UE4 game to Linux on Windows is complicated). I originally had a HTML5 build of the game but I had to take it out as some of the textures were missing (Turns out destructible meshes aren't supported on mobile/HTML5 platforms)
Instructions
Score as many points as possible by killing humans and destroying rocks
Controls
WASD keys - move
Mouse - Aim
Left Mouse Button - Shoot
ESC - Open up pause menu in game
Xbox controllers are supposedly supported
Most of the external assets in the game (models, textures, sounds etc.) are obtained from the optional starter content that comes with every new Unreal Engine project as well as from Mixamo.
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 100% |
| #309 | Theme(Jam) | 3.73 |
| #634 | Humor(Jam) | 2.60 |
| #681 | Fun(Jam) | 2.86 |
| #791 | Innovation(Jam) | 2.67 |
| #850 | Overall(Jam) | 2.84 |
| #871 | Mood(Jam) | 2.62 |
Comments
@TooMuchPete: Thanks :) It wasn't hard to do since in Unreal Engine 4 you can create a destructible mesh in a just a few clicks but I wanted something to show that you're playing as a giant monster who can reduce things to rubble :3
Great game! I was kinda intimidated by my own shadow at first xD
I like seeing people try new stuff and not sticking to their comfort zone!
Next time it is ue4 + c++ for you :-P
Keep up the good work and never give up!
I liked that! felt like citizen kabuto... love the death fire stone balls
woah, I could see my house from there! That bug's hilarious!
Not a bad concept, I would recommend this for women, because they can murder men all they want. I didn't quite undetstand how the rocks supposed to break but i was happy when they did. It's fun.
I played this for a surprisingly long time!
I ended up flying upwards forever when walking into some rubble, though.
I've got to congratulate you on moving out of your comfort zone for ludum dare, I don't think I could do that! ^_^
Great graphic!
A little too tricky the hitboxes of the rock sharpnells... when the little men are within them they are "invunerables"..
Btw nice gameplay!
Well done!
Very cool, the choice of Unreal was definitely a challenging one for a jam, and the result is awfully pretty! I'd love to see you expand on the concept outside of the constraints of the jam since playing as a giant monster is definitely alluring. Nice!
I respect your effort to go with Unreal Engine, it must have been quite hard! Of course the game is not complete, but the rock explosions and fireball show the potential of making a game with this technology. Although I try to always put the gameplay and fun before the graphics.
I could look at those rock explosions all day! It just goes to show how awesome things can look in unreal. Great job in not giving up. I bet you learnt quite a lot from it :) Looking forward to seeing the next one!
It was pretty good although it lacked a lot of content and there was a glitch where I'd keep flying away from the map endlessly as far as I know. Despite that, though, still a pretty decent game.
Love the rock's rumble effect, though I was rocket-launched into space at some point I guess while walking on the rumbles which is bit tricky. Anyway good use of 3D and since it seems you put some effort in designing the beast I'd like to see it :)
The breaking rocks are really cool! On my 2nd play I blew up a rock and flew infinitely into the sky so that was pretty cool in it's own way.
Nice concept, definitely felt the power of being a huge monster, would be interesting to see it expanded. I would consider adjusting how the points work, because it's easier to rack up points by destroying rocks than by hitting the little humans! :)
Not bad for an unfamiliar tool! That's usually a recipe for disaster. There's not much to it, but it's pretty fun nonetheless.
Surprisingly tricky to hit those pesky humans, especially with debris getting in the way. If shrapnel could also kill them it might make blowing the rocks up more useful.
My own shadow made me laugh - looks like I'm some kind of giant, angry, rock-spitting moose? :D
This was a pretty epic game and especially loved the collapsing rocks, gave a good feel of your size and the puny humans running around were fun. Hope you keep up with this game in the future :)
Blowing up rocks is really fun. I did glitch into the sky a bit. Also the head of the player model is kinda irritating.
Things blow up in a really satisfying way! Lighting is good and the shadow of the player looks great. Could do with a bit more to do in the game and some sort of goal, but a good start.
Nice little game, but it does get a bit repetitive I'm afraid. Looks like you focused on graphics over gameplay. Which I understand, because that can be a lot of fun to work on :)
It's fun to make things explode!! ;)
I think with music could be better, but I loved it!!
The screen shots look sweet, but I'm on parallels and wasn't able to load it, got runtime error :(
@Grahhhhh: Ah that's a shame. Is that for both the 32 and 64 bit builds? Unfortunately I don't have a Mac to make a build for that.
