Hi all,

Here I will give my thoughts on one of my favorite projects, a year after development.

The Lonesome Wagon is somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine: the low-poly art, nonsensical physics , chaotic interactions, they add up to this intriguing prototype, resembling of what 'Red Dead Redemption' would be if it was made by a second year game dev student. Ahem. (I have yet to play Red Dead Redemption, but I assume there are similarities)

This was my first experience with unreal engine and was entirely built using blueprints. Since then I've been reading up on proper c++ with Unreal, but I did learn a lot about the inner workings of the engine.

My goals for this project were mostly focused on the factions and the wagon. Much as a previous assignment we were challenged to build a game based on two words, and mine were in fact 'factions' and 'wagons'. 

But before I touched upon any of that I chose to get a proper shooting mechanic working. With some basic 3D models and the in game materials, I created a few characters, some rudimentary models for guns and made them fire. I found that making the bullets fire of unrealistically slow, with the necessary smoke effects, made fire fights look impressive and lengthy.  Resulting in dragged out shootouts you can expect from an old western. Great!

After that I went to work on a  functional horse cart. I quickly decided I would make two parts, with the horse being able to turn and indicate the direction while the cart smoothly followed in its tracks. Sadly due to the limitations of my resources, I wasn't able to acquire a rig for the horse and cart, resulting in the current abomination. Yet I found that with the necessary sound effects and movement, I could bring to life the experience of riding a cart, even with the static model I created.

the AI was the interesting bit. I had messed around with AI quite a few times, I had used vector math and navigation meshes. But Unreal was the first engine in which I made use of Behavioral trees and a perception system.  By combining both of them, individual characters could, by following a few rules under certain conditions, make the West come to life. 

Due to the scalability of all factions, once the AI was finetuned for a single character, all characters of all factions knew exactly who they should be shooting at, and who  to sell their wares too.

I'm particularly fond of the reputation system I was able to build into the game. Making so that allegiance is not predetermined at the start of a session. Currently the player is free to confront any faction in the way of there choosing. And it's that freedom that I wanted to obtain when I committed to creating a game including several factions.

I must admit, this is probably the project I spent the most time playing myself, after 'finishing' it. And I hope to pick it up once in a while with a friend for good fun .

P.S. I added local multiplayer, because what good is fun if you can't share it with someone? 

Thank you for your interest!

Quentin