Unreal Engine 5 - Gameplay Ability System - Top Down RPG (Udemy.com)

This is the most comprehensive Unreal Engine course available. If you want to learn how to architect a fully-functional RPG game, this course will give you the ability to do so with an expandable code base, architected with AAA quality code. If you've ever wondered where to draw the line between C++ and Blueprints, this is the course for you. If you've ever wanted to create an RPG complete with a stats system, abilities, leveling up, spells, attributes, menus, all while keeping your code base clean and following best practices, this is the course for you. If you want to step up your Unreal Engine development capabilities and better understand the inner workings of the engine, this course is for you. If you have plans to make your own serious game with interconnecting systems, involving attributes, abilities, level ups, enemies and AI, and coded for multiplayer, this is the course for you!

In this course, we will create a top-down RPG style game, filled with systems architected using Unreal Engine's built-in Gameplay Ability System (GAS). This is where you will learn how to architect a shipped game, and code it expertly so it can be easily expanded, upgraded, and maintained. We follow SOLID coding principles, and balance the Blueprint/C++ ratio in a way that AAA shipped games do, such as Fortnite. My experience with AAA shipped game code, as well as consultations with industry veteran developers has allowed me to reveal to you the way a real shipped game's code base looks like. If you've ever wondered how much of a game can be kept in Blueprint versus C++, look no further. This course is the answer.

NOTE: This course involves programming in C++, which involves the use of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) such as Visual Studio, Rider, or VSCode. The IDE used in this course by me will be Rider, but this IDE is not a requirement for students to follow the course. You can use any IDE of your choice.

The assets in this game project were made specifically for this course, and will be provided in an asset pack. This includes:

• Characters, including Aura, the main character, as well as enemy characters including Goblin Warriors, Goblin Rangers, a Goblin Shaman, Red and Black Demons, the Ghoul, and a Shroom.

• A modular dungeon pack that can be pieced together to make basic dungeons

• A waypoint shrine and obelisks

• Particle Niagara System Effects, including explosions, level up effects, slingshot rocks, hit impacts, electricity beams, fireballs, fire bolts, flames, stars for stun effects, and more!

• Sound effects for enemies, footsteps, spells, and more!

• Textures for the HUD, including high-quality buttons, frames, dynamically-animated spell globes, progress bars, XP bar, and more!

• Full animation sets for Aura and all enemies

• Much more!

In this course, we will be covering the following topics:

• Setting up a Top-Down Project from scratch

• Enemy and item selection with outline effects

• Proper use of OOP and inheritance to create a character class hierarchy

• Intro to the Gameplay Ability System and the core classes that comprise it

• Custom Gameplay Ability System Components and Attribute Sets, and how to replicate Attributes

• All important settings for all GAS classes and components

• How to use Attributes for player stats, including Primary Attributes:

  • Strength (increases physical damage)

  • Intelligence (increases magical damage)

  • Resilience (increases Armor and Armor Penetration)

  • Vigor (increases Max Health)

• Secondary Attributes, based off of primary attributes and other custom variables:

  • Armor (reduces damage taken, improves Block Chance)

  • Armor Penetration (ignores percentage of enemy Armor, increases Critical Hit Chance)

  • Block Chance (change to cut incoming damage in half)

  • Critical Hit Chance (chance to double damage plus critical hit bonus)

  • Critical Hit Damage (bonus damage added when a critical hit is scored)

  • Critical Hit Resistance (reduces critical hit chance of attacking enemies)

  • Health Regeneration (amount of Health restored every 1 second)

  • Mana Regeneration (amount of Mana restored every 1 second)

  • Max Health (maximum amount of Health obtainable)

  • Max Mana (maximum amount of Mana obtainable)

• Vital Attributes - things like Health and Mana, which are dependent on all the other attributes

• Gameplay Effects - classes in the GAS system used to apply changes to attributes

• Gameplay Tags - an essential part of GAS, which allows us to identify qualities, attributes, abilities, character classes, and any other thing we can imagine

• Game UI - how to handle complex UI in an RPG game efficiently, in an organized, modular, and scalable manner. We cover different UI paradigms, from MVC (Model View Controller) and MVVM (Model View ViewModel, using Unreal Engine's new ViewModel feature)

• Full Attribute and Spell Menus, with upgrade abilities, spell trees, locked spell levels, spell upgrades by ability level, and more

• Attributes - how to use Gameplay Attributes to represent player stats, and incorporate them into the gameplay mechanics by creating an Effect Application pipeline, allowing for calculations and results caused by phenomena in the game, such as combat damage

• Gameplay Abilities - the heart of GAS. We create all manner of types of gameplay abilities to handle the casting of spells, handling important capabilities of the player character and enemy AI, and how to configure different abilities to suit your needs.

• Different RPG Classes - we implement different character RPG classes including the Ranger, Warrior, and Elementalist, and do so in an easily-scalable manner so you can have any number of character class types in your game