This isn't bad at all. Im assuming it was the humans but it was fun being thrown into the sky and raining rocks upon the masses. I don't think I could do this with two week of experience. Good stuff!
It was pretty laggy, but that seems to be a result of my weak laptop :(
The graphics looked excellent though
@hdong: It's an Unreal Engine 4 game so you do kinda need a decent machine to run it decently which I apologise for since at the time I had no idea how to change the quality settings via code/blueprints.
Very impressive. Was a bit weird when walking, but crushing things and people made up for that.
I stepped on a rock and flew into space! A little bit more and it would be a Kerbal Space Program :D
Simple, yet beautifull entry. Also, unreal engine games are pretty rare here!
I had some fun with this one. Also... From some reason i found it incredibly funny XD
The game is good, not great but not bad. It just lacks things to do, after 5 shots it gets boring, sorry.
It lack of content, but I can understand it since you decided to switch from unity to UE. Hope to see your progress on a next jam ;)
Shot a human and flied endless in the top. 10/10 :P
Joke asides (ok, i did fly endlessy to top), a nice idea, i really great shadow and finally a desktop-game which is not made with unity :P
It s a little big buggy (I have fired upwards without no reason), but I guess there is a lot technically speaking. How did you make rock explode? Are you using Voronoi algorithms?
@SoloDuoTeam: There's an option to create destructible meshes in Unreal Engine 4 which I believe implements a Voronoi algorithm under the hood (for controlling the amount of individual pieces the mesh breaks into iirc)
The graphics and physics are really well done, very well expected of a UE4 project, which makes this all the more impressive if this is your first UE4 project.
I would recommend either moving your camera forward or remove anything of the player that would obstruct it, since it's kind of distracting seeing part of the monsters face while the camera moves. Also see if you can make the rubble not collide with the player, that way it's easier to move around after you break stuff.
Cool use of the Unreal stuff, was fun stomping around and chucking boulders at things.
Cool graphics, weirdly addictive. I included it in part 27 of my Ludum Dare 33 Compilation video series, if you would like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/hHQb1uxX9tA
So, strange bug, but the monster and human flies up really high if they walk into the rock rubles. This makes for an amusing glitch, but also makes it hard to get a higher score. Oh well, had a little fun playing it. It does feel like a bigger game was in mind, as there doesn't seem to be much material (as you've stated on the description).
It was nice to at human from this point of view :)
Please, check the video of me playing and commenting: https://youtu.be/CEXUUzwEAa8
Your game is at 12:33
The screencasting software made my laptop to lag, but later without it the game run well.
The scale problem for the protagonist is really quite interesting. I think there could be a lot of interesting gameplay in it. Say you eat the humans instead, and eating makes you larger, so it becomes ever harder to pinpoint them. Still you gotta eat to survive. Or simply fending off swarms of annoying critters in general. Interesting emergent feature of the game. The shadow and the other assets in the game were very nice. It would have been cool if the camera shook some when a boulder hit the ground. Or you walked. And if that affected the humans. I would have liked some indicator of the aim, but not deadly important. Worse was that while the mouse was hidden (good) it was still active to stuff outside the window. So when looking down trying to hit people close, I accidentally got out of the game. I didn't figure out what the blue bar was, so some text or icon on it explaining its purpose would have been nice. The buttons were very huge in size too and could have been scaled down a bit (especially given the scale-thing with being a giant). In attempting a new engine, it was a very good entry.
The monster (or shadow of the monster) looked fantastic, and I loved that I was way bigger than all of the little guys running around.
I found that all of the humans seemed to run to one particular spot, so it was pretty easy to hit them when they got there. Like fish in a barrel.
It was a little hard to aim without a crosshair. Especially when I first started and I was shooting a big rock but was so close that my own boulders didn't even render.
Otherwise, I think I need to get a better laptop before next LD. Any Unreal Engine 4 game that I've played has been pretty choppy. Obviously not your fault, but I feel like my computer's inadequacies prevent me from giving your game a fair shake :(
I like the way the rocks explode, looks great! Squishing the humans would be a bit more fun if the projectiles had a larger area of effect, and if they didn't just disappear when hit. Fun game though!
Very, very, very nice! This really deserves a post-jam version. I didn't find it immensely fun, but this was mainly because it was running at around 3 FPS on my laptop. The effects are epic, though! 4/5 overall.
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I liked the way the rocks exploded!