Empires on UE4 (A collaborative project)

Full Auto Firemode is now done. I have a few more things I want to do before I close firemodes (make them blueprintable so others can create Firemodes), but automatic weapons are done now.

 

Yeah. Right now I have a full anim set for everything I want to do with infantry movement (run, walk, crouch, prone, rifle, pistol and shotgun shooting for all of those states).

 

Tutorial time: How to create a weapon in UE4Pires

Creating a new weapon is really easy. The first thing you do is right click, Create New Blueprint. In the search bar, search 'BaseInfantryWeapon' or just find it in the hierachy.



Give the new gun a name, and double click on it. That opens up the Blueprint editor for your new gun.

Click on the 'Defaults' tab of the Blueprint editor to start messing with the properties.

The first section is 'Display'. This section governs what the gun looks and sounds like. It should be pretty straight forward as to what goes here.



The second section is 'Weapon', which contains the Weapon Offset. This Vector3 is the offset from the bottom center of the palyer where the weapon fires from. You shouldn't have any need to modify this.



The next section is "Firemodes", the most important part of the gun's behavior. This tells the game how the gun fires and how it should behave.

It's split into 3 parts, the Firemode Data, The Ammo Pool, and the Firemode Class.

You need to have at least one Firemode Data, Ammo Pool, and Firemode. You need to have the same number of Firemode Datas as you have Firemode Classes. (I may simplify this and move Firemode class into Firemode Data).


Firemode Data looks like this

• Ammo Consumed Per Shot: This is how many bullets this firemode takes to fire.
• Ammo Pool Index: This is the index into the Ammo Pool array that this firemode takes bullets from. Multiple firemodes can share the same pool (this should be common, actually).
• Rounds Per Minute: This is how fast the gun fires.
• Rounds Per Shot: This is how many projectiles to create. This is useful for creating shotguns.
• Damage: How much damage does a single shot do. This is per firemode so you can create a slower firing higher damage firemode.

Next up is the Ammo Pools. This is the Ammo pool that Firemodes pull from. It's set up this way so that you can have like a underbarrel grenade launcher fire a different type of ammo.

• MaxAmmo: How much ammo total is there in this ammo pool.
• Clip Size: How many shots can you fire until you reload.
• Projectile Class: What type of projectile does this ammo shoot?

The final part is the Firemode Class. This may be merged into the Firemode Data Array in the near future.



This dropdown list contains the list of firemodes this gun can use. As of writing they are:

• Single Shot
• Full Auto
• 3-Round Burst
• 2-Round Burst

You can create your own X-Round Burst Firemode by creating a new blueprint based off BurstFiremode, and then in Defaults changing the rounds in the burst.

Final Result (No sounds):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1940586/2014-11-03_23-14-47.mp4

 

Well alright I can TRY to port them over. But keep in mind any slightest change is most likely going to result in us having to rebuild the models. Especially the first person guns. Does UE4 differentiate between view models and world models? Or is that just one model with multiple LODs?

And I think I will have to get myself a license then, eh? Welp there goes $20 bucks a month.

 

Yea, it use world and view models.

 

The terminoligy i'm going for in this is '3rd Person Models' for what others can see, and '1st Person Models' for what only you can see.

And, yeah, the 3p model for weapons doesn't have a slot yet. That's on my todo list to add. It's a single line of code.

 

Alright. Just to make you understand this: The meshes we have currently are only the ones in the SMDs. They are not in any state to work with in terms of changing anything. If you want to compare it to code, it's a decompiled mess with no comments at all and it would be faster and more efficient to rewrite instead of refactor. At least that's my stance on it.

 

Well, 4.5 JUST came out, so you can probably just do a month of sub time, download UE4.5, and do all the work you need on that. Hell, unless the asset import process drastically changes, You could probably stick to 4.5 for a number of months while the rest of the game engine advances.

You keep access to any version of the engine you download. Doing a single month may be worth it to check it out.

 

Well alright I got myself a license now and will have a closer look at the retargeting of animations. Since nobody spoke up I guess we can simply use the Source models.

 

Last time i tried to import a SMD i was able to import the animation and the skeleton, weights and stuffs as well, is that so much of a problem there are only the SMD files?

 

That is all there, yes. We won't need the animations anyway since we are using the ones that come with the Unreal engine. The skeletons are also there, so we can retarget to them. My problem lies with the topology of the models themselves. They are everything else but clean, as I already said. Sure you can import and use them for now, but don't expect them to look good. And changes would take a lot longer than just rebuilding them.

I recently had a look at the view model of the NF sniper because of that "hole in the scope" issue. The whole thing was so messed up I looked at it for 10 minutes, said "nope" and closed the file again.

 

Oh, ok, i see what you mean now.

 

Did you open it? The topology on the fingers should already be enough to put you of, if the rest pose of the sniper rifle doesn't already do that.

Also: I am so going to devour that doc section: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/

 

Well, no, i never had any of these particular models, in any other format than mdl, under the hand lol.

 

Use this if you want to have a look: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/CrowbarTool

 

I realized today that if you have an alternate firemode, you may also want an alternate view model animation set (For example, an underbarrel grenade launcher). I've done the same thing as ammo pools and set up a table of animation data that firemodes can reference.

 

You had to make that yourself? That's kickass!

I don't know why, but I sorta expected these game engines like that to have basic FPS elements already in place.

 

There is a weapon system developed for the Shooter Game Sample, but it kinda sucks and not what I wanted to do, design wise. I am using it as a reference.

One of my goals is to get the entire game set up in a way that someone without coding skills can create new things. As of right now, every gun in Empires (except the shotgun pistol) is possible to recreate with this system, including the rocket and mortar. All vehicle weapons are also capable of being created in this system as well, but some effects (like the Bio DoT and Plasma's Heat To Target) can't be done because those systems aren't in yet.

What's more, is not only can you replicate all of the Empires weapons right now with this code, I've also taken it a step further. For example, we could blend the BE CAR and the BE AR into the same gun. Press 'B' and toggle between full auto and 3-round burst. We could give one of the SMG's an Underbarrel Grenade Launcher or Underbarrel Shotgun. This system is incredibly fluid... and it can also work this way for vehicle weapons. Hell, I'm even considering removing the Projectile requirement on what the gun can shoot. Make a gun that shoots BE Heavy Tanks? :D


I'm still working on Ammo Consumption and Recoil patterns. I plan on doing a Cone-Bloom system as well as light recoil.

 

Yeah, I was reading over it and I'm like, "This is basically everything." Or at least everything necessary for it to "feel" like Empires. Ancillary stuff like bio DoT, HtT and the shotty pistol aren't strictly necessary for that "feel".

It's obviously not finished with the missing spread, recoil and what not, but the bulk of it is there and seems pretty straightforward. That's awesome.

Oh and a gun that shoots heavy tanks would be amazing. Fuck the haters, Kylegar. :D :D :D