ODM: Orbital Defense Madness

Devlog

• Structure's Persistence System - Giancarlo Morales
  September 26, 2026 by gian.mo06

  Building is one of our game's core systems, but what's the point of building if your structures don’t persist across levels? My job this week was to figure out a way to make the buildings' layout an... Continue reading

  
• v0.0.3 Patchnotes
  September 25, 2026 by OneCouch

  ADDED: - Placing towers now costs resources. - BP_UFO, and corrisponding AI elements (WIP) - GameplayGameMode now tracks number of currently alive enemies - Splash screen widget blueprint for later im... Continue reading
• Random menial problems by Dominic Thompson
  September 25, 2026 by That1domino

  The First Problem: There were a couple issues I was having in this sprint, but none of them seemed large enough to make one post about so I am just merging them all together. One of the issues I ended... Continue reading

  
• Designing The Phases of Play - Dante Chacon
  September 25, 2026 by EsquireLard

  This week I tasked myself with solving our "Day/Night" system--which ultimately became what I'm calling a "Day Phase" system. In our game design for ODM we decided upon some key phases within the core... Continue reading

  
• Navigation for Flying Enemy
  September 25, 2026 by countOrlock

  Problem: Pathfinding: The standard AI pathfinding functions such as Move To, all require a navmesh in order to move an agent to a location. Being a flying enemy means that depending on your approach,... Continue reading
• The Creation of The Laser Tower - Kaleb Lemens
  September 24, 2026 by electricfan54

  The idea for the laser tower is the classic tower that shoots a constant beam of damage at enemies. Every tower in the game has two paths and the laser tower is no exception. The first path is the doo... Continue reading

  
• Implementing Character Selection - Giancarlo Morales
  September 20, 2026 by gian.mo06

  After my teammate Zach created 3 different characters for our game, we needed a way to allow the player to be able to select between them so they could use it in game. After my other teammate Dominic... Continue reading

  
• Grapple Gun - Zachary Brodahl
  September 18, 2026 by countOrlock

  When first forming our game idea, one of my first character ideas was a character that had a grapple function to move around the map. This character evolved as time went on and eventually became the H... Continue reading

  
• What Makes a Wave System - Dante Chacon
  September 18, 2026 by EsquireLard

  In our v0.0.2 build I spent a lot of time on two major systems. One of which was the AI's targeting system (which ended up sending me on a wild goose chase on how to implement Unreal's AI Perception S... Continue reading

  
• Optimizing Options by Dominic Thompson
  September 18, 2026 by That1domino

  The Problem: For this week I had a lot on my plate when it came to updating the menus. During week one I set up the sub menu's for the player to swap between, but there was a crucial issue with settin... Continue reading

  
• v0.0.2 Patchnotes
  September 18, 2026 by OneCouch

  ADDED: -Added the upgrade interface. - Simultaneous spawning for all enemy spawners using a "Wave Start" Interactable. - Wave Start Interactable - A screen for when the player died. - GameMode part of... Continue reading
• Deciphering how to implement a Resource System - Giancarlo Morales
  September 12, 2026 by gian.mo06

  One of the main things that I spent the most of my effort trying to figure out during this spring was the resource system. In our game ODM there’s a main building resource that will be used to prett... Continue reading

  
• The Challenges of Placing Buildings on a Grid - Kaleb Lemens
  September 12, 2026 by electricfan54

  While working on the building system for the project the main challenge was placing buildings on the grid at the correct position and rotation. The issue with placing buildings on a grid is the positi... Continue reading

  
• Finding a Method For Melee - Dante Chacon
  September 11, 2026 by EsquireLard

  This week I encountered my first major hurdle on this project. In a previous iteration of development we solved projectile based damage, where a projectile object could be shot out of a gun, collide w... Continue reading

  
• Deciding on First Person Animation Method - Zachary Brodahl(countOrlock)
  September 11, 2026 by countOrlock

  PROBLEