Hi! My name is Grzesiek and I am a technical designer. I decided to post this to hold myself accountable and actually stick to a project for once. The project's goal is to create a locomotion/combat system that resembles Resident Evil 4 Remake, The Callisto Protocol, Alan Wake 2. What elements make these games play and feel like they do?

Movement:

• Weighty feel is provided by realistic movement speeds and acceleration/deceleration.
• Starting and stopping movement in realistic way - not instantly.
• Turning in place and pivoting when movement direction is suddenly changed,
• Character jumps rarely if ever,
• Having an IK on legs to adapt to the floor,
• Theres is little amount of foot sliding.

Camera:

• Camera is very close to the character,
• Rotation rate of character/camera can be much slower than you would expect, often you cant rotate fast enough.
• For the most part character is facing the direction of the camera, walking to the sides and back does not make the character turn but rather character starts strafing or walking backwards,
• When character is standing idle it is possible to rotate camera without the character turning to see its face,
• Camera shakes and essential camera work that should be invisible to the player but is very much present helping and guiding the player through different situations.

Weapon handling:

• Shooting is only available when aiming, trying to fire when not aiming may result fore example in a melee attack.
• Weapons are improved by playing idle breaks when standing or walking - cleaning weapon when idling.
• Different animations may be played based on how fast the player clicks the shoot input - gripping weapon tighter or at different angle when shooting fast.
• Different animations may be played based on current speed and directionand last shooting time - holding gun up after firing, automatically lowering it after a while of not shooting
• There is realistic unsheating and sheating weapons using animations and correction with IK.

Controls:

• Actions are typically slower to happen, may take a bit more time, this kind of movement and controls only work when the entire game is designed specifically for it. You would not want to play a fast paced action game with such movement :D
• For this reason often some kind of input queueing is introduced. The game while slower should still be responsive, this type of gameplay is not and excuse for janky controls

Physics:

• Affecting player character with physics - their clothes, hair and other hanging elements such as weapon holster or the bottom parts of the jacket while jogging.
• Procedural animations such as IK corrections, aim poses, leaning towards direction of the movement and simulating head bobbing on camera through animations.

Creating such system is actually very advanced and requires a lot of effort and knowledge - knowledge that I do not possess yet and- which is why I started this project :D

One of the biggest problems that may arise is lack of proper animations. With such a complex system, the lack of dedicated animations may turn out to be critical and block the progress of the project as I am not an animator - I will be using marketplace assets and modifying them as as i go (hopefully). In any case ill try my best to have the expected effect.

For the sake of this project we will need a character - meet Alex Carter, ive just Chat GPTed him into existance. A young cop and wannabe detective from US. This should give use enough context for future gameplay decisions for now :)

I will be working in Unreal Engine 5 as this is the engine I use daily at work - the project will contain both blueprints and c++. While i am certaily no programmer i can use c++ to some degree which will be crucial for  Gameplay Ability System and other features that can only be accessed through code. I have no idea how long this project might take  so bear with me.

Thanks and stay tuned for more!