Unreal Engine - Flexible Combat System Features

foreign what is going on everyone I hope you are having an awesome day and you're living your best lives in this video we will be going over every single feature of the flexible combat system I'll try to go as fast as I can while giving you all the information needed but it will be a long video so I will time stamp the features so you can skip to the ones you're interested in now to clarify every single one of these features are included in the bundle asset to separate the melee range and Magic assets I will go through the features specific to each one and then I will go over features which all three packs have in common things like companions gear leveling up Etc I will leave a title in the top right for which asset the feature belongs to this tutorial will go over all the big features however to go over all the small fine details of everything would just take too long so I will be leaving out the smaller features in the system so just be aware that you're getting even more content than what I go over in this video and without further Ado let's get into these features kicking it off with the melee only system first things first let's take a quick look at the animation sets there are eight different stances you can take two-handed main hand and shield fists fists with Shield dual wield one hand left and one hand right each of these apart from fists and fists with Shield have more or less 45 animations for each one seven attacks including four light attacks two heavy and one lunge and the rest is Locomotion AKA movement including basic movement strafing and braking I won't go over each animation as this can be found in the downloadable demo file which is linked in the asset moving on basic attacks like I said there are four light and two heavy attacks when these attacks are chained together each successful attack in the sequence will increase the damage by 20 of the original damage within a range if you stop attacking or fire an attack which is at the end of its sequence the attack damage will reset next up selective attacks if a user is blocking if you attack into it your character will be staggered leaving you open to be attacked to get around this we can either use a lunge or a break block attack which will break the enemy's block and stagger them instead you can do a perfect block or Parry by blocking just as the enemy strikes you causing the attacker to be staggered but for a longer duration now we have these attacks in each weapon stance so let's take a look at these stances when we equip a weapon we will go into a weapon stance depending on which weapons are equipped then when we swap between our main and offhand our stance will automatically update based on which weapons are equipped there are eight sets of movement animations based on if the main hand and offhand are equipped with a weapon or Shield then there are unlimited attack animation possibilities as the attack animations come from the weapon so each weapon can have an entire set of attack animations specific for that weapon next up is attack movement when you fire an attack you would usually be locked in place when testing this however this felt really unnatural so to counter this I added in attack movement allowing a brief moment where you can rotate your character mid attack this is set up so when the attacker lifts one foot off the ground during an animation it allows a small pivot really making the combat feel more fluid input buffer is used for every single action in the game but it is most noticeable when chaining melee attacks for those of you who don't know what input buffer is it basically allows you to queue up your next action meaning if you try and fire an attack near the end of an attack currently taking place the system will store this attack and fire it as soon as the first attack is finished this makes combat much much smoother and is used in a lot of the top combat games dodging tax dodging attacks is pretty self-explanatory you can hold shift to Sprint to avoid attacks or spacebar to roll and Dodge attacks then we have the targeting system the targeting system will lock you to face a character when you lock on you will switch to strafe movement and you can switch targets using the Q and E keys or the GamePad right thumbstick the mask for this targeting system has gone through a few iterations so it really feels like when you switch targets you're switching to the Target you want to switch to next up stamina management when you sprint your stamina will drain over time and when you roll a fixed amount of stamina will be drained if a user is blocking stamina will be drained based on the amount of damage being received having a shield equipped will reduce the amount of stamina drained based on its block value if an attack is blocked and there isn't enough stamina to cover the attack the blocker will be staggered I decided to move away from a tax draining stamina as I really didn't want the player to be completely drained of stamina all the time slowing gameplay down I prefer the combat where users focus more on blocking attacks and managing their stamina this way next up melee assassinations if the conditions are correct AKA you are behind a Target undetected you will be able to assassinate them changing camera angles and running in execute animation killing them in one blow when it comes to AI the AI can be set to use any of the weapon Styles and their combat can be varied in numerous ways they will switch between aggressive and defensive based on how much they've attacked recently if the player is facing the incorrect way leaving them open to attacks and if the player is blocking they will try and break it when dealing with groups of AI you can set how many engage on one player at once to prevent huge amounts of AI piling up if you own either the ranged or magic pack you can give the AI multiple attack Styles meaning if they are in the outside attack group as there are too many melees attacking the target they can switch to ranged or magic