So, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve been working on the weapon system/shooter mechanics for the past week.
Just before I got to prototyping platforming level 2, I realized that that’s enough for now and I should move on and make the second core mechanic of my game - shooting.

If you’ve watched the video, you probably know that it doesn’t look super-cool. Yes, I know. But this is my first project in Unreal Engine, and I have, unfortunately, too little time to work on it.

General Description

Let me tell you a little about how the game world will be built, because I think I didn’t mention it before. You will have a “danger-free” space, where you can freely walk and (msot likely) explore it. To put it more bluntly, this will be a visual interactive representation of a level select menu. You will have “corridors” with “doors”, entering which will load a corresponding level.
There are couple of reasons why I’ve chosen this over the usual ingame level select menu. But for now let’s just say the setting dictates it. At the end of each corridor is always a boss level, whom you must defeat in order to gain a thing, which will influence your “safe space” and allow you to further advance in the game. Forgive me for speaking so vaguely, but I’m not yet ready to share the details - don’t want to give you the raw version yet.

In this space, you will be able to unlock different weapons, but you’ll be able to take only 3 of them on any mission.
Some of the levels will be entirely platformer-focused (first ones for sure, you won’t even have weapons then), some - shooter-focused, and others will be a mix of both.

Now let’s go over what I’ve done.

Weapon System

You have 3 slots for weapons in your “inventory”. No visual representation of which weapon is and wether is equipped yet. You can already pick up weapons in the Safe Haven, equipping them in the free slots. You can’t pick up the same weapon twice. By pressing 1-2-3 keys, you can swap between slots, and there is a swapping animation playing.

Shooting

I’ve actually managed (no idea how, but I freaking did it after rerwriting it for 3 or 4 times!) to incorporate a “master weapon” which handles most of the stuff: calculating hit results, playing animations, checking if player needs to reload (empty clip) and other stuf like that.
And there are three (so far) weapons that inherit everything from this master weapon. It’s pistol, assault rifle and shotgun. I took one of the free assets on the marketplace, because a) I’m not sure if I ever will have time or the possibility to work with 3d modeller to make custom stuff b) it’s faster right now. Each weapon has tons of variables like rate of fire, max ammo in clip, reload time, damage and the like.

The last thing I’ve done (an hour ago) is basic enemy “dummy” which can take damage and display floating damage numbers. You could’ve noticed from the video, that Shotgun deals 0 damage - that’s okay, because I didn’t configure it and forgot about it, lol. As you’ve may also noticed - shooting enemies in different parts of their bodies deals different amount of damage.

Also, the rifle should be automatic - didn’t implement that yet as well, and the “zoom” you see is only a basic thing I’ve quickly added just to have it. I’ll be making ADS later, I guess. And, every weapon is shooting exactly in the same pattern - one bullet per one tap of the mouse button. Even shotgun. Because I was focused on the overall mechanics of the master weapon, and customization will come a bit later.

But the best thing? It all works. The animation, the hit result processing - everything!

Conclusion

I know it’s not much and looks pretty basic. Truth be told - I’m kinda ashamed to post all this, but this project is very important to me.
So if somebody is reading this - thank you.