Paintball Maze Project Prototype
This solo project was a simple testing project for trying different features in the UNREAL Engine using both C++ and Blueprints. We needed to have a randomly colored paintball splat system, the projectiles had to match the colors of the splats, a drawable whiteboard paint system, "fog of war", and a variety of other features. How we implemented them into a game was up to each person, so I designed a simple maze using destructible meshes. The objective for the player is just to reach the end of the maze to travel to the next level, which if implemented, would have been more complex and continued to get more and more difficult as each level was passed.
There were some difficult aspects to this project, but the main obstacle in which I had to overcome was not knowing all of the specific C++ calls and functions associated with the UNREAL Engine. I have used C++ for many years, but not knowing what particular methods were used was difficult at first. The documentation available online for this helped tremendously.
Video demo
The original version of the project had some issues which I took care of when polishing it afterwards. Some of these issues included paintball splats not rotating properly, so they were always pointing "upwards", another issue was with the destructible walls. The problem here was that the player could simply run into the walls and they'd break. Obviously, this was not really intended. In order to fix this, I added a collision box around it and set the collision to block everything *except* projectiles so that the player could still shoot the wall inside the collision box area.
The fog that can be seen hovering above the ground in the video is illuminated by the player as they walk around. A radius around the player is cleared so the player can move through it easier.
Since this was a maze based game, the fog was more of just a proof of concept.
The destructible wall mesh with an invisible collision box surrounding it
Collision settings for the box collision surrounding the destructible wall mesh
Continuing work on the project, I chose to add more color to the environment, make shadows more impactful and adjusted lighting, I added zoom and crouch functionality, and made the paintball splats rotate upon being created so it always looked unique. I also made the sounds be 3D positional-based. Splats were quieter the further away and so were the explosions from the walls destructing.
A shot of the maze
This project, being a testing grounds, helped teach me a lot of different things such as using C++ in the engine, 2D graphics, render targets, creating materials with special effects, and a lot more. Even though it was merely a prototype, it showcases some of the skills and tricks I've learned over time.
