Blueprints College Work Games Unreal Engine

Taiji Commodore

Overview

Name: Taiji Commodore
Genre: RTS
Roles: Lead Programmer
Project Type: College
Project Duration: 4 months
Software: Unreal Engine 5
Language: Blueprints

<a href="https://scottdotio.itch.io/taiji-commodore">Taiji Commodore by SCOTTdotIO</a>

Controls

I coded controls to allow the player to move the camera around the space. To rotate the camera you press Q and E, to zoom you use the scroll wheel and to pan the camera you can either use WASD, middle mouse click to drag the camera or edge scrolling depending on what you have set in the settings. I also added code that make sure the camera can adapt to changes in height in the map.

I added in settings to allow the player to customise to their preferences. There are separate sensitivity settings for panning up/down or panning left/right. You can change between the 3 pan controls: WASD, drag and edge. As well you can change the speed of the spin and zoom. Speed and sensitivity settings are simultaneously controlled by a user text input box and a slider.

Base Mechanics

There are two resources which are used to build everything in the game. You can gather them by building resources generators on resource spots. Each resource has a dedicated resource generator that can only be built on its resource spot.

Units are controlled with a behaviour tree and queues. They have one queue to hold tasks and another to hold actor targets. Movement is the most basic task you can set your unit to perform. First you select the unit by left clicking on it then you can right click to tell it to move. If you shift right click instead it will add the item to the end of the queue allowing you to queue up multiple tasks for your units.

Units and Structures

Engineers have a bonus task, they can build structures. Once you have selected the engineer the HUD, at the bottom of the screen, is filled with all the structures you can build. Left click the icon and then choose where to build it. You can also tell engineers to help with building units or structures with right clicking on an incomplete build.

Factories can build units. They work the same as engineers but can’t help with other builds and can’t move.

Tanks are mobile units that can attack enemies. They will automatically shoot enemies once they are in range.

Turret are immobile structures which can be built for defence. Like tanks they will shoot enemies that come in range of them.

Resource generators can only be built on resource spots. Once built they will generate resources for you to build more units and structures.