[Dev Log] Generic Slenderman Clone Part 1 // UE5 & Blueprint

The next game on my list for the 12 months of games challenge is a straight up Slenderman clone. Slenderman is without a doubt one of my favourite games of all time due to the simplicity of the premise; you are chased around a forest by an A-Posing faceless man in a suit whilst collecting 8 items. I was always more of a console gamer and so I didn't know anything about the "indie" games scene and then 2013 hit with Slenderman and now I can't go back; indie horror games are my favourite genre.

So to ease myself into UE5 (and remind myself of how the editor works); I decided to make a straight up Slenderman clone. Once I've completed this version, I will then remake it using C++ instead of Blueprint.

In total there are 5 stages to this game, in this first part I'll be:

1. Creating the "map" and first person mode
2. Putting notes on the "map"
3. Displaying the collected notes count
4. Adding a way to collect notes
5. Adding "slenderman"
6. Creating a titlescreen and endscreen
7. Creating an executable

So there will be a full "game" by the end of this stage (it helps keep me motivated) but when I say "map" I mean the default 3rd person map and "notes" will literally just be textured cubes from the starter content.

1 - Creating the "map" and first person mode

I've just synced UE5 at work and I did the "Your First Hour in UE5" tutorial from the Unreal Learning portal but other than I've not done much. I will say I like the interface upgrade and the darker colours. For this project I'm using the Early Access 2 version.

I started off with the third person project using Blueprint and starter content. My game will be imaginatively called "Default Unrealman".

I cleaned up the scene a bit by removing the text and moved things into folders. 

I added a hacky "line trace" to my character which is simply just a collision box shaped to a rectangle coming off the players face. It's not very efficient but I'm not making Halo so it doesn't really matter.

"True" first person mode is achieved my simply attaching the camera to the head socket and moving it so it's on the head. The rectangle trace is also connected to the head socket. I set the camera to move with the pawn rotation and then set the pawn rotation to use controller yaw; this way the camera doesn't do a 360 spin around the player but moves as the player moves.

2 - Putting Notes on The Map

I created a new blueprint actor for my notes which simply contains a cube with a texture on it from the starter content. The note contains a text variable with what to display on interaction and a collision box, I then placed 8 of them on the map.

3 - Displaying the Collected Notes Count

For this, I needed to override the current game mode. I created a new HUD class called BP_GameHUD. Then created a widget called W_GameHUD. BP_GameHUD contains a reference to W_GameHUD and a function that allows access to this widget.

With that out of the way, I added some text to the Widget and then added the widget to the viewport.

Currently this isn't interactable but it's simple enough to set up getters and setters in the widget to change this text.

4 - Collecting the Notes

This involved adding the usual "Press E to use" text to the screen whenever the player is looking at a note.  I added a new text component to the hud widget and 2 functions to set and stop displaying it.

Then I gave the note blueprint a reference to the hud widget and called these functions using when overlap begins and ends on the collision box. Now when playing the game it appears in the middle of the screen, directly where the player is looking and disappears when the collision stops. 

To "collect" the note, it removes the actor from the game when E key is released and to update the HUD widget, I added an int to BP_GameHUD and a function to increment which then updates the hud widget.

5 - Adding "Slenderman"

My version of slenderman is an A-Posing default unreal man:

UE5 has a couple of new components that you can add to actors called "InterpToMovement" and "RotatingMovement", however I'm going to do it the old old-fashioned way:

This will get replaced with a behaviour tree later on but for now it's fine.

Terrifying.

6 - Creating a Titlescreen and Endscreen

The most involved part of the process...at least there are widgets this time and I can just drag and move them around instead of manually typing in positions. Bless the editor. I hate doing UI stuff.

After much faffing about creating a new game mode for the menu screen and setting input controls for each screen. I finally had a "working" slenderman game....I mean technically it's a game.

7 - Creating an Executable

This was the most different part of the process from using UE4. Turns out I still haven't installed the Windows SDK on my pc; I've had it for almost a year now. The package and cook is in a completely different place as well and documentation links are broken. Very cool Epic.

For future reference, you need to install the specific .NET framework from here:

https://aka.ms/dotnet-core-applaunch?framework=Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App&framework_version=3.1.0&arch=x64&rid=win10-x64

Then, just when I thought it was building, I needed to disable the Quixel Bridge plug-in due to some random shared pointer being null. I will say though Quixel did fix it back in October, I just haven't updated the Engine...

But eventually I got my application:

It's beautiful. 

It might not look like much but it's basically the bare bones of the game. Make it night time and add a spooky forest and it's pretty much done....OK maybe not completely. The next stage is to add the flashlight and sprint mechanics and make it night time. Then in Stage 3 I'll create the forest.

