For our first game jam our prompt was a “hyper-casual one button game”. I decided to use this first simple game jam as an opportunity to explore Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) as I wanted to improve my knowledge in blueprint coding to better help me with the CSGO module in future. In hindsight, I feel that Unity may have been a better engine to make Stare in, as it is more suited to 2D environments than UE5, even if they are both 3D engines.
First draft and prototyping
Before making the game, I decided to prototype it in scratch. This is because Scratch gives a very straightforward way to think about the code which will then help me better understand what I need to do in the final version of the game.
As I had never used Unreal before, starting from absolute scratch without any research or tutorials would have not ended well. Because of this, I found three videos that I intended to use for the game, but of which I only used two. The first video was a video on how to make a basic clicker (UE5 BP GURU, 2023), I followed this, which helped me to understand Unreal a lot better than my previous understanding. As a one button clicker game has limited capabilities in being unique I decided to use a flip flop to change the image of the button when pressed. For this I used a video that showed an alternation between two images (KeySmash Studios, 2020) and used my own knowledge to alter it to alternate between four, this was done by setting the button image to a new image depending on whether the button was pressed or not pressed.
Packaging and issues
Most of the issues that came with this code come from packaging the file. At first the game did not have a package at all, of which I found out that the problem was where I had attempted to change the toolbar widget for Stare from the default Unreal logo to an unused 5th piece of button art. However in doing this, It caused the packaging to crash each time. By reverting it back to the default it was able to package again. However, once packaged, another problem presented itself as you could not press the button. After looking into why I had this issue, I realised it was because I had originally set up this game as a mobile game and so now when opening the game it does not work with mouse press, and only works with touchscreen. These are mistakes that can easily be fixed and won't be repeated in future.
Reflection
In reflection, Stare has given me a good amount of technical challenges for a first project while still being able to create a finished project. I got to use a large amount of important techniques for UE5 for the first time, like using functions for the text bindings and casting blueprints to utilise variables in other places. My goals of improvements after this game would be to build upon the foundations of what I have learnt in this game to create better blueprints in future.
Biography
KeySmash Studios. (2020, October 31). How to Change a Button’s Image on Click | Unreal Tutorial. https://youtu.be/TENH-OmlbSI?feature=shared
UE5 BP GURU. (2023, May 9). Making A Cookie Clicker Game—Unreal Engine 5 Mobile Game Tutorial. https://youtu.be/0feiF2MZk4I?feature=shared