Hi, everybody! I'm sure by now you've seen our big news about the Unreal Engine 4 becoming available for free to everyone. It's tremendously exciting news, and it's never been a better time to be a game developer. Now, let's check out this week's Marketplace content release! Also, now that the web-based Marketplace is live, I'm including direct links to each new item so you can see screenshots and purchase them directly from this blog post. :)
First up is the Steampunk Airship by Jerome Pourchier, a highly-anticipated and beautiful set of modular environment art. This is over 190 assets including animated mechanisms, a glass canopy set, a full set of copper pipes, and a wide variety of architectural structures. Even though all of these pieces are assembled into an airship, they're designed to be usable as modular pieces in virtually any type of steampunky environment. This is a great set, and you should definitely check out the video!
Here's a pack I've been excited to publish! Whether you're new to Unreal Engine 4 or if you simply want to quickly block out levels and gameplay, you should consider the Ultimate Greyboxing Kit by Strafejump Studios. This is a pack of 73 modular shapes, 18 blueprints and 14 materials to help you block out basic level design quickly. Everything's built to snap perfectly together and to the grid, they're set up with basic collision and a custom world-aligned material, and they're assembled with shapes instead of BSPs for quicker iteration without having to rebuild a level. The Blueprints have features like buttons, trigger plates, doors, moving platforms, damage zones, and animated hazards to flesh out gameplay as well. Finally, the set comes bundled with two example maps to show how they can be used. This could be a great help to developers wanting to quickly prototype their ideas, so be sure to give it a look!
Next is the Spline-Enabled Fence Pack by HostileAssets, a very clever and versatile Blueprint-based system for creating extremely customizable fences of all types. There are over 250 types of unique fences that can be created for any length, configuration, or structure. This is one of my favorite examples of how easy and powerful Blueprints can be. Check out the videos! Here's the Industrial Fence, the Metal Fence, and the Wooden Fence.
It's time to get back to nature with the Nature Mega Pack by Manufactura K4. This is a beautiful pack of 80+ assets for assembling photorealistic forests, fields, plains, and more with a wide variety of trees, bushes, plants, flowers, and rocks. All assets contain hi-res textures and normal maps as well as the multi-layered terrain material, and a demo level to show off how it all works. Check out the gorgeous screenshots below!
Speaking of nature, here's the Landscape Material Pack by Alexander Kryuchkov, a pack of 38 materials including rock, stones, gravel, grass, sand, and clay with normal, displacement, occlusion and diffuse maps. All textures are 1k tiling, and would be a fine addition to a project featuring landscapes. Check it out!
And last but certainly not least is the Character Attribute System by Adam Wolf, which is an extraordinarily useful standalone system for easily creating stats and attributes for any pawn. You can use this whether you're managing health, mana, stamina, energy, strength, or other character stats, or even an experience-based leveling system, as well as being able to set regeneration for stats like health and mana. Adam has even developed functions to spend available points on stats and attributes that you set up, as well as a system for providing temporary buffs. The pack includes a sample widget with health bar, level progression bar, a stat sheet, and more. It's hard to communicate how useful this is through screenshots alone, so I recommend checking out the video to see all it can do.
That's all for this week. Expect a lot more coming in the next couple months, because let me tell you, since Unreal Engine 4 went free, submissions have been going crazy! Stay tuned.