LP's 12 Months of Games // Alien Invaders Part 2 [C++ & SFML]

Completed Independently

In part 1, I got a basic game loop going and you could shoot invaders as they descended upon you. In part 2 there's now shields, sounds and a flying saucer!

It's almost there but there's still some bugs and finishing touches such as:

• Background music. The famous "dun dun dun dun" has not been implemented as I haven't managed to recreate the sounds to a satisfactory standard and increasing the step as you destroy invaders is a task in itself as I'm not a sound engineer person.
• The arcade style surrounding and background as well as the CRT shader. A colleague showed me a different way to implement the disintegration effect using shaders so I'll be implementing that as well as messing around with some other shader effects.
• 2 Player mode
• Demo mode
• Taito Cop Easter Egg
• Different Invader shots. Right now they're all just using 1 shot and will fire every couple of seconds or so. That needs changing.
• The flying saucer is every 3 seconds which isn't correct. I haven't figured out from the assembly yet though what the actual timing mechanic is for it to appear.
• The Credit Inserted and Start Game animations haven't been created.
• The states don't really play with each other nicely
• Bugs

I'm shocked that the original developer managed to create this game in a year but not just the game; he also built the hardware that the game ran on. This is a level of engineering that I can only dream of reaching. 

Result:

It doesn't look like much but I'm quite proud of myself for sticking to a project and getting it to a somewhat finished state. That in itself is an achievement for me. I am feeling a bit burnt out on SFML though having done 5 back-to-back projects with it and I'm looking forward to a bit of Unreal and Blueprints for the next project.

This is far from over though. I have a new project now to recreate Space Invaders with as many APIs as I can. Making it that first time though is the kicker; now it's almost out of the way, I can focus on refining the code and then re-implementing it using other libraries.

Code:

https://github.com/l-paz91/AlienInvaders2/tree/main/AlienInvaders2

The code is quite honestly, awful in places lol. But I don't care. I think that's one of the hardest lessons I've learnt whilst doing this exercise; just do it and worry about how shit your code is when it's done. I do enjoy refactoring and optimising but they don't help you get a project finished.

LP's 12 Months of Games // Zombie Arena [C++ & SFML]

Completed Via Tutorial

Another tutorial finished from "Beginning C++ Games Programming" by John Horton. 

Please do not use this book to learn C++. Some things boggled the mind when following this tutorial like:

• variable + 0 (???)
• Creating a header, only for it to contain functions that are neither marked as extern or static or within a namespace. One function returns a raw pointer which is deleted somewhere else...
• #pragma once #ifndef #define combo (pick one. I like ifndef define because it's slightly more portable).
• Constant float to int/int to float with no casting or safety in place. For example, he'll choose to make an int variable but only use it with a float???
• Singleton classes. Don't get me wrong, I like singletons but this is not the best way to do it. The constructor should be private with copy and assignment deleted. There should instead be a static public function that declares and returns a reference to a static instance of the class to ensure it is destroyed properly.
• Member functions that don't modify are not marked as const nor is anything returned by const reference if it can be.
• Initialises class members in the constructor body instead of via initialiser list; this causes the member variable to be default initialised and then assigned again.
• Const member variables are initialised in the class body definition??? static const integral types yes, but otherwise for linking sake, it's best to initialise const members in the constructor.

One thing that really bugged me was all the event handling for input was done in main. I am a firm believer that objects should handle input events themselves. That said, the author promised at the end of this game that there will be better code handling in the next two projects so I'll hold further judgement until I finish the book.

Finished Result:

I was having fun with this one by the end. I quite like "Demakes" and I think this style would make a good Left 4 Dead demake. The hitboxes on the zombies are a bit janky and I'd like some background music but other than that I'm actually pretty happy with this one. 

It taught some solid SFML concepts that I can take away to personal projects. I'm itching now to start Tetris or my own version of pong to apply what I've learnt but I'm going to finish the book first as he mentioned using more advanced sound features, particle effects an split-screen in the upcoming chapters.

Code:

https://github.com/l-paz91/ZombieArena

There's a code drop for this one as I feel I changed it enough. Assets haven't been included for copyright reasons but here is the authors repository:
https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Beginning-Cpp-Game-Programming-Second-Edition

LP's 12 Months of Games // Basic Pong [C++ & SFML]

Completed Via Tutorial 

This is the second project taught in "Beginning C++ Games Programming" by John Horton. The two chapters mainly focused on teaching classes and multiple files so the actual pong game was lacking.

