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STEINWOLF FPS Prototype

OVERVIEW

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Infiltrate quietly or loudly. One gun or two guns.

  • Designer Icon

    Technical / Systems Designer

  • Prototype Icon

    Ongoing (2025)

  • Person Icon

    2

Unreal Unreal Unreal
FPS Singleplayer Action Stealth Prototype Mission

My Tasks

DEVELOPMENT

Project Timeline

Working in Spare Time

Prototyping & building core systems currently

Project Goals & Progress

Working with Philip Jensen, my level designer friend, we wanted to create an FPS mission that takes inspiration from games like Wolfenstein. The goal is to have dual wielding weapons, the option of stealth, and some set piece moments. Ideally this is a prototype that could be taken and placed into a game like Wolfenstein and fit in realistically, disregarding the later needed polish.

We are working on this in our free time, with Philip doing the level-related tasks and myself handling the technical aspects. So far, I have been building the core systems in C++. Currently we have a dual-wield system that works with mixing and matching weapons, but visually it only works for the rifles due to a lack of animations. The player can shoot and kill a dummy enemy, and I am working on adding more weapons with different effects now.

FPS Controller

I started by replaying the two mainline Wolfenstein games to see how their controls felt. When trying to emulate the true first person style from The New Colossus, I encountered several problems with the camera and collision.

One iteration was made rotating the spine bones when the players aimed up and down so the arms would follow the camera view, however, this caused clipping problems as the skeletal mesh and camera was outside of the capsule collider. Making the collider larger would only cause more issues with collision detection when walking, so I decided to instead try without bending the spine. This solved clipping, but the aiming was extremely inconsistent and unusable.

Finally, I decided to switch and try the first-person style from The New Order, where you can only see the player's arms and weapons. This made it much easier as I could parent the camera to the mesh and have a pivot point that rotates for the aiming. For a prototype, it works well and allowed me to proceed with the weapon and other systems. The weapons have different sockets and there is an IK for holding the single weapon, which I found some good videos about online. See the current results comapred to their references below!


View FPS Character Setup and Weapon Input Functions

Combat System

I've used C++ before, but not in Unreal, so this is my first time. I want to understand it better though, so I am building all the base classes starting in C++ first. After getting the first-person character set up, I began on the combat system.

The design focus here is to allow the player to have several different options of handling enemies in the more linear and mission-focused map. They should have the option of several different weapons and combinations, as well as the noise they make being a factor.

Weapons

We really wanted to focus our combat around fun weapons, including the ability to mix and match dual-wielding them. To do this I created a weapon component that contains a switchable WeaponDataAsset. I then attached two weapon components to the player, and hooked up the player input to control each hands weapon.

When the player equips a weapon, I can switch the WeaponDataAsset with the correct data. This means it is decoupled from the WeaponComponent itself and changing a weapon stats independently is easy.

View WeaponComponent Swapping Code

Ammo & Inventory

Since different weapons can have the same ammo type, I made a Combat Component to compliment the two Weapon Components. This became the authority over the player and holds all information related to ammo reserves. So, when the player requests to reload their weapon, it checks the Combat Component to see what is available.

I did this because it removes the need for each WeaponDataAsset to know the amount of ammo a weapon currently has, and the component will also become more useful in the future with added player abilities or inventory items.

View CombatComponent Script

Firing

I am aiming for the design of having no bullets actively spawn in. When you fire your weapon, it draws a small sphere trace and adds some random spread (depending on adjustable variables) to check for immediate hits. This is for the sake of performance and to emulate the feel of the Wolfenstein games as well, not having physical bullets fly through the air for hit detection.

To make the effect feel powerful and realistic, which is important for a game like this, there is muzzle flash, clear audio, camera shake, and visual recoil. All of this is to sell the illusion of real bullets being fired. Later on I plan to add different effect for each of the guns so they have specific use-cases and cause the player to choose their setup based on their desired playstyle.

View Firing Functions

Animations

This has been a large pain point for me as I do not have access to a normal set of custom animations, only free ones I find online. I couldn't find any for dual-wielding weapons, so I had to learn how to make one using Unreal's Control Rig. I made an animation to move the hands into the proper positions for the guns to appear on screen using the sequencer and applied this in my animation blueprint based on certain conditions.

While by no means does it look perfect, I think it gets the point across for our prototype. In the future, I would like to make some more animations for different guns so you can see them equip/unequip, and have the hands show more prominently. Currently, the rifle is the only weapon with proper sockets for the hands.


NEXT STEPS

With the dual wield system working with three different guns functionally, I now need to get it working visually with animations and proper sockets so the player can have a better experience in seeing what they are doing. Then, I will move on to creating the AI behavior with them patrolling, taking cover, and reacting to the player's noises and actions. We hope to make one full level that could be included in a Wolfenstein (or similar) game!