Dreamscapes

Overview

Dreamscapes is a solo third-person action-adventure project built in Unreal Engine 4. Developed to master core Unreal architecture, the project focuses on modular spellcasting mechanics, real-time Niagara and Cascade particle simulations, collision handling, and responsive UMG user interfaces.

Tools & Technologies: Unreal Engine 4, Blueprints Visual Scripting, Niagara VFX, Cascade Particle System, UMG UI Designer

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Technical Contributions & Systems Breakdown

1. Inheritance-Based Ability & Mana

• Base Ability Blueprint: Engineered a parent ability class responsible for mana costs, tracking cooldown timers, and broadcasting UI state updates.
• Child Spells: Created child Blueprints that inherit from the base class and override the primary execution function, enabling hot-swapping of player abilities inside the third-person character controller with zero duplicate cooldown logic.

2. VFX

To balance visual fidelity with frame performance, I split particle simulation duties across Unreal's two VFX engines based on emitter complexity:

• Niagara Enemy & Projectile Simulations: Built high-particle-count enemy entities and spell projectiles in Niagara using dual emitters with varied spawn rates, dynamic materials, and physics update modules to animate floating enemy forms.
• Cascade Arcane Runes: Utilized Cascade to render localized ground rune circles (dnd_runes_gen textures) with custom lifetime curves and rotational behaviors.

3. Game Instance Telemetry

• Cross-Level High Score System: Implemented score tracking inside a custom GameInstance Blueprint, persisting player performance data across level transitions and serializing records to the main menu leaderboard upon level completion.

4. UI

Main & Pause Menus

• Created a main menu using Blueprint-driven visibility toggles for level selection and tutorials.

Combat HUD & World Prompts

• Real-Time Resource & Cooldown Binding: Linked UMG health and mana progress bars to character attributes, and programmed ability icons to modulate alpha opacity dynamically based on current mana availability and cooldown completion.
• Contextual Raycast Prompts & Loading States: Added a dedicated loading screen for heavy loading, alongside world-space UI widgets that toggle visibility when the player's primary fire raycast intersects interactive targets.

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Direct Impact

• Scalable Spell System: Using class inheritance for abilities allowed new spells and projectile types to be prototyped and equipped in minutes.
• Optimized VFX Rendering: Offloading high-count simulations to Niagara while keeping static rune motifs in Cascade maintained smooth frame pacing during combat encounters. Enabled or disabled based on primary fire targeting, providing contextual information to the player.