It’s been a month since I’ve shown what is going on in the main town. A lot of little things have been coming together to start adding some life into the town. For those who missed part two, there is even a short video in that post that was created using Unreal Engine 4’s sequencer at the end.

I am still working on the next two big systems on my roadmap. This includes 4 playable classes and a questing system. Due to a lot of things that end up being intertwined with these two major features a lot of things that are going to be in the town can start to be shown off.

Player’s Bank

The player now has a chest at spawn in the main town for storing items. It’s holding a couple of test items in it for now. Player storage is always an important thing so it’s been something I’ve been wanting to add to the main town for a while now.

I am expecting there to be around 1k different items in the game by the time I’m done. This is by no means the final version of the bank as I will more than likely add several tabs the player will be able to buy to increase how much they can store. Along with updating UI element a tad for the color and other things.

It’s at least great to have a base of this down and working. It’s hard to get a full scale of how I want it to be until I’m further along and get a feeling for it.

Character Sheet

As a part of making the four classes I’m going have in this game playable they need a character sheet. This overall was a decent test of my item system as far as having enough variables set up on the items to make sure everything I want to be covered is.

The first screenshot above is just a rough idea I had in how I wanted the character sheet to look. Since nothing was exact there have been some slight alterations to it. Playing with UI elements and setting them up as far as using vertical boxes, horizontal boxes, borders, size boxes and a bunch of other things has been interesting. I’m sure I’ll learn better ways as I get more experience.

I’m decently happy with my current result. I did end up dropping the two artifact slots since I could not find a way to make it look decent or they were not holding in the place where I want to put them. Those are maxed level end game items anyways so I can resolve that another day.

All that stats in the different panels in the character sheet are also updating based on which items are equipped from my item data table. I am hoping to reduce down at a later date the 44 columns of data each item has.

I’m still playing off some theories in how I think my entire inventory and item system is going work. So far I’m accounting for just about everything I need on individual items to handle things like being equipped to the character in the proper slot and stats from that item.

The more details page still needs to be built. On that page, I’m going to have some lore that I have not written yet. Along with some other stats and anything else I could not fit on the main character sheet.

Next up I will be working on the skill trees for the different classes. I will more than likely be playing around with that off and on over the next couple of weeks. Along with adding a skill point and stat points for leveling up to the character sheet.

NPC Teleporter

Since players are going need to get from the main town into whatever dungeon they want to run I’m going be handling this with an NPC. I felt this was the best way to handle it instead of having 25 individual portals all around the town.

Two different NPCs will handle this. The first one will handle the non-trail arena maps. Another NPCs in a different spot in town has the remaining maps for the player to get access to.

There are still some things I need to add that will come in the future. Such as checking the player meets a minimum requirement for entering a dungeon. Those pre-requests have not been fully implemented yet and are expected to be once I work on questing for the first 15 zones more.

The cool thing is the conversions with the NPC to get to the map you want is all being handled in a Behavior Tree which is something Unreal Engine 4 has. It makes it quite easy to keep things organized and test to make sure the 31 different option inputs from the player while going through the text are working.

The bold path in the tree is just one example of it going through everything to a result. As the player clicking on different options to navigate to the map they want.

Meanwhile, this is what the player is seeing from their point of view on the screen. I will more than likely make several UI changes as with a few things I’ve been working on. That will come at a later date after I have a lot more things in place and can start working towards a more final version.

Shopping At NPCs

The main town also now has a couple of shops for the player. There are two main functions these are going to serve. The first is providing some very basic items for doing different things. The second is providing a place if the player chooses to sell items they don’t want for gold.

The town is set up with a bunch of homes all around it that will serve as places for the NPCs to be around. Some of them have fenced in the yard while others are smaller homes closer together. So I could go in and set it up a little more like a shop in some of the yards if I feel the need for it.

For these basic items, they are pulling the name, icon, and gold cost amounts from a data table. The only thing I’m considering adding is the actual value for selling an item. For now, I just have it set up to reduce the item’s value price by 50% and have that be what an item sells for.

Some of the shops around town are selling basic items that don’t have a current use. Crafting is something not worked on yet. It’s however quite easy to replace what is being offered in a shop on my end and I’ve been working on naming items here or there when I can for different aspects of the game.

Naturally, since these items are unusable they are going be sold back to the NPC for a 50% loss.

Questing

A large amount of the NPCs in the main town are going be quest givers. There are two different branches of quests. There is the main questing which the player will need to work on to unlock higher level dungeons. Along with daily quests that give out some rewards for completing whatever task it's looking for.

Questing is still something I need to work on over the next two months a little here or there. Hopefully, by then I’ll have it done for my first 15 maps.

Final Thoughts

The main town is starting to shape up quite nicely. There is still a lot of a thing to be done and improved on. I’m enjoying how this place is turning out. When I can I sometimes just load up this map and have it running as my backdrop when I’m working on different elements of the game.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Screenshots are from Unreal Engine 4.

Game Development | Main Town Part 3