As a game developer, it’s always nice to keep an eye out for free goodies. Many of us are after all digital hoarders as we never knew when if ever we could use something for a project we are working on. Every month Unreal Engine (UE) has “free for the month” assets to be used with UE projects. While it’s been my intention to try and cover it more often I’ve missed a few.
This month includes $139.95 worth of goodies for game developers to use and see what different asset and software development communities have to offer the unreal community. There are 2 different kinds of homes, a spline wall system, close combat animations, and a level design tool kit. It seems like some cool stuff could be made from just this month’s September collection.
For checking out these assets I will be using UE4 version 4.26.2
Level Design Tool Kit By Liam Heron
It seems like this level design tool was created to solve a lot of pain points developers have when working within UE4 itself for world-building. It does require a little work on your part to get it up and running. It requires you to enable a plugin for your project and was a lot more involved than what I was looking to quickly into for a post of this format.
One of the biggest features is being able to mass select a bunch of items all at once in a simple matter. Those who have suffered from how annoying it is to try and select a bunch of stuff in a set just to move it an inch one way or another can appreciate something like that.
Unlike a lot of things, you can find in the store that tends to lack much information at all on how to use them. Level Design Tool Kit has a decent-sized demo zone set up with a lot of tutorials on how everything works off-site.
The bulk of what they are offering is in the terms of blueprints set up to make your life easier. They have a lot of different things that help with alignment, mass selection, scaling, moving, and so on. Even a tool to help find those pesky floating unwanted meshes that can break any game's immersion if you don’t remove them.
I have not used anything like this before and if I was still in the zone building of my main project I would have given it a go. Since it looks quite involved it’s more than likely something I’m not going to use as I’ve gotten used to the weird quarks UE4 has in its base-level design features.
Close Combat Animset By Ibrahim Akinde
If you are looking for a bunch of close combat animations that are rigged for the epic skeleton this is going to be a must-have. It includes 46 animations that are set up for a wide range of different games and should fit the majority of situations for that style of combat.
It has a lot of the basic movements you would need in a game such as walking, jumping, and running. Which are quite abounded to find in UE4 with Epic even including quite a few that are similar for free in their offering and demos.
The real star in this pack is going to be the evading, blocking, and attacking animations they are offering. It looks like there are 13 attacks animations. You have things like hooks, jabs, and different styles of kicks.
It even looks like the developer is working on adding further value and updates to the pack for free as well. While there are a lot of animation sets out there in the wild to find. Many places stopped supporting the Epic skeleton standard for UE4 for whatever reason. So packs like these can save you a lot of time in having to retarget bones with it already being set up for UE4.
Procedural Spline walls System By Kart Muller
This is another one that keeping up with most of this month’s theme of zone building. I don’t have a lot of experience with the UE4 spline system or using them in a game development setting other than knowing many use it for making rivers. Being able to quickly set up procedural walls can be a great way to work on massive zones and a tool like this could have been helpful in my project back at the start.
It’s great they showcase quite a few different materials in their demo map for the pack. Even without having much experience in using splines. It was quite an initiative to just click on the little white box at the end of the material and drag it out in any way I wanted to use it. This quick little mock-up only took me seconds. I am somewhat jealous I did not have this when I was making zones in my own game it would have saved me a fair amount of time.
It is quite easy to use right out of the box. The developer also has an over 40 min video explaining a lot of the ins and outs of using this system. Other videos following up on it including how to use the system for Quixel Megascans which is great to see as every UE4 developer already has access to high-resolution scans from Quixel that they then could integrate into this system.
This is one of those packs I will be spending some further time investigating into the advanced features of. As I might have a use case for it next year in a project. This is always exciting to find something you will personally use when it comes to these monthly free deals.
Old Brick House By Gabro Media
While there have been a couple of house packs in the past in the free for the month deals. They usually only came with a couple of home furnishings if any. This thing is loaded with over 250 props and over 400 meshes. Making this quite a useful pack if you ever just needed some random item and the vintage look these items are modeled after is something you want.
Steeping into the demonstration map the developer has set up makes you feel like you are walking into your grandmother’s house or something akin to it. My mind is already racing with quite a few different games all of these props would be fun to use.
Alchemist’s House By Evgeniya Yaremko
While not to be outdone by the other house this month the alchemist house comes with 100 different items. This includes modular pieces to build out your own house. Along with a bunch of prop items to populate it with.
The demo set they have setup illustrates quite a fun medieval-like atmosphere you could build around the props. With quite a few of the smaller items that could fit in with all sorts of different situations. This out of all of this month’s packs has to be my favorites.
Final Thoughts
The September Free For The month section in the UE4 store turned out to be some decent offerings for those needing world-building items. I could see quite a few different types of games having needs for what was included from horror to medieval and quite a few things in-between.
As always when it comes to this offering in the UE4 store. These packs are free to use in Unreal Engine projects. Even after the month is over as long as you have claimed it during the offering. There I still have a couple of weeks left to get them.
Other Content
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Content displayed and discussed is from UE4 Free For The Month Of September. Screenshots are from UE4.
