I almost gave up on my HD-2D BEAT 'EM UP...

Get my 12 hour course on how to make 2D games with Unreal Engine:
tinyurl.com/Ul...
Support the channel on Patreon:
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I've been hitting a road block with my Unreal Engine 5 beat em up that I'm making using Paper 2D... however in this devlog I go over how I was able to break through that and kept on working on it after all.
If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe: / @cobracode
● Twitter: / cobracodedev
● Discord: / discord
Used Assets:
Free Warrior Animation Set - clembod.itch.i...
Cultist Enemy Pack by clembod - clembod.itch.i...
Icons made by Freepik (www.freepik.com) from Flaticon (www.flaticon.com/)
#cobracode #gamedev #unrealengine #ue5

[@Take22952]

I really hope you haven’t given up on this after this video. I’d love to see more from this game.

[@therubbermeep7456]

This game is beautiful don’t you dare give up on it!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you. I do want to get back to it at some point, but am completely burned out on it right now. Have a lot of 2D/3D Hybrid top down stuff going on right now :)

[@reede140]

Really cool stuff. Consistently impressed by the work you do with 2D in unreal. Has definitely given me a lot of inspiration to jump back into my own beat-em-up project and stick with the Paper 2/ZD workflow for it. Keep up the awesome work!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you so much :D

[@tartnet3741]

Love your content so much I finally caved and bought the course to help me on my own project! Your original videos about your beat'em up is what made me start it in the first place!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D I hope you'll learn a lot from it!

[@snowshinobi1142]

so happy to see people making 2d games in unreal. you are the reason why i switched to ue from unity last year. I have not regretted it. ue has so many features and its super easy to learn (imo). Tysm for your amazing videos i cant wait to see more of your game!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D Awesome, I'm glad you didn't regret your decision to come over to UE!

[@NoobieSnake]

Hey Cobra, I'm glad I stumbled upon your channel. I was doing research today whether I should pick Unreal Engine or Godot as a beginner solo developer with zero knowledge on coding and programming. At first, after doing my own research online, most people said Unreal Engine is not for people like me, Godot fits my criteria more, but your video seemed very convincing because HD2D is exactly what I want to do with battle scenes such as Pokémon or Final Fantasy, or JRPG in general instead of real time ARPG. After watching a few of your videos, I immediately subscribed to you and have purchased your Udemy course because you explain things very clearly and you seemed like a great teacher overall. Hopefully, by the end of learning your Udemy course, I'll be able to implement what I've learned on it. Very excited and looking forward to it. Thank you very much!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you so much :D I'm also looking forward to do JRPG style stuff in the future. I hope you'll be able to learn what you need to know!

[@VOAxInsanity]

Randomly found your video while I was looking at game videos and I hope you didn't actually give up on your game, I would hope to play it on playstation one day, it looks amazing.

[@CobraCode]

Thanks! I still haven't completely given up on it, but it's been on the backburner to give me time to improve at pixel art and read books about AI implementation. Getting closer to giving it another shot though :)

[@VOAxInsanity]

@@CobraCode by chance will it be for console, if you decide to continue?

[@CobraCode]

@@VOAxInsanity Possibly, but not a high priority

[@VOAxInsanity]

@@CobraCode well, you didn't say *"no"* so there's hope still lol

[@Selrisitai]

I'm glad you kept going. The more you improve at pixel art the more options will open for you. It really is looking like it could be quite fun! My only problem with multiple classes is that it means you're boxing yourself into the standard beat 'em up framework. You're not going to want to have complex or very refined fighting on the melee character if you're also going to have a ranged character, because then the ranged character will feel laughably basic by comparison to the melee character's parrying and crowd-control move-set.

[@CobraCode]

Thanks :D Yeah for now I'm not overengineering things and just going with my usual flow. But yeah like you mentioned this might be a case where 'composition over inheritance' rights true. My friend recently showed me the Gameplay Ability System as well, so implementing that would probably also make things a lot more organized... however it does have a pretty steep learning curve.

[@Selrisitai]

@@CobraCode What's composition over inheritence?

