Ultimate Gravity System Demo

Unreal Engine’s comprehensive Character class is the cornerstone movement code of many UE4 games because it covers almost all the bases in terms of features. However, downwards gravity is hardcoded into the class, so making a game that requires directional gravity is a real headache to get working in Unreal. I’ve already built a custom gravity movement component and gravity source system, which makes for a neat demo but lacks a few key things to make it a first-class citizen of UE4. The two major features I will implement are:

1. AI Navigation around arbitrary meshes.
2. Signed Distance Function (SDF) gravity fields

The Recast navigation system can’t be used for navigation around a sphere planet, let alone anything more complicated. Having worked on the Flying Navigation System, I know how to integrate custom navigation algorithms into UE4, and so it seems the logical next step to create this feature that would elevate gameplay to a new level. To the end-user the shift to the new navigation system would be almost transparent. Many features in the default Recast navigation system would also be implemented in this system, such as tiled generation, hierarchical pathfinding and dynamic rebuilding.

To me, the idea of modelling with SDFs is the ultimate way to control gravity fields. Using this method we can create a gravity field of any surface with a signed distance function, as well as any combination of simple shapes.

When the gravity field has been tailored to the level artist’s wishes, the mathematically defined gravity surface can be quickly converted to a solid mesh, which can be used for AI navigation, rendering and collision. This feature also opens up the world of procedural level generation, where amazingly fun gravity fields can be generated at runtime. There are no limits to the possibilities!

Around these primary features, there will be numerous quality of life improvements to make it as easy as possible to design levels with the system, as well as build custom functionality.

List of Marketplace Assets used in the Demo: 

• 4K Wood Materials
• Angel of War
• Beautify
• Bugrimov Maksim’s “Crow”
• Bunker
• Enveloping Ambient
• Fantasy Mushrooms Collection
• Footsteps Sounds
• HackAndSlash VFX
• Menu System Pro
• Paragon: Minions
• Science Laboratory
• Scifi Cityscape
• Spaceship Interior Environment
• SuperGrid Starter Pack
• Ultimate Sci-Fi SFX Bundle
• Warp Effect
• Zero Gravity Sci-Fi Assets