Introduction

Navis Sideralis is an action RPG Rogue-like shooter game currently in development. After almost a year, a first prototype of Navis Sideralis has been made. The version is named Alpha Andromedae 0.1.0 and is available for Windows 64 bits. This prototype is made for historical purpose. It is not intended to be used as a proof of concept but to show a work in progress.

In this version, you control an UE4 mannequin and you shoot enemy robots with a grenade launcher. You score one point per enemy killed and you die if the enemies touch you. The level is very simple: just one platform floating in space.

How it was done

I started the project in Unreal Engine 4 with a C++ blank template. All the base classes are made in C++ and customized with Blueprints.

The project started with Unreal Engine 4.10. It has been upgraded to UE 4.13 now.

I’ve used HacknPlan to manage the project. It’s a free online project management software dedicated to game developers.

What is done

The C++ classes

• NSGameInstance
• Gameplay/NSGameMode
• GamePlay/NSGameState
• Player/NSPlayerController
• Player/NSPlayerState
• Characters/NSBaseCharacter
• Characters/Player/NSHeroCharacter
• Characters/NPC/NSBotCharacter
• AI/NSAIController
• AI/NSSpawner
• UI/NSHUD
• UI/NSUIDebugChangeSensitivity
• UI/ProjectSettingsBluprint
• Weapons/NSWeapon
• Weapons/NSProjectile
• Weapons/NSDamageType
• Weapons/Effects/NSExplosionEffect

In future articles, I may describe these classes.

The Blueprints

• BP_SkyBox
• BP_Spawner
• GamePlay/HordeGameMode
• AllLevels/BP_GameInstance
• Characters/Hero/BP_Hero
• Characters/AI/BP_BotCharacter
• Characters/AI/BP_AIController
• UI/BP_HUD
• Weapons/BP_GrenadeLauncher
• Weapons/BP_Grenade

The SkyBox

I’ve made a skybox using the software Spacescape. With Spacescape, I could create a texture of a nebula and use it in a material on a SkySphere.

The BP_SkyBox blueprint rotates the material of the SkySphere based on a RotationSpeed variable.

The Enemy Bot

The Bot Character is a UE4 Mannequin with a base color red. It is controlled by a simple AI Controller (BP_AIController) which just moves the bot toward the first player. This will be improved later using BehaviorTree.

In the current level, the bots are spawned in spawners (BP_Spawner). This blueprint has variables specifying the wave size and a range for delay between spawns. The spawner asks the GameMode the modified number of bot to spawn. The GameMode checks with GameInstance the current number of bots and returns a value based of the max number of bots wanted.

Weapons

The current weapon is a GrenadeLauncher which spawns grenades (BP_Grenade) of class NSProjectile. This is one type of weapon. In future versions , I will create other kind, such as InstantWeapon.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Writing this article, I realize that there are many features I’ve made, that I should have described in an article while making them. such as the Spawner, the Weapon and the Characters. I will try to write an article each week to keep following the work in progress.

Next article will be about the new female character.