[@CobraCode]

@@Selrisitai It's a slogan many people use that don't like using classes and inheritance. They say that instead of overusing derived classes, it's better to create reusable and modular components (in the case of Unreal Engine actor components) and attach these to your classes instead. In the end you'll still use both together but they believe you should more heavily lean on components and that's something I've been trying to do recently. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nqmqgJyfh56Ngck

[@brunoaversa7347]

Dude .... Your game is looking SICK!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D

[@rip3rs]

You are the reason I have been able to move forward in UE5! 1000x Thanks! Your Udemy courses are AMAZING!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you so much :D I'm glad the courses are helpful!

[@Smurfis]

Don’t give this up looks sick love the style

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :)

[@Kr33gola]

dude this looks unrealy cool

[@ronsronshirt4177]

buddy. USE LAYERS in aseprite and if you're hurting for time consumption with the sprites, honestly you could use smack studio to skip the stage of drawing and redrawing your character over the low detail animation and replace it with paper doll animation and mild cleaning up. but i prefer my low framerate smear frames personally

[@NegaPreto_]

This video made me want harder to play this game when it's avaiable, great job

[@CobraCode]

Thanks :D

[@kanoeyes]

Finally a new devlog!!!

[@TheGameIsOverCy]

Interesting log ! Keep up the good work! You inspired me to start working on my own game :)

[@ItsLaro]

So glad to see you've cotinued this! Once again, I can't thank you enough for covering this beautiful niche. Course looks solid, insta copped.

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D

[@XvirusX]

Amazing Work! Never Give Up!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you so much :D

[@Meplike]

Bro wahtever your do, keep it up, take your fun in it, and naturally, you'lll get supported for your efffort, anytime.

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D

[@byBearrrrr]

Hi Cobra, love the video and the progress on so far! Hope it’s going well, would you ever release the project file of this onto your Patreon?

[@CobraCode]

Thank you. Probably not for this one, since this is a long term passion project and also the license of the assets doesn't allow redistribution. Maybe some day I'll make a minimal version of this with CC0 assets which I would be able to share.

[@byBearrrrr]

@@CobraCode thanks for replying! Ah fair enough, can’t wait to see more, you are smashing it! Oh that would be a great idea! Keep well

[@TheDestroyer1101]

Is there any hope of you putting this as a template or tutorial series on how to make this game specifically. I would buy a membership to your patreon, I bought your Udemy course and was a little dissappointed this was not in it. I really want to make a game very simalar to this one.

[@CobraCode]

Hey! The original plan was to make a full 50 hour premium course on how to make a game like this. Sadly I've tried to make that happen for multiple months but just kept on hitting road blocks. One of the problems is that I can't use the sprite sheets from this video since I need something with a CC0 license. So I started learning pixel art to create those myself... with mediocre results. Also there are still many more things to figure out with the AI and spawn system and I just kept banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to streamline and breakdown highly complex systems like that. For now it's on hold and I'm focusing on making more Top Down 2D stuff... but I definitely do want to revisit something in that direction once I've recovered a bit.

[@TheDestroyer1101]

@@CobraCode Ill be totally honest I'd pay 30 bucks a month to be able to make the game that you have up here. Is there any way you could at least post the current project that you have now so I or others could play around with it. What you have here is like 25 percent of what I want for my fighting game. Amazing work I just really want to play around with it and see what I could learn from it. And I really hope that you make the tutorial soon. I can't tell you how excited I have been just watching your videos and trying to figure out how to make it work for my project.

[@CobraCode]

​@@TheDestroyer1101 Thank you so much :) But again... sadly all of the assets I'm using here are under a license that doesn't allow redistribution even if it is within the complete projects. Ripping the assets out would break a lot of things unless I have something exact to replace them. Also there's still a lot of stuff in there that is rushed and I'm not comfortable sharing :( Sorry, but it's just not something I can do right now :(

[@TheDestroyer1101]

@@CobraCode Understood, I guess I will just have to wait paciently, but trust me I am sure I am not the only one that is looking to make a game like this.

[@arthurkivimaa1371]

What's the program you're using to make artwork for 2D characters?

