Unreal Engine gameplay programming tutorials by a Lead Gameplay Programmer at Hexworks. Learn GAS, combat design, motion warping, procedural generation, and more.
GAS has no input buffering built in, so let's build it: gameplay events, a try-then-buffer component, a gate tag, two anim notify windows and a drain function that re-samples the stick at consume time.
When a Modifier Magnitude Calculation is enough, when you need an Execution Calculation, how attribute capture and bSnapshot actually work, and a damage pipeline built end to end.
How to implement dodge invulnerability frames with the Gameplay Ability System: an anim notify state that applies an infinite gameplay effect, a Combat.State.Intangible tag the damage pipeline checks, and a gameplay event that gives you perfect dodges almost for free.
How I author melee hitboxes in my Quod Combat Framework: socket-to-socket capsules like Dark Souls, rank and group IDs that make sweetspots pure data, damage windows on the montage timeline, and multi-hit policies.
GAS is Unreal Engine's framework for abilities, stats and effects. Its six pieces, one attack traced through them, and three rules that prevent most bugs.
GiveAbilityAndActivateOnce grants a GAS ability, activates it once, and removes the spec by itself, even for latent abilities. When to use it, the rules, and a full knockdown example.
How to create a simple Unreal Engine Save System using Blueprint in 10 minutes. You will learn that it's quite simple to create a Save Object in Unreal Engine and how to set its values and finally save it to disk.
Gameplay Effect Components in Unreal Engine 5: what the built-in components do, plus how Duration Policy and stacking actually work.
Learn how to use Motion Warping in UE5 with Blueprints. Set up warp targets, configure animation notifies, and create smooth character movement for attacks and traversal.
Hard references vs soft references in Unreal Engine explained. Learn when to use each type, how they affect memory and load times, and best practices for your UE5 project.
Learn how to use Data Tables in Unreal Engine 5 to store and manage game data. Step-by-step guide covering setup, row structs, and querying data at runtime.
Create procedural levels in UE5 using dynamic level instances and ULevelStreamingDynamic. Full guide with Blueprint and C++ examples for runtime level generation.
How to push Unreal Engine 5 past 1000 FPS, even on an integrated GPU, by turning off Lumen and Nanite, switching to the Mobile or DX11 Forward renderer, and leaning on lightmaps. Includes the trade-offs.
A short list of Unreal Engine courses on Udemy worth your time, including Stephen Ulibarri's GAS RPG course, sorted by Blueprint, C++ and Gameplay Abilities.
Some intel CPUs crash when under high load in new Unreal Engine 5 games. In this post you will learn how to fix these issues.
The Ability Tasks I reach for most in Unreal's Gameplay Ability System (GAS): Wait Delay, Wait for Attribute Change, Play Montage and Wait, and more, with what each one is for.
The article discusses GAS Ability Instancing Policy, essential for managing game abilities. It explains three policies: Non Instanced, Instanced Per Actor, and Instanced Per Execution. Non Instanced uses a single object for all abilities, limiting state storage and requiring completion in one flow. Instanced Per Actor allows state storage by creating a unique instance per actor, offering…
The Exit 8 is an Unreal Engine game that puts a twist on the "find the differences" horror genre. Here are five games like The Exit 8 to play next.
Could Palworld's launch have been predicted from its Steam wishlists and followers? A look at the numbers behind the launch, and why the real success came after it. Useful for indie developers.
I created a steam game in 60 hours using Blueprints and Unreal Engine 5.
Use your own icons to customize how Unreal Engine classes look and feel.
A list of Unreal Engine plugins that save development time, from small workflow helpers to full systems you would otherwise build yourself.
Ten games built with Unreal Engine 5, from Lords of the Fallen to TEKKEN 8, and what the engine brings to each.
Gameplay Ability System Documentation on how to create Attribute Sets to hold your character stats
Learn about the different duration policies of Gameplay Effects from the Unreal Gameplay Ability System.
Storing state in Gameplay Tags makes it easier to store state and create interesting gameplay. At the same time it allows to create data inside the editor without the need to write extra lines of code.
A step-by-step guide to building your own Unreal Engine plugin: setting up the module, picking a loading phase, and where your code goes.
In this article you will learn how to create a Poison Gameplay Effect and how to craft an Antidote to counter that poison. The tutorial uses Unreal Engine 5.3 but provides info on how to do this in other Unreal versions as well.
Learn how to use the IK Retargeting system in Unreal to share animations between characters.
Component Visualizers are a set of tools in Unreal Engine 5 that enable game developers to visualize and interact with specific components within their game world. These tools are designed to help developers better understand the behavior of their components, debug any issues, and create more polished and optimized gaming experiences.
Learn the basics of the new Unreal 5.2 way to create procedural content in a visual scripted way
Epic's Gameplay Ability System documentation is thin. Here are the GAS docs, guides, talks and sample projects I point people to when they get stuck.
Animating complex character interactions is hard. In Shadow of War there are a lot of takedowns and finishers that require characters to be in sync while delivering satisfying motion. I will explain the pipeline they use.
Horizon Zero Dawn shipped to acclaim. But two years before launch, testers called it 'BEYOND DISAPPOINTING'. Here is what Eric Boltjes of Guerrilla Games says makes game design a hard job.
Horizon Zero Dawn started with a small team. Here is how they prototyped and iterated their way to the game's mechanics.
Fallout 4 uses modular kits to create its levels. Modular techniques can be used to create complex levels with lower effort. There are different ways to make modular kits stand out and break their monotony.