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Work duration: 8 weeks
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Engine: Unreal Engine 4. Version 4.27.
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Unreal Marketplace Assets, used for showcase purposes.
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POLYGON - Dungeon Realms
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Stylized Newbie Weapons Pack
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Homing Projectile Magic Spell Fx Pack
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Synopsis
A Tower Defence game I have made using Unreal Engine 4. I mainly focused on scripting and making a game that could potentially be published. I also wanted a nice environment for the players. So I created a stylized environment that I dressed for a release product. At the same time, I wanted to develop this game to develop a skill for prototyping.
Project Specifications
The idea
The typical Tower Defence I have encountered usually has a predefined spot for where you can place your turret. And often tower defence games are played from an above aerial view. So I wanted to try and make a tower defence game in which the player is a part of the level. They run around in third person building turrets, collect items, use abilities and defend their crystals. Much like the tower defence game: Dungeon Defenders by Chromatic Games.
Equipment
I wanted different elements, building turrets, selling, and upgrading turrets. But I also aimed to add the RPG element of items; enemies that drop items, different rarities, and have different statistics. Implementing items into the game encourages the player to be active. A lot of tower defence games don't give the player a reason to stay active during the waves when enemies attack. By implementing items that both change the players' stats and give them abilities, I encourage the player to be active with those abilities they get. Items also give the player a choice of how they want to play the game. Some might want to go for a different build that supports turrets with a lot of damage, focusing on equipping items that have a lot of damage while maybe sacrificing turret attack speed.
Turrets
The core of a Tower Defence game are the turrets. So I built a system where it's easy to add many different turret variants. All you have to do is create a new row in the data table, and then design your turret. After that, just make a child of the master turret class and name the turret to match your data table turret. You can then decide what button should be connected to spawning that turret.
Creating a new tower with commentary
Enemies
The enemy system is built up with some pretense set on their spawn. Every enemy spawns from a spawn point in the world. Each spawn point is connected to a base. If a level is designed with multiple bases, spawn points can be allocated so that spawned enemies will prioritize certain bases. Enemies in this game follow basic behavior. They have a priority list that is the following. When spawned, look for the closest path towards their allocated base. If a turret is in the way stop and starts hitting the turret. If there are multiple turrets in the way. See if one of the turrets is a "Wall Turret" and priorities hitting that turret if it can be reached.
Waves
The waves can be built by a designer using data tables. A wave is defined by how many and what type of enemies should be spawned. The game also increases enemies' health and the amount of gold they drop with each concurrent wave. This was implemented to make the game harder the longer you play. I did this to compensate for not having a difficulty level. And since I've implemented an endless mode, a mode where the waves go on forever and the number of enemies that spawn is increased every wave. By having the increase in health it keeps it interesting while playing, since you just can't have a single build and then leave the computer.
The First Level
The first level in this game could be considered a tutorial level. Two paths converge into one, this is where the player's base is placed. By having these two defined paths connect at the player's base we define a clear target for the player. Instead of focusing on how the enemies will travel the player can prioritize building turrets.
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The Second Level
Paths are the set of points that monsters will travel throughout their life. If a map has multiple paths, that presents the players with more complexity for resource management, DPS allocation, and targeting. Various characteristics of the paths can yield different player experiences. For example, the middle path consists of three adjoined paths. This means that the most amount of enemies will travel through there. And if the player distributes all its resources to the middle path it will not present much of a difficulty. Although seeing as there are paths on the side as well, this might present a problem if the player has not devoted enough resources to cover these side paths as well.
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Gameplay video with commentary
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Maximilian Jernberg
Level Designer / Technical Level Designer