Introduction

Hi everyone (if someone is reading this at all)! Here I want to talk in general terms about the development process  of "COP: Devastation".

Well, it started about 1.5 year ago, in March 2023. I was a newbie in gamedev and Unreal Engine then, so I didn't have exact plans about my game. In the first place, I started developing it as a test project to learn UE5. But then I decided to make a real game, so I had some ideas what this game would be. After that, a long process of developing began.

Of course, I had a lot of problems and  difficulties, mostly connected with animation, collisions, save and load system, level design ect.  Also, I had a plenty of other things to do apart from that. Well, I decided to devote all my free time to this. So I'd like to tell you how I created the game step by step and what things took how long. I hope it will interest someone or even will be useful :) 

How was it?

The first thing I did was add a character to the game. It's not a secter, that this 3D model was taken from the site "Mixamo". By the way, all the animation were also from this place. So then I customized player controls,  importerted and adjusted the animations, so I got a charater that could run, jump and crouch. Considering that the development started in the first half of March 2023, the customizing of the player character lasted until June. Well, I had no experience then🙄

The next step was to add weapons in the project. And I made a mistake there that I recommend everyone not to do: I decided to add all the weapons I planned to add at once, ALL. The thing is that I didn't really have an exact idea about game. So it was a bit recklessly and hasty to do such a large part of work, considering that I had to change a lot of thing then, so it turns out that I wasted a lot of time. Don't do like me! Well, finally a added and adjucted all the weapons, so it was already the end of August.

From September to November I worked on UI and pick-up items (I mean booster, ammunition and so on). I can say that part of the project wasn't hard for me, unlike the two previous parts. Also, in this period of time I created the first zombie. It was the simplest bot, so its AI I finished later. Well, at the beginning of November I had my game generally playable, but there wasn't one important thing: the game MAP.

So I started creating the first of two maps – "Survivor Camp". This process lasted until January (it was already 2024, heh) . Well, it actually took 2 months, but the most annoying thing was that I spent half of this time searching and customizing 3D models and textures. Honestly, it wasn't very interesting process, but I had to do that.

After that, I started creating new AI and improving the old one. Also, I added 5 types of zombies (actually, all of them you can kill in the game, haha): "defaul simple just a common zombie", Runner, Trixter (with long claws), Giant and the strongest one – Butcher (this is the one that are jumping up in the screenshot on the game page). The another one thing I did then was placing Navigation Mesh and Navigation Modifier Volumes on the map I had created earlier. All of these things are used to allow AI build a route to the goal. So, I can say this part of work was pretty interesting for me. Well, it took me about 2 month.

Well, it was already one year since the developing started, but I still had a lot of work to do. So roughly in March I began working on the save and load game system (it is used to enable you not to lost your progress, in "COP: Devastation" it is responsible for saving the max number of waves are have survived). After adjusting this system, I started creating main menu and other sreens (menus) in the game.

At the beginning of May I already had fully playable version of the game with all the required components. So I made the first build of the project. Well, there I had many problems which I succesfully solved over time. The only one thing I didn't have done at that time was the second map – "Military Base".

From the mid-May to August I worked on this map, considering that almost all July I was on vacation. So, in August I finished "Military Base" and started polishing the game.

Eventually, this game was released on August 25, 2024.

Thanks to everyone who have read this post, I really appreciate it. I will be so glad if you visit my game page and if you are interested in, then download it)))