[@CobraCode]

Aseprite, These characters are by an artist called clembod though and I only made some adjustments. clembod.itch.io/

[@Skystudio42]

Can you do a full tutorial to the full creation of the character animation to the creation of enemies ai ect like a 1h and more video

[@Bloodyshinta1]

i've been toying with the idea of making stick figure sprites to dial in gameplay mechanics and then hire someone later to make art, how well do you think this approach would work?

[@CobraCode]

Hey, I think that is a pretty nice approach! But in that case you wanna make sure to use the json method I teach in this video: studio.kzbin.infoUiMUTf2kCSs/edit I think in the video I use 'packed' as the export method, but I later found out that using 'by row' together with split by tag allows sheets to be updated more seamlessly. That way you just have to drag the json over and all of your flipbooks and things you set up should still work after your artist drew over the stick figure. AFAIK skullgirls uses a similar approach where they'll release alpha versions of characters to the public that aren't colored and have non-final frames so they can get a better feel for how things work out in gameplay first and then nail it down.

[@Bloodyshinta1]

@@CobraCode that sounds really convenient thanks for the info

[@ProxyDoug]

The game is looking awesome.

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :)

[@alexlealch]

The enemy IA and concepts of this video, are part of the Udemy course?

[@CobraCode]

In the udemy course we do set up a pretty similar system for the enemy AI. However it only covers melee enemies with a single attack and not the advanced things you see here with the ranged enemies or special attacks.

[@alexlealch]

@@CobraCode have You plans for publish this advance things? Please please!!

[@SuperKawaiiLabs]

​@@alexlealch i would love to know too!

[@CobraCode]

@@alexlealch To be honest I'm still not that great with behavior trees myself and a lot of the things I did in this video are still experimental. I'm not quite comfortable teaching these things yet. However depending on what my next full course ends up being it might include some of this.

[@alexlealch]

@@CobraCode in the future, maybe. I will wait 😁

[@EstebanLopez-bn9pd]

Are we able to have a parent PaperZD Animation Blueprint and inherit from it to implement other characters or do I need a ABP per character?

[@CobraCode]

I actually talked about that with HeavyBullets, who's the creator of PaperZD. It's something he does want to implement, but apparently it's extremely complicated and would involve writing a custom compiler, so it's probably not gonna happen any time soon :(

[@evo3179]

I wanna play this game!

[@cai24]

I have bit of an unusual noobie question; just testing the waters to see if someone can hint me to right direction. I am prototyping a 2D game using PaperZD in UE5. Turning is done automatically using camera-oriented turning for the character, but since we are talking about flat plane, it has to be sped up so that the character wont appear as ”flat” (which it is, technically). Problem is, I wish to use turn animation instead - while keeping all animation control in locomotion state machine. But, I havent been able to do it so far. At best, I have only been able to make it turn only to one direction. This has made me suspect that my whole approach is wrong. Or, I am just too unskilled with using blueprints. I know that turn animation brings no value to the gameplay. All the paper2D/PaperZD tutorials I have found, including yours, just leave it out and just flip the character, because, why bother. But I want to keep at it because I realized that solving problems like this actually teach me much more about blueprints and help me understand how things work. I am not asking anyone to provide me complete solution because I enjoy figuring things out myself. But, if anyone could hint or point me to the direction as how I should approach this problem, I would appreciate it. Should I ditch the state machine or are there just simply some way to employ the state transition conditions I havent figured out yet (the normal way to read what animation to play is to get velocity from player character)

[@goodfractalspoker7179]

Very beautiful color palettes and sceneries!

[@that_guy5341]

can u release a demo soon plz?

[@CobraCode]

Hey, sorry but it's still pretty far from that. Even though the game might look decent, the game feel is still far from satisfying.

[@that_guy5341]

@@CobraCode ok

[@stickxddx]

how did you make the 3d background

[@CobraCode]

It's just an asset pack I bought on the unreal engine marketplace. Just search for 'stylized environment' and you should find many like these.

[@RoniStudio]

as a beginner using Unreal Engine 5 Are the PC specifications below enough to learn UE5? Core i5 13500, RTX 3060 12GB. 16GB RAM.

[@CobraCode]

Yeah that's a pretty beefy rig. Shouldn't have any issues.