combat and attack from a distance you can also customize how hard an AI is to kill by tweaking their behavior and stats I have a tutorial going over this there is some more AI features to talk about like AI stealth detection and patrolling however I will be going into this later as this has shared functionality with the other assets skip to the AI additional feature time stamp to check these out now we also have an animal spider example which uses melee combat the system has been set up so any animal can be added to the project and all you have to do is swap the animation and mesh data over in the data tables as for our spider example here we have multiple spider types with different sizes and materials despite the damage can either be physical or Elemental take a look at our fire spider for example now there are still a heap more melee features but they share some functionality with the other assets so I'll be covering them at the end next up range specific features let's jump into the animations there are 60 ranged animations total the reason why there are so many is because I have adopted an arrow drawn resting on the bow movement state so when you draw an arrow from the quiver you will go into the aiming stance if an enemy died during this period you might not want to fire the arrow if you then release your aim rather than have the arrow disappear we will go into an arrow notched state where the arrow is resting on the bow waiting to be fired aiming from this state takes less time than drawing an arrow from the quiver meaning you can shoot enemies faster feel free to check out the rest of the animations they are on the downloadable demo in the previous update of the system I used a fixed animation for when the AI was hit by an arrow this felt unnatural so in a recent update I added physical hit physics now when an enemy is hit by an arrow depending where they are shot they will have a physical reaction like a knockback okay let's talk Arrow types there are 10 different Arrow types sharp arrow which deals slightly more physical damage ice Arrow which freezes the enemy in place momentarily Frost Arrow which slows the enemy fire arrow which bursts on impact burning all Targets in the area for some damage and then burning them over time poison arrow which has a very slow stacking up damage over time debuff when it reaches its Max tick it becomes deadly electric Arrow will electrocute nearby enemies rain Arrow Will Rain arrows down from the sky explosive Arrow will deal large amounts of damage in an area pushing enemies back Madness arrow will turn enemies into allies for a short period of time and the ultimate Arrow which is an energy Arrow having no pull down from gravity and dealing massive AOE damage in an area next up we have the arrow Switcher when holding X all the GamePad left shoulder we can quickly switch between arrows that we have in the inventory allowing for smoother Combat gameplay next up Arrow quiver drawing the quiver will hold up to 15 physical arrows if the user has more than 15 arrows they will be spawned in until only 15 hours are left when 15 arrows are left every time the user draws an arrow they will draw that specific Arrow from the quiver meaning as we continue to shoot arrows our quiver slowly empties next up ranged assassinations now this is a single player only feature as it involves using slow motion which functions slightly strangely in multiplayer when undetected if a headshot is achieved a slow motion cut scene style will occur of the user shooting a slow motion Arrow at the enemy and killing them in one hit we also have a ranged aiming path we can toggle with v or the right Gamepad button which will show us the direction of the shot this changes color based on what Arrow we currently have equipped as for range AI when at a distance the AI will continuously fire arrows at the player when approached they will begin to kite away from the player while firing arrows if an ally is blocking their shot they will move to a different location where they can get a shot any of the 10 arrows can be given to the AI to use as they wish if the melee acid is owned the AI can switch to a melee attack stance if their enemy gets too close there is some more AR features to talk about like AI stealth detection and patrolling however I will be going into this later as this has shared functionality with the other assets the AI additional feature time stamp to check these out now now there are still a heap more range features but they share functionality with the other assets so I'll be covering them later OK let's jump into the magic asset there are a total of 33 magic animations ranging from movement to different spell attacks let's kick things off with the ability trainer and Spellbook any AI can be converted into a ability or skill trainer which will allow the user to train skills to use in combat training these skills cost coins and can be level restricted if wanted once trained they will appear in the Spellbook and can be used on your spellbar to use in combat as you wish Spellbook has multiple sort categories of all the Spells fire Frost poison lightning Madness and special selecting spells to switch spells you can place a spell on the Hotbar and use keybinds to swap between them I wanted the system to feel as natural as possible When selecting spells if the user didn't like selecting spells via spell Hotbar I wanted to offer another option bringing me to the radial menu spell selection this is a menu which allows you to select your spells by spinning round a wheel once selected The Chosen spell will display in the spell preview in the bottom right corner this is the default when Using a Gamepad as a Hotbar would be impossible for Gamepad controls however if you go into the control settings this option is also available for mouse and keyboard okay that's learning and selecting spells now let's dive into the actual spells themselves in total there are 56 spells with 12 different spell types the Spells are blueprinted as different types meaning making more