Bucking Bronco

My first project in Unreal Engine was a blueprint-based game that had a focus on physics. The inspiration for the game came from “Battlebots,” a show where two robots face off in arena combat. My favorite robot “Bronco” wins by flipping it’s opponents into the air, which gave me the idea to make a game where Bronco flips cubes into objective areas to solve puzzles.

I created the model for Bronco in Blender, and assembled it using a blueprint class. At this time I was still relatively new to the engine, so many of the techniques and code used were from various YouTube tutorials and sourced from the UE4 documentation. Not only did this teach me how to program many features commonly seen in games, including cut-scenes, object interactions, and HUD’s, but it also taught me how to use online resources effectively to build my own games.

As it stands, “Bucking Bronco” has only the first three levels. Although I love this project, I realized I still had much more to learn about Unreal (particularly C++ coding) and did not believe I would learn it all just developing new puzzles for this game. Thus I retired the project for the time being, but will one day return to it with new skills and fresh ideas.

Crab Grab

“Crab Grab” was my first foray into C++ within UE4. The idea of a crab collecting falling coins was chosen due to its simplicity, making the transition from blueprint to C++ easier. The game works by spawning coins within a spawn volume hidden above the player. The spawn volume code actually comes from the “C++ 3rd Person Battery Collector” tutorial found on the Unreal Engine YouTube page, but I modified it to spawn the coins instead.

I really enjoyed learning how to create flipbooks and seeing the sprite come to life with movement. More importantly, this project got me familiar with C++ syntax. Coming from a background of primarily Java development, C++ was rather foreign at first. But with continued work, I soon found I was able to adopt it’s unique style and work efficiently within the context of UE4.

Personal Game Engine

For my class titled “CSC 481 - Game Engine Design,” taught by Dr. David Roberts, I was tasked with 4 projects that culminated into the creation of a reusable game engine. It was coded using Processing and Java, and includes the ability to create game objects, detect object collision, and handle various events using an Event Management System that works in real time. The above videos demonstrate the engine running two different games: One a simple demo platformer, with moving objects and gravity-affected character, and the other a “Space Invaders” type game. Due to academic policies, I am unable to publicly share my code at the moment. However, I will gladly share it upon request by email.