[@cansado2287]

I think the moves need more special effects, especially the big cultist PS: nice :)

[@CobraCode]

Thanks for pointing that out! Yeah I can definitely polish it up a bit more.

[@Serenelove520]

Is it possible for 2D characters to attack in a 3D way? Meaning, like a cone or circle in front of him, and hit targets not if the same lane

[@CobraCode]

Yeah for sure, that's actually what I'm doing here. It's just a 3D hitbox and you can adjust the depth on a per attack basis

[@Serenelove520]

@@CobraCode Cobra, I loved your hd-2D concept, can we work on a game project together?

[@Serenelove520]

@@CobraCode Cobra, I have the funding.

[@CobraCode]

Thanks for the offer, but I already have too much on my plate @@Serenelove520

[@smokesum2D]

@1:17 can you link that tutorial?

[@CobraCode]

Hey, thanks for pointing that out. I just added a card that should pop up in the top right if you play that part again.

[@littledemo3605]

can u make step by step ai for BEAT 'EM UP. ? please bro make series for it it really unique tut no more people explain it.

[@CobraCode]

Hey, that's nothing I can explain in a KZbin series since it's a super advanced topic and will take multiple hours. I am currently prototyping a full 20+ hour course about making a beat em up in this style though.

[@lawrence9713]

wait asprite aint freeware?

[@CobraCode]

It's free if you compile it from source by yourself. However that's a bit annoying and not everybody knows how to do it so many people buy it on steam or on the official website. I also liked the convenience of just being able to install it on all my pcs easily and bought it on steam.

[@lawrence9713]

@@CobraCode 👍

[@EpicGamer-uw6ce]

Please make a 2d 3d movement tutorial pleasee I cant find it anywhere, or make the 2d 3d template free D:

[@CobraCode]

Hey, I already have a tutorial about that, but it's a bit out of date and not using the enhanced input system that became the default in UE 5.1. kzbin.info/www/bejne/a2rLmHdsppydZ80 Sorry, but I can't make everything free or I won't be able to continue doing this.

[@jedb57]

just remember that the name "HD-2D" is trademarked by square!

[@CobraCode]

Thanks for the reminder. Yeah definitely not gonna use that in any marketing material for the actual game, but should be fine for youtube.

[@angusmf]

The 2D workflow in UE continues to be SO BAD. What the hell? After Unity seems to have nuked itself with these runtime fees, I thought of looking into Paper2D and PaperZD again, but...good grief. This looks miserable, and you STILL can't do 2D skeletal animation in UE? Probably wouldn't help a project that's dead-set on using a pixel art style, but the 2D animation and IK tools Unity has offered for years now are amazing compared to messing around with sprite sheets. Please someone explain to me why I'm wrong, and/or tell me it's worth paying for Spine or what alternatives there are.

[@CobraCode]

Yeah I agree that the workflow with base Paper2D is absolutely horrible, but I personally think it's pretty nice with PaperZD at this point. Yeah there are of course still repetitive tasks and some way of creating inheritance with animation blueprints would be great. The developer of PaperZD however is super open to suggestions and is working on a lot of stuff behind the scenes, so I only see things getting better. It's been more than 5 years though since I touched Unity, so I don't really know what nice tools you guys have over there. I actually plan on taking a look at some Unity features to try to potentially recreate them in UE as small plugins, but that might take quite a while.

[@angusmf]

@@CobraCode Perhaps I'll reach out to the PaperZD dev. Unfortunately I think it would take a lot of work for anyone to replicate what Unity has--I guess this is why Spine is not free. 2D animation package gives you a skinning editor can do everything something like Spriter does, can use the layers in the texture file and the elements are meshes that can be deformed by the skeleton. IK package gives you animatable IK for all this using unity animator.

[@maryhermann]

*Promosm* 💦

[@RioFordays]

Your game looks awesome, it would be a shame to give up on it. Would you also consider ever making a course on how to create such a game once you're done with it? Seems like there would be a lot to learn from it.

[@CobraCode]

Hey, thanks! Yeah the main purpose of working on this game was to eventually make a course. I've been prototyping this, but getting stuck over and over again due to the sheer complexity of having to break down and explain everything I built for this. Also art assets are hard to come by since the ones I'm using in the video cannot be re-distributed. The course is currently on hold and I'm working on another one that is more doable.

[@compatriot852]

Recently discovered your channel. Noticed you do templates. Is there a way to access this beat em up as a template? Interested in making a top down game that transitions into a beat em up for combat with some occasional auto flying segments like Pokemon rangers guardian signs or Afterburner ii

[@CobraCode]

Hey. For the beat em up I have a full course planned. I did some prototyping for it already, but hit a roadblock when it comes to the art which lead to delays and me prioritizing another course first. It will come eventually though. Not too sure about a template, but that might also be an option. The Paper ZD 2D/3D hybrid template I have is actually already pretty close to what you need for the beat em up.

[@NJoint]

I probably would buy this game. (And I'm definitely buying your udemy course after I'm finished with the one I'm currently doing)

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D

[@codiroberts886]

I've completed other paid online courses for UE5 and I'm currently on the final section of your course. What separates yours from others is the projects are interesting and your way of teaching builds confidence, I feel like I might finally be able to escape tutorial hell and create a fun project for myself, and that's exciting to me. What you're doing works and I hope you continue with more courses and updates on your personal projects. Thanks!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you so much for the kind words :) I tried to make the kind of course I would have loved to take when I was still learning, so I'm glad it's working out!

[@ProjectShinkai]

never give up

[@frost8077]

This gameplay style is exactly what I'm wanting in my current Godot project. I've been on the fence about trying to tackle 3D levels for my first game, but I'll have to look into my options after seeing this. Whichever one's easier to work with.

[@Gatitasecsii]

No way man... keep seeing all these uninspired ugly boring devlogs everywhere. This one looks decent and you're giving up on it?...

[@CobraCode]

Thanks for saying that... but for the time being, yeah. I do want to come back to it at some point though, but I need to figure out the whole issue of not finding sprite sheets with the animations I need. The only solution is to hire somebody and pay ungodly amounts of money or keep on waiting until I'm good enough at pixel art to do it myself... this I am currently working on, however it does take time.

[@Gatitasecsii]

@@CobraCode What if you go the route of skeletal animation? If you do it right, you can get pretty good results and flexibility. In my own game I use skeletal animation and my girls can change outfits and share animations if I want, so they can all use every weapon and the enemies can also share these animations, making them all as complex as the player's character. Plus honestly pixel art is kinda ugly and not worth learning, but if that's your vision I get it.

[@CobraCode]

@@Gatitasecsii I really am big on pixel art though and believe certain things are hard to express with bone based animations. I believe that generally skeletal based animations can look quite stiff and it's also not easy to learn to do it properly. Dragons crown, Oboro Muramasa and Detained are good examples of how to do it right, but again it's a whole new skill set to learn and also not a simple solution if you wanna do it right. Also I'd have to buy Spine and hope that the Unreal Engine runtime is being updated to the latest version. It is a possibility, so thanks for the advice! But I think I'm pretty dead set on pixel art since getting good at that is one of my long term goals as well.

[@re.helena2064]

Can i download this game? looks cool tbh

[@CobraCode]

Hey, sorry but this is still VERY FAR from playable. I make things look good for the video, but there are still no restrictions in where you can go. Enemies are really random and inconsistent and there are also many, many bugs and unfinished systems.

[@Wred-dp6gy]

id would buy this game ten times over

[@RockyMulletGamedev]

Great progress ! Nice to see that it's still underway.

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D

[@ZimMabu_GameDev.]

where can i play ya games?

[@CobraCode]

Hey, still very far from a playable state, so it's gonna be a while.

[@CobraCode]

Get my 12 hour course on how to make 2D games with Unreal Engine: tinyurl.com/Ultimate2D

[@alexmomot6268]

Bought it! Thx a lot! ;)

[@CobraCode]

@@alexmomot6268 Thank you :D

[@Jean-sj1xw]

Will it be available in Skillshare as well? :)

[@CobraCode]

@@Jean-sj1xw I looked into that, but IMO skillshare isn't really well suited for game dev courses like this. Also they were really inflexible and had strange rules that didn't make any sense.

