Jay Versluis

Character Selection in Unreal Engine (Demo)

Added 2020-10-18 23:14:21 +0000 UTC

As promised earlier today, I've polished my little Character Selection project and turned it into a playable demo. You can pick any of the included Synty characters and run around the demo level in Polygon Town (available from the Synty Store or from the Unreal Marketplace).

Here's how to use this thing:

walk around with WASD, use SPACE to jump
press TAB to bring up the menu, select with your mouse
press 1-4 to change outfits
press 5-7 to change skin tones
press TAB again to dismiss the menu
if that doesn't work, click outside the menu first
press the WP Guru logo for credits
press ESC or the red X icon to quit

I've explained how to replace the mesh programmatically in this article, (it's extremely simple). The project itself and the animated menu is a bit more involved, so I'll make a more in-depth video about it this week. Stay tuned!

I wonder if there's a market for free playable Synty demo levels like this. I remember when I first started with Unreal Engine, something like this would have been a great toy for me. It'll also help potential buyers see props and characters up close. I could tweak the camera a bit, add a zoom, let users choose the Showcase level, adjust collisions so people actually fit through doors etc. What do you think?

UPDATE: I've added outfit and skin tone selection to the demo.