is super easy and it's just a matter of changing over the data table info or creating a child of one of the blueprints there are six primary damage types fire which burns the target over time ice which freezes the target Frost which slows the Target electric which zaps nearby enemies poison which damages enemies over time with a slow ramping up damage and Madness which turns the enemies to attack their allies briefly all the spells that I'm about to list will apply one of these Elemental effects to their target so let's dive into it first up we have projectiles Fireball frostbolt poison bolt lightning bolt and Madness Ball then we have Channel spells flamethrower icy wins poison spray chain lightning and drain life then we have placement spells fire pit poison eruption Madness Zone ice spikes meteor and lightning strike then we have placement Channel spells which require you to stand still channeling we have acid rain blizzard and Reign of Fire then we have moving Channel spells Firestone and ice storm next up we have runes which are almost like traps when someone walks over them we have the fire rune ice rune lightning rune Madness rune and poison rune then we have teleport which teleports you to the desired location then we have Buffs which increase the stats of your character buff armor strength agility crit and intellect then we have heels heel over time heal self wants heal self Channel and heal Ally Channel then we have barriers absorbing damage and reflecting damage to the attacker we have the energy fire poison ice and lightning barrier then we have spawning Elemental Weapons these spells will require the melee or ranged asset to use spawn Frost two-handed sword spawn poison and lightning daggers spawn fire sword and shield and spawn Frost book then we have polymorph which turns the user into an animal for a certain period of time any damage will break the effect and for this we have a sheep polymorph then we have summoning spells and these spells will work but the spiders won't attack without the melee asset we have summon poison spiders summon frost spiders and summon fire spider these summoned enemies work like Companions and can be controlled but more about that later and that is all the Spells we have spell cooldowns any spell can be given a cooldown and a number animation will run counting down the number of seconds until the spell is ready again buff bar when a barrier gets created a buff is used or a weapon is spawned there will be a buff timer displaying on the left side of the screen this will track how long there is left on the spell and if it's a barrier how much left of the absorb there is as for magic AI the AI will strafe around casting spells depending on their scenario if they are low Health they will heal if an important spell isn't on cooldown they will use it and if the conditions are right they will teleport away from you there are four major types you can give to the AI fire Mage Frost Mage poison Mage and lightning mage all of which will select a range of different spells depending on the scenario the Spells the AI can choose can be changed as you see fit if the melee asset is owned the AI can switch to a melee attack stance if their enemy gets too close there is some more AI features to talk about like AI stealth detection and patrolling however I will be going into this later as this has shared functionality with the other assets to the AI additional featured timestamp to check these out now there are still some more magic features but they share functionality with the other assets so I'm gonna jump into those now let's kick it off with factions factions is just another word for team and was added in the last update all this means is that you can have more than two teams players can attack other players from different factions and likewise with AI if you want to make a game which is simply players versus AI or player versus player all you'd have is two factions factions have enabled the use of setting up Wars which means we can now have multiple teams all fighting against each other faction based I really really like this Edition the options for friendly fire for player hitting player player hitting ai ai hitting player and AI hitting AI are all toggleable let's talk about AI additional features absolutely any AI can be anything from a shopkeeper skill trainer companion enemy Etc the only requirement is giving the AI some dialogue which can trigger those events and then giving them some data to use now moving back on to the combat side AI can be given Patrol routes to follow you can set up whatever route you like and you can make them walk in circles or walk backwards and fourth the AI also has stealth detection when you walk around you will make noise if this noise is close enough to an AI they will come investigate what the sound is if they see you they will immediately begin combat and attack you if they lose sight of you they will continue chasing but follow the noise you make while running away rather than knowing exactly where you are to prevent an AI hearing you to either sneak past them or execute them you can Crouch and roll making no noise if an AI loses contact with you and they can't hear you they will walk back to their original position and carry on their patrol now let's jump into companions absolutely any AI can be a companion and a companion will follow you around taking various orders a companion can attack follow Retreat wait go here and hold inventory items for you when a companion reaches zero life they will either die and drop all the loot you have given them or they can be revived the only difference between companions is that the melee asset can use a spider companion and the melee combat features ranged uses range combat and Magic uses magic combat the companions are controlled using a radio menu to make giving them commands a simple process leveling up of course when you kill an enemy you gain experience when you reach the end of your experience bar you will level up and you can allocate stats the primary stats included in the system are Health dexterity AKA stamina wisdom AKA Mana strength for melee damage agility for range damage intellect for magic damage and crit chance there are some additional gear related stats such as bonus damage which allows armor to give extra damage then we have armor reducing physical damage magic resist reducing magical damage and block reducing stamina drained when an attack is blocked combat gear can be assigned whatever stats you like and as many as you like damage reduction is calculated in a percent based way meaning the damage won't be ignored if a large amount of Defense stat is equipped when it comes to equipment in the melee asset we have the full armor set and four melee weapons in the ranged asset we have the full armor set nine arrows and Two bows and in the magic effort we just have the full armor set as mentioned earlier stats can be assigned to any piece of gear and any piece of gear can be swapped in or out onto the player and it will interchange with the default character mesh dialog component the dialog component allows you to create conversation between you and AI any AI can be assigned dialogue and dialogue can trigger any event you like we can set what dialog line comes up next dialogue return lines meaning we can end a conversation and come back at a different point Quest dialog for when a quest is unavailable accepted and complete we can activate actors play sounds and animations give the player various responses which will lead to a different dialogue line and Trigger dialogue camera cutscenes dialogue is also covered in the save data but more about saving later the event setup so far are ending dialogue giving a quest opening a shop training an ability triggering an actor triggering a camera movement becoming a companion or accessing companion storage the dialog is set up in data tables and I have multiple examples you can use to create your own the loot component allows loot to be picked up from any actor in the game so far it's set up on AI so you can loot killed enemies and it's set up on a loot parent blueprint meaning you can create a child of the parent and attach loot to anything you like with or without animations this is currently used for looting chests dropped items and just generally looting an item from an AI loot can either be random based upon drop charts of a list of items or you can set specific items for the enemy or object to drop this makes it ideal for random enemies giving random loot or more important enemies giving specific Loot shopkeepers and inventory the inventory component is what we use for the player inventory shops and containers it generates multiple inventory slots where items can be swapped picked up dropped sorted into categories sorted by a feature and split up it's what we use for purchasing and selling items taking things and putting things into chests and the companions inventory shopkeepers are incredibly easy to set up all you need to do is give them the data table with the list of the items you want them to have starting items can also be set for the player based on which map they load into of course we also have the ability to drop items when these items are dropped a bag will spawn which items can then be picked up from if all the items are picked up again the bag will despawn tooltips are a hugely important part of any inventory system so I wanted to make sure I did them right all the stats or special damage info are displayed on the tooltip and a few extra details not only this but the position of the tooltip will change depending on what area of the screen the item is on meaning the tooltip is always in full display outlining actors the outline component allows you to give certain things an outline when the player overlaps them there are of course some conditions which need to be met but anything can be given an outline quests as requests I recently updated the system so it can create a huge number of quest variations the quests that can be made are talking to someone ending the quest talking to someone as part of an objective interacting with an object collecting an object killing an enemy reaching a location or collecting an object from a killed enemy you can have as many Quest objectives as you like and the status of these objectives will be tracked via the tracker this can be toggled on or off we can also have a compass world map minimap or minimap Compass objective tracking telling you where to go to reach the objective objectives can have individual tracking telling you exactly where the item is or average tracking giving you the general area of the objectives quests work cross-level quests can be accepted from one NPC and handed into another quests can have conditions requiring a certain level before you can accept them or to have completed a certain Quest you can have solo quests or chain quests from the same NPC quests can be started automatically when you move into a certain area and they can be completed automatically when the objectives are complete I really really went to town on this Quest system update so it pretty much has anything you can think of all the quest data is saved which we will be talking about later as well onto the compass mini map and world map any object in the entire system can be given map tracking you can select which icon you want what size it should be and how close you need to be to that object for the icon to appear this object can be displayed on the compass minimap or minimap Compass or all of them or none of them all important map tracking will be displayed on the world map in terms of world map customization you can have any world map size with secondary Maps when you enter buildings Etc I have a tutorial on how you can make your own Maps step by step accessible when you are verified so far tracking is set up for important locations such as a village or town chests friendly enemy or companion AI workbenches for crafting and Quest objectives enemy Ally and neutral units will have different tracking based upon what faction you're