[@Jean-sj1xw]

@@CobraCode oh got it! I’ll be buying your course soon enough then :P Thanks! As always, thanks for the videos you create!

[@Rotembab]

Really love the style of these games, NEVEWR BACK DOWN NERVER GIVE UP! But seriously I really looking forward for this game :) Keep up the good work!!

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D

[@jephrennaicker4584]

is there a site, where we could play this game? thanks!

[@CobraCode]

Hey, thanks for asking. But this is still very far from being playable. Even though things might look good on video, there are still many essential things missing and once I let people walk around in that world freely everything will just start to fall apart, so I'm still pretty far from putting out any type of playable build.

[@jephrennaicker4584]

@@CobraCode well I look forward for the day it playable, great work !

[@Doppio_00]

super cool

[@G4m3sh0rtZ]

This is really great I felt inspired with this brother please keep going on follow your dreams I support you bro

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :D Since making this video I spent a lot of time on practicing pixel art and I am actually drawing the first draft of a beat em up sprite sheet now, so things are looking a bit brighter now!

[@jojodelacroix]

Good job! I know pushing through those types of slogs is hard. And coming back after a longtime away is even harder yet. The consolation is that your game does look fun! :3

[@CobraCode]

Thank you :)

[@SuperKawaiiLabs]

this looks so fun

[@yomamagaming6736]

Keep it up. Your work looks amazing. I am just getting started in Paper ZD. Can't wait for my games to look like yours.

[@Spamkromite]

I like this, but my concern is to make a feasible dialogue choice system for the game since the game I have in mind is heavy on narrative and with many choices like a point and click adventure mixed with side-scrolling beat'em up like Golden Axe. I'm afraid until I can find a good multi-branched dialogue system, my only choice would be to create hundreds of arrays per character (and I would like to have some rich text so that I can colour or give format to words 😭). I'm too noob on this and I don't know most of the proper jargon.

[@CobraCode]

Something like that can get complicated very quickly and especially as a beginner it might be hard to get it right. There is a plugin by reubs which is a super fleshed out dialogue system. My friend also used it and said it's really good... but it costs about 300$. Might be worth looking into though. kzbin.info/www/bejne/boazq3p3q5hlrq8

[@snowshinobi1142]

I use narrative plugin 10000% worth the money if you aim to be a dev with a good dialogue system. I will never not have that plugin in my projects. @@CobraCode

[@ryutyk9910]

Anyone know how to let the 2D character being constraint on a curved surface ? It is like Legend of zelda a Link to the past 2. I think this is a limitation of UE5

[@jennjennjenn61992]

why are you forcing yourself to work in unreal engine? why are beginning programmers feeling like they have to use unreal or unity? this makes zero sense

[@CobraCode]

I'm not forcing myself to use it, but I'm really enjoying it. I've used over 6 different game engines throughout my life and used more than 5 programming languages professionally on a daily basis. But out of all the things I've tried, Unreal Engine just 'clicks' and allows me to work the fastest and create by far the best results. Even if other engines might be more performant or produce a smaller package size, if I don't enjoy working with them I wouldn't be able to stay motivated.

[@jennjennjenn61992]

@@CobraCode right but as with any premade engine it bottlenecks as soon as you need to go beyond anything like collision or slopes, if you aren't a programmer then the engine won't help

[@CobraCode]

@@jennjennjenn61992 Yeah that's certainly true. I believe blueprints make it a lot easier and more accessible, but on the other hand they don't teach you good habits of looking at source code and trying to really understand what happens behind the scenes. It can leave you really lost once a premade thing you've been using starts to fight you and you find the limitations (of the character movement component for example). The great thing with Unreal is though that everything is modular and you can easily create your own nodes, make your own plugins and override engine functionality. This part is a steep learning curve, but I hope I'll be able to find out more and more about that and also teach those things in the future. But yeah in the end, the engine doesn't really matter as much. It's just my personal preference.

[@jennjennjenn61992]

@@CobraCode I totally get it

[@milesmungo]

What do you suggest for beginner programmers? Or those entering game design without coding experience?