Design and development of videogame mechanics with Unreal Engine 4

Abstract

This document presents the technical proposal for the project performed, which has consisted in the design and the implementation of videogame mechanics while performing a research work to discover how videogames are developed using the game engine Unreal Engine 4, developed by Epic Games and the current game engine used for this project. The steps that will be followed are: 1) The design of the objects and their behaviour, including game mechanics and interaction between the player and other objects. 2) The development of the designed features. Even so, this project does not intend to develop an entire videogame. The interest is focused on discovering how the engine works, how the communication between the objects in the game scene is managed, what are the possibilities for a programmer and how to use them to create believable actions and effects. This work consists mainly in programming tasks, but also some animation tasks in order to create a visual coherence with the actions performed. The main inspiration to create the initial design is the horror genre of the videogames, which commonly presents slow movement, great amount of interaction with the environment (implementing puzzle elements to achieve goals) and event-based behaviour. The development stage includes C++ programming, Blueprint Visual Scripting programming, asset searching, modification of downloaded assets as animations and skeletons with Maya, composition of combined animations and creation of particles.