in tracking icons can be updated at runtime which were used for when a companion is wounded and needs Reviving in total there are 233 textures ranging from UI to icons spells radio menus items Etc ranging from all free asset packs VFX as for VFX there are 35 range VFX 5 melee VFX and 70 VFX for the magic asset all of these VFX ranging from Attack hits to spells sound menu and effects for the melee asset there are 62 sound effects 50 for the ranged and 81 for the magic asset each of these sounds are in a data table allowing you to easily swap any that you don't like as for the sound menu all these sounds are given a sound class from master volume ambient music and sound effects allowing you to change the volume of any one of these groups Dynamic camera the camera is dynamic meaning that it changes position based upon our character's actions whether in melee combat ranged aiming magic aiming crouching or using the inventory the camera will update its position this was added as it really brings the game alive when you have some small camera movements activated actors maybe from a quest or just walking up to an actor you can activate it making it run some blueprint code this can be used for doors or any interactive objects you can think of multi-slot save data as for save data almost everything you can think of is saved in the game killed AI chest loot inventory loot character transform and Camera position shopkeeper inventory companions picked up items activated actors dialogue position magic runes placed spells learned spells on Hotbar or radio menu bells that have been trained from a trainer a textile weapon drawn weapon stance character level and stats quests and quests that you are tracking an insane amount you name it if there's something you need saving it's most likely being saved to save the game you can either get a checkpoint blueprint I've made or you can save via the menu and this is where things get a bit cool when you make a save it will save an image of the save the save name the map name and the time and date of the save the save games are multi-slaught meaning there isn't one single save for the entire system you can go back to any previous saves these saves can be overwritten deleted loaded or a new save can be generated entirely when naming is safe for Gamepad a virtual keyboard will pop up as the controller lacks the ability to type I'm pretty proud of this safe system it pretty much has it all control menu the control menu allows you to change any of the key bindings at runtime it works for both keyboard and Gamepad and also allows you to change the mouse or Gamepad sensitivity while moving or aiming I've also given keyboard the option to use radio menus for spells and consumables if they prefer this over the Hotbar menus consumables and quick slots consumables or any on-use item can be put into the quick slots to be used during combat at a fast pace there are a heap of potion types from restoring health stamina and Mana to buffing the character these buff consumables are only available on the magic asset however both Hotbar or radio menu options are available for using consumables crafting you can craft items using resources in the world consuming the resource and producing the item so far we have player crafting for making simple objects like campfires we have campfire crafting which allows you to cook things to restore health and smithing crafting allowing you to produce plate armor crafting has been set up to be incredibly easy to add onto all you need to do is set which items you want to be used as resources and what items you want to be used for the result and you're done additional workbenches can also be produced where all you need to do is pick the animation anything the user should be holding and set the meshes around it super simple stuff each crafting bench can have multiple categories of things to craft take the smithing crafting for example resource collection along with crafting we have resource collection so far it's set up for Mining and wood chopping we can use a pickaxe to break rocks giving us all or a wood chopping ax to give us wood different size resources their health amount of resource dropped is all fully customizable when dealing damage you will produce combat text this combat text changes color and size based on if the attack was a critical a damage over time effect or if the attack was an elemental type such as fire or ice death when you die you either have the option to be in a wounded revived state or to just completely die if you're wounded you can be revived by other players in multiplayer but for single players you might have to end your life when you die officially in single player you will respawn at the last safe spot with all the progress you had at that point for multiplayer you will respawn at the player's star save systems aren't coded for multiplayer as there are many routes you can go down for saving in multiplayer all which will depend on what type of game you're making so I thought the best option was to reset the player which would be used for any team deathmatch Style game so team that is all the features of the system apart from a few smaller ones I skipped over I hope you are feeling more knowledgeable on what the flexible combat system has to offer please drop me a message on Discord or under this video if you have any questions and with that all said thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Beardgames

Views: 20,412

Keywords: Epic Games, Unreal Engine 4, Unreal Engine 5, UE5, unreal engine, ue4, Beard games, Beardgames, unreal engine 4, unreal engine 5, epic games, ue5, gamedev, unreal engine 2020, game dev, game developer, indie gamedev, Indie Game, Unreal engine flexible combat system, unreal engine fcs, unreal engine marketplace, ue4 fcs, ue5 fcs, ue4 flexible combat system, ue5 flexible combat system, flexible combat system, RPG starter kit, ue4 starter kit, ue arpg, ue4 arpg, ue5 arpg

Id: NvtPWbirvOI

Length: 34min 49sec (2089 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023