Solo Project -
Programmer
Project Overview -
During the holiday break, out of inspiration from the original Fortnite menus and curiosity on how they were made I dedicated 2 weeks to understanding the ins and outs of widgets within Unreal Engine 5 in order to create the main menu systems, such as the button layouts, switching between widgets within the same level, animated background, and lastly randomization of loading screens.
Widgets -
Widgets within Unreal Engine 5 are very easy to use and setup, in this project I learned how to setup images and anker them to certain parts of the screen. Next I learned how to customize buttons with custom colors, opacity, and images.
Lastly I learned how to add MP4s in the background of the menu, which is the method I used to add the wireframe background within the menu.
Project Showcase -
I was able to figure out how to play background music, display a moving MP4 video in the background, and switch images based on button hovering. The most amazing part is that I created a fully randomized loading screen with a cool, randomized tip section for each loading screen. The tips are also the actual tips provided in the game, which gives it that amazing, original Fortnite feeling.
All the content used for these menus is the property of Epic Games.
Conclusion -
This project gave me the chance to truly understand how to customize and optimize widgets within unreal engine and I believe this skill is key to enhancing the user experiences given to the player when starting or loading games.
Randomization -
The Fortnite loading screen normally has two parts that are randomized.
First -
The Loading Screen imaging, I learned how to setup arrays that hold the list of the different images, then setting up the blueprinting to pick one random image from the array on widget start
Second -
Random Tips, the tips given to the player on the bottom right, are also arrays, this string array holds all the possible tips I’d want to give to the player, and then again picking an random tip on widget start