Drone Alone: An indoor sandbox game

My latest, Unreal Engine 4 powered project is about a home security drone
that has to defend the apartment from intruders in short, partially randomized
missions.

Overview
Drone engines and controls
The environment
Technical details

Drone Alone v0.1 release

I’d like to keep the development process transparent so thoughts, opinions
and questions are welcome.

You should maybe try to do some video footage of it. Right now your small pictures and long texts doesn’t give me much if I don’t have time to read or test it. :slight_smile:

v0.11: Tweaked Thruster engine and first person camera (“C” key).
Download

[video=vimeo;98721681]https://vimeo.com/98721681[/video]

the ambient occlusion is to die 4!

I think controlling a drone in real life would be alot different tho, If I were making this id make every wall an instant hazzard, just to try and keep up with the danger.

Oh dear I totally forgot to update this thread…
But you’re right, the drones control very very differently from real ones. I did consider the idea of making a physically correct/plausible rig but would have been a lot of work and could have hurt player experience. Now gravity doesn’t affect the drone body and the attached engines and all the movement characteristics are produced by very simple parameters.

As for the AO, well in that video that’s all Lighmass. I did come up with a medium range AO solution for the drone, to prevent it looking detached from the scene in indirectly lit areas: http://zspline.net/temp/DynamicAODemo.mp4

(Crossposting from the unreal forums.)

I’ve reached a point where I’m comfortable releasing the next version, v0.54.
It’s still low on content (only the starting room looks decent) but the game
loop works so hopefully this release will give an idea about what I’m aiming at.

This game is not meant to be a commercial product but a vessel for me to learn
the engine and experiment with unusual ideas. One such idea is the gamepad-mouse
hybrid controls: While a gamepad only control scheme is available, I strongly recommend
having the left hand on a x360 controller for analog movement while the right hand
on the mouse for looking and interactions. (Keyboard based movement technically
works but not fun.) I’ll try to get Leap Motion and Razer Hydra working as well, for
the benefit of the dozens of people who have any of those devices. :wink:

The other thing is that I really went to town with diegetic UIs: There is no HUD
or any kind of gamey menu or tutorial. All the information you need to know is part
of the game’s world, including the controls and game mechanics.
They might need some deciphering but I hope that if you read everything
carefully then you’ll learn everything you need, plus clues about the background story
and perhaps you’ll also find easter eggs. This makes the first couple of minutes play
a bit like a hidden object/room escape game. You’ve been warned.
(Just to be safe I also included the control layout in the readme.txt.)

In February I’ll start publishing articles detailing the inner workings: special effects,
materials, game logic, asset authoring, etc.
In the meantime please give the game a try and let me know what you think. :slight_smile:

Download: Drone Alone v0.54 (Windows x64)

If you’re not happy with the windowed mode and/or resolution you can start the game
with the following parameters:
DroneAlone.exe -VSync -ResX=1920 -ResY=1080 -FULLSCREEN

[video=vimeo;157336609]https://vimeo.com/157336609[/video]

Development overview

Asset authoring workflow

this is inspiring stuff. I love the breakdown of every step you took.

:slight_smile: I’m glad you liked it. Here is the next part:

The creation and use of volumetric textures.

The smoke material.

A bunch of material tricks.

A high level overview of the Effect class which handles particle systems and decals.

A couple of tips for working with Blueprints, from wire management to bullet penetration.