13 Heroes

Inspiration

I made this project because I have a lot of respect for our US military and what they do. I want to show my appreciation through my skillset which is making games.

What it does

This project is a virtual memorial for the 13 soldiers that died towards the end of the war in Afghanistan. As of now, players can walk around the level and read info about each soldier. Players can also interact with the caskets.

How we built it

I built it using Unreal Engine and it's built-in Blueprint coding system.

I'm still a beginner at Blender and 3D modeling and was excited to have an experienced modeler from UMBC's Game Developers Club create the caskets and flags for this project. Here's his ArtStation: Ryan Griffin. https://www.artstation.com/zerostrike

Challenges we ran into

I spilled water on my laptop prior to the event starting, so I had to spend a lot of time in one of UMBC's computer lab. I really wanted to code this project in C++ but for some reason the computers wouldn't compile visual studio. My workaround was using Blueprint and it turned out to be a faster workflow even though I still would have preferred to show my C++ skills.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm happy that I got as far as I did. I focused more on completing the functionality then the level design. I'm actually happy because I've been learning this 3D-modeling software called Blender and I created the headstones which I found cool!

What we learned

I learned more about level designing in Unreal Engine. I also learned more about modeling in Blender and UV Unwrapping meshes and importing them into Unreal Engine.

What's next for 13 Heroes

I plan to continue working on this project. When I get a new laptop I'm gonna convert all the Blueprint logic I created to C++ in Visual Studio. Blueprint is slightly less performant than coding directly in C++ since it has to go through a virtual machine in order to read C++ code. I also plan to make this multiplayer so that other people can be in the same level at once. I want to host a school event where I purchase a dedicated server for a limited time and students can hop in the same level at once. I also want to add onto the design to make it more interactable. At the moment all you can do is interact with the caskets.

Built With

• unreal-engine