Guides and Showcase

Configure Ninja Input and replace the default configuration from a project, such as the Third Person Template, so it will use Input Handlers and an Input Setup.

Using Ninja GAS, you can configure the Gameplay Ability System in your project and prepare your Player Character, so it can use the Combat Attribute Set provided by Ninja Combat.

After configuring the initial Combat Components, the first step in Ninja Combat is to prepare your character for Melee Attacks using a Melee Weapon, which must be registered with the Weapon Manager.

With the melee weapons configured, the next step is to create a primary and a secondary attack using the Attack Ability, add these abilities to the player character using Ninja GAS and configure their inputs using Ninja Input.

To make sure that our attacks work, we need an enemy. Using concepts established before, we will create a new enemy character that properly reacts to incoming damage from player attacks.

Continuing the damage handling, we will handle fatal damage, which starts the death flow and activates the Death Ability.

The Combo System is used to trigger attack sequences that can even branch out depending on different inputs. In this guide you will learn more about it and how to mix Attack and Cast abilities in a combo.

Let's take a look at the Opportunity System by creating a finishing move, that will replace the primary attack, whenever the enemy's health is low.

The Target Lock Ability helps with camera focus, precision and add visual indicators to a target. This system uses Unreal Engine's Gameplay Targeting System to collect targets.

Motion Warping can adjust root motion animations to shorten or stretch their movement, so they will properly reach targets.

The combat system provides Viewmodels to support your user interface. Let's get started with that topic, by creating some progress bars that will track the player's main attributes: Health, Stamina, and Magic.

Now that we created the first Combat Widget, let's create a more advanced one, the Overhead Info. It will be used with the enemy character, to show attributes and status effects.

To create our secondary weapon, we should have Ninja Inventory configured. So this is our next task: perform the setup, update the Weapon Manager, and convert our weapons into Items and Equipment.

Let's create the first part of the Inventory UI, so it can display the weapon slots and the backpack. These will be built using the base Inventory Widgets and UMG Viewmodels.

With the new weapon configured and usable, we will create a Projectile and the appropriate Attack Ability to use it, utilizing the camera as an aiming mechanism.

Let's create a new weapon that will enable us to work with projectiles. Once that is done, we will configure the Equipment Ability to switch weapons and also their Abilities and Animation Layers.

Let's look into the secondary ability to the ranged weapon. It will allow us to explore the integration with the Gameplay Ability System Targeting, in conjunction with the Cast Ability.

We have recurring actors for projectiles and the Cast ability in the Combo. Let's use the Actor Pooling to make sure that these are pre-spawned, and we can avoid the constant spawning/destruction overhead.

With two armor sets and two weapon sets, we can build our Inventory UI to allow managing these properly. This will use the Inventory Viewmodels, including their drag and drop functionality.

Since we can swap inventory meshes, it means we also need to control how our character looks when not wearing any armor. So we need to revisit the Inventory and Equipment setup and configure default meshes.

Using the consumable fragment, we will look into potions that can be consumed by the player. We will also configure the arrows as a stackable item that we can adjust as they are used.

Let's add random stats for the weapons and armor. This will be done using Item Fragments that can select random values from pre-defined ranged.

In this guide we'll add other variants of the weapons and armor, ranging from light and heavier armor pieces and with varying quality levels.

Now that it's possible to properly perform inventory management, and we have a certain item variety, it's time to configure item drops from the defeated enemies, including a configuration of their loot tables.

The AI uses teams to determine their attitudes towards other Controllers. We will use Ninja Factions to configure the alignment between players and enemies.

Now that we have a stable Combat, Inventory, and Bot setup, let's configure our project so that whenever an enemy is killed, the character will receive a bounty and increase its reputation with the Merchant Faction.

In this step, we will introduce Ninja Bot to the project and perform the first few steps to make our enemy react to the player. This includes configuring the Bot Controller and using the data-driven perception setup.

Now that the enemy can detect and perceive the player as an opponent, we can configure a weapon and a couple of Attack Abilities that can be used in the enemy's Behavior Tree.

Now that the enemy can attack, we will introduce the Block Ability, which mitigates damage. Then, we will add a Hit Reaction Ability to the player, including two important damage types: Block and Breaker.

Continuing on the defense mechanisms, we will configure an Evade Ability, including invulnerability during some animation frames. Evades can be directional when locked on targets.

Now that enemies can perform attacks, the player can parry and counter-attack. In this context, this can be used to greatly increase the enemy's stagger bar.

To better organize the AI behavior, we will use the AI Token Management system from Ninja Bot. This will make agents only act when they have the appropriate Action Tokens, or request them when needed.