Finished Result:

The "bat" is far to quick and moves off the sides. The ball scrapes along the bat or becomes stuck resulting in ridiculous scores and there's no states like a menu or game over. The basics are there though but I'll be improving this over the next week to add better collision, sounds and "english" (where the ball bounces off the bat with a certain velocity) as well as multiplayer.

I did finally learn how to use Github with Visual Studio though in this exercise. It's quite painless once you get used to it. I still prefer Perforce but for project sharing/collaboration, Github is the clear winner. That won't stop me from using Perforce though.

Code:

I modified the code in the book however it's mainly from the tutorial so I won't be posting. The next Pong game I will though.

LP's 12 Months of Games // Timber!! [C++ & SFML]

Completed via Tutorial

I started a book called "Beginning C++ Games Programming" by John Horton. It's aimed at those who've never used C++ before and teaches you how to make 5 games using SFML. I thought this would be the perfect introduction to SFML as I could ignore the bits about C++ and focus on the library. I was right.

I've just completed the first game; Timber!! I've used sfml once, many years ago to try and make pong. At the time I had been learning cpp for about 6 months and found it utterly confusing. This time, thanks to experience with FLTK and DirectX it was more "ah so this is how I get a sprite, this is how I draw it, this is how you poll events" etc.

I'd say this project would take a while for a complete C++ beginner but it was perfect to showcase on how to get to grips with sfml. I'm looking forward to the other 4 games and learning other sfml features.

As for the tutorial itself; I don't like the amount of hardcoded numbers and the fullscreen game (I prefer windowed when debugging). All the textures rely on the screen being a certain size as well but I can remedy that in my own projects. Also, the author is extremely bias to arrays and OOP with the code being very java-ry. I wouldn't recommend the book for first time C++ programmers as I feel it would teach some bad habits; make sure you use Principles & Practice for cpp.

Finished Result:

The assets were all provided by the book and I made a few adjustments to the code but other than that it's pretty much what the book gives.

I will say I'm extremely surprised by just how easy SFML actually is to use. I'm already formulating how to get a tetris game working or match 3 from just doing this simple game. So I guess it was a good tutorial overall.

Code:

A code drop will not be provided for this one as it's mainly from the book.

Challenge // LP's 12 Months of Games

So I'm an engine programmer...I like optimisation and tool creation. I'm at my happiest when making/doing things that makes gameplay programmers lives easier. That's mainly because I find the more gameplay aspects of games, well, tedious. 

The problem with this mindset though is that ultimately it makes me a terrible engine programmer. I can't make the best game engines if I don't know how games work. Like I know how a game works in the logical sense of how a computer understands it but I don't understand the nuances of level design, timing, AI, suspense, re-playability, state, message dispatching, entity systems, stat balancing...the list is endless. Hats off to gameplay programmers; you are wizards to me.

That's why, I'm designating the next 12 months as the year of games (it was originally supposed to be a new years resolution but I always fail at those so I'm starting early to try and trick myself). I'm going to attempt to make a game every month; no matter how shitty or simple; I want to make a game that has a start, a middle and an end. I've already got some ideas like:

• Slenderman clone in UE4 (I already half started this in 2020 and then got bored when I had to actually make the game)
• Tetris
• Solitaire
• Pong
• Space Invaders
• Doom
• Five Nights At Freddy's clone
• Super Mario World clone (not the entire game...jesus like 1 or 2 levels)
• Game Jam entry (probably Ludem Dare or Haunted PS1)
• Bejewelled clone
• Minecraft??

I want a good mix between styles, like shoot-em-up, platform, 3D, strategy, etc. Also I need them to be well documented so I don't get caught up in deciding what game mechanics to put in. I've noticed that if there is too much choice, I get overwhelmed and abandon the project. I think that's why I'm such a terrible gameplay programmer; the ability to do anything is too much and I just want very specific projects like; implement rotating images. Add animated gif support.

For the more classic games I'd like to just use C++ and DirectX or FLTK/SFML and then Unreal for the 3D games...I might even make slenderman in UE5 as I've not even opened that thing yet.

I'm saying 12 games because I feel that's more realistic, however if I feel like making something new every weekend I'm not going to stop myself. I'll update this post with games as I finish (or not finish them) and I'm excited to see how I've done by November 6th 2022.......

EDIT:

- Timber!! [C++ & SFML] (Nov 2021)

- Basic Pong [C++ & SFML] (Nov 2021)

- Zombie Arena [C++ & SFML] (Nov 2021)

- Thomas Was Late [C++ & SFML] (Nov 2021)

- Alien Invaders Basic [C++ & SFML] (Dec 2021)

- Alien Invaders Part 2 [C++ & SFML] (Jan 2022)