Unless you enter into a private arrangement with Epic Games, as a EULA user you won't have access to "proper" tech support. As not every indie developer has the kind of money to sign custom deals like that, most of us rely on other sources for insight and help. Here are just a few of … Continue reading UE4 support
Category: Unreal Engine 4
Post-processes
A post-process is, very basically, an effect that is applied to all or parts of the image of the screen at some part of the rendering process. Try to see it as a layer in Photoshop to which you apply a filter. You can have this filter apply to part of the image or all … Continue reading Post-processes
eNums
When working with variables, as the gamedev joke goes, thinking of a good name for them is one of the hardest tasks. We all have our own standards and ideas regarding this, but I generally rely a lot on UE4's categories to keep relevant variables grouped together. One thing I have been relying on a … Continue reading eNums
Localisation
Unreal Engine 4 has a very nifty localisation dashboard, which, once activated, does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to localising your game. With it you can gather all the texts in your game from folders you've selected and create a robust localisation using .PO files. There are a couple of caveats … Continue reading Localisation
Working in Unreal Engine
For any developer there is a wealth of options out there for out-of-the-box solutions. In the triple-I spheres the choice seems to be Unity or Unreal and both certainly have their detractors and supporters. Personally, I chose Unreal because it gels with me and I like BluePrint visual scripting. It may not be the right … Continue reading Working in Unreal Engine
Mini-games
Piczle Cross Adventure is mostly about following the story and playing picture crossword logic-puzzles. However, there is a little more fun and adventuring to be had outside of all that. There are some mini-games and mini-puzzles! When deciding on what kind of mini-activities to include and where I tried to stick to a few simple … Continue reading Mini-games
Books
I am a personal fan of books in adventure games as a way to offer extra information in a way that is entirely optional to the player. It is a cheap but effective way to populate the world with extra information, back story, whatever you wish. And in this case I also use books to … Continue reading Books
Dialogs
One element of the old-style RPGs we all know and love, and that persist in video games to this day, are the dialog boxes where the text appears letter by letter. Why these exist exactly is not clear. If you think about it they don't make that much sense. But they are part of video … Continue reading Dialogs
Blueprints: In-game messaging
Aside from character dialogues Piczle Cross Adventure also features some basic in-game messaging. In Piczle Colors some information was broadcast to the player through a fake Twitter-style social media post pop-up. When the player reached a milestone, unlocked a level, earned a trophy or anything like that, one of the game's characters would "tweet" at … Continue reading Blueprints: In-game messaging
Blueprints: Score-chan actor
A little technical blog post this week, as I talk through the creation of the Score-chan Actor BluePrint in Unreal Engine 4. Paper2D functionality in UE4 is not officially supported anymore and has a couple of quirks. However the Sprite and Flipbook Actor Blueprint classes are very useful and contain everything you need to quickly … Continue reading Blueprints: Score-chan actor
