A Modern Kind of Problem news - Table Top Fighters

I was assigned to do this project by my college, I'm a second year on a Games Development course with Pulse Recording College in Dublin, Ireland. My focus has predominantly been on programming but I have a very solid understanding of all aspects of Game Development from 3D Modelling to audio.

Naturally when the chance arose to work on Table Top Fighters I was delighted with the challenge this would present me, as well as challenges I would set for myself. I had worked on 2D Animation during the recent Global Game Jam, and was looking forward to applying it to 3D Animations, particularly as we captured them all with Mocap.

So the first real question for myself, Unreal 4 or Unity 4.6

I have limited experience with Unreal 4, but I'm aware of all the fantastic documentation Epic has out there and I did own a license. This was prior to Unreal 4 being made available to all without the subscription.

I began work on the project, dedicating a day to trying to make stuff work, and after 24 hours I came up with something like this.

This was using Unreals default 3rd person controller.

We live in a wonderful age for indie game devs. So many powerful tools are at our disposal for a minimum cost. A modern kind of problem, but one that allows creativity.

I needed to be honest with myself. It had taken me a long time just to get the camera to float where I wanted it and the blueprint system seemed quite Alien to me, for a project of this scope, I was going to be much more efficient at doing it in Unity as it was a tool I'm very familiar with.

Sadly when I pulled in our basic stuff it didn't look quite as good as it would have in Unreal.

Then Unity 5 came out.

As always, our models were going through iterations about the same time as Unity 5 was released. I ported the whole project immediately and the game took a step up in how well it looked.

Upon each iteration or re-rigging of the models they improved, as did other elements which came into play, such as our UI and audio.

Our battle arena also went through significant upgrades, as the mechanics are all coming together. The animation is not what I found the hardest to work with, so far its been the colliders and the Physics system. Everyday they improve though.

The particle system has been fun to work with, and the basic systems we need are in place and fully functional.

I hope to get a demo to the IndieDB community once the colliders and weapons systems have gone through some testing, we as a team would love feedback!

- Conor, Lead Programmer.