Tag: Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine Tip #5 – Play from the camera’s current location

TSP LarryLeave a comment

Testing is a very critical part of game development. It helps fix up holes in your game’s logics/mechanics, It ensures that your game progresses as intended, and more. This tip helps your development process by allowing you to spawn your character at the current location of the camera.

Normally, in Unreal Engine; your character will spawn at the “Player Start” object. This can be overridden in your game mode. The other place to override this, without editing code or blueprints; is in the dropdown menu next to the play button.

There is a option in the play menu to spawn the player at the Current Camera Location.
There is a option in the play menu to spawn the player at the Current Camera Location.

If you click the arrow next to the play button, you can select to spawn the player at the current camera location. It’s that simple. From there you can use this to more easily test parts of your game that are spread apart.

I’m still trying to find out to test out different data settings. When i find out the best way, i’ll create a new post.Thanks for reading.

Check out some of my other posts:

Awesome Assets – Quixel Megascans

TSP LarryLeave a comment

Are you looking for FREE high-quality assets for your Unreal Engine game? If so, then your should take a look at Quixel Megascans. It’s free for Unreal Engine users!

Megascans is a massive online scan library of high-resolution, consistent PBR calibrated surface, vegetation and 3D scans, also including desktop applications for managing, mixing and exporting your downloaded scan data.

What is Megascans? – Quixel

You can find them in the Unreal Marketplace in the free section, or you can go over to their website. You can login to their site using the same Epic Games account you use for the Unreal Marketplace.

NOTE: The assets in the Unreal Marketplace can be very large.

Tip – Download directly from the website for quicker usage.

If you do not need the amazingly realistic 8k version of their asses for your game, you can choose the 2k or 4k version when directly downloading from their website.

Making a high-quality game doesn’t have to completely break the bank. Be sure to check out the Quixel Megascans Library. Theres a link to the official post below:

https://quixel.com/blog/2019/11/12/quixel-joins-forces-with-epic-games

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Game Jam results

TSP LarryLeave a comment

Unfortunately, my entry didn’t place well. Overall I placed #531, which is about the half way mark.

My game

I made a fps game. In this game the player is playing a VR game console. The console constantly lies to the player. Eventually the player will leave the simulation.

The idea behind the VR game console came from the hosts including “the game is” in the title. That’s just how I interpreted it.

I’ve thought about continuing it. But I’m not exactly sure what direction I would want to take it in to really make it engaging and interesting.

Stats and Results

I had a total of five reviews. Here we the overall stats for my game.

  • Graphics: 3.043
  • Theme: 2.704
  • Audio: 2.366
  • Overall: 2.507
  • Innovation: 2.366
  • Game Design: 2.366
  • Fun: 2.19

I think I needed more reviews. Five is difficult to really get an accurate description of. I should have put my game out more, but it didn’t help that I had a large size downloadable game. I saw alot of entries were web based.

As, for the rest of the entries;Here are the results:

  • Overall Winner: Black and White
  • Fun: Jimposters
  • Innovation: Clickhead
  • Theme: Race Track: a track of lies
  • Graphics: The tutorial
  • Audio: Mendacium

It was a fun experience. I’m glad I did it. Next time I’ll probably try to do even better.

TSP Games – Goals and Past Experience

TSP LarryLeave a comment

I started up TSP Games because i wanted to get serious with Game Development. I’ve used a lot of game engines/frameworks in the past:

  • Game Maker
  • Adobe Flash
  • HTML5/Javascript
  • Construct 2
  • RPG Maker
  • Microsoft’s XNA
  • Unity
  • Unreal Engine

I also am somewhat okay at drawing, graphic design, and 3d modelling. Those 3 are my weakest fields however, and i do want to improve on them.

Flash Games

Game Development was always a hobby of mine, the most “success” i had was with Adobe Flash. I quote the word success because it’s relative. I defined my success with it as actually fully completing games start to finish. Back when it was an active/popular technology, i did actually also make some money off of games made with it. I cannot brag however because a lot of people did, and a lot of people did make more in fact. I can’t brag about it, but i can take some pride in the completed work.

What is now know as just FGL.com, used to be FlashGameLicense.com. This was a site where flash developers could interact, upload, and sell games to publishers. I really miss these days. The game jams. The chat room. First impressions and leveling up. It was a lot of fun. Maybe i’ll do a short post on it. I also did contractor work as a flash/html5 developer. This was really cool also. I got to work on some cool projects that i’ll forever be grateful & appreciative for/of.

Not really making games….

Fast forward to around 2019. I still “make games” but i don’t really make games. What i mean is, i would make a lot of prototypes, but never finish them. I had a lot of ideas that got started, and never finished. I think there are many aspects to why they were never finished. However overall i think one reason i stopped is because i didn’t have a goal or motivation besides the fun i get from doing it.

I have done a lot of Unity prototypes, with various gameplay mechanics; but never really finished anything. Lately i switched over to Unreal Engine, and was starting on that same path for a while. However, i’m not sure where/how; i decided to make a goal and try to seriously work for it.

Goals

I don’t want to become rich from making games. I’m not trying to make some huge game development company that becomes a household name. I think my first/simplest goal at the moment is to make a game, and for someone random to tell me in person that they really enjoyed it and/or it touched them. I want to earn it though, i don’t just want it from friends or family who wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings or are just being nice.My second/third goal(s) would be to publish a game for Steam and then for Console. I have some ways to go until then. I’m still learning a lot. However, that’s what i decided on. That’s why i decided to create ThinkSleepPlay-Games.com.

I guess i still could make games without TSP. However TSP represents something solid, that i have decided upon. Ideas, Inspiration, and Motivation can be fleeting. TSP represents my goals as a game developer, and hopefully will help me stay focus.

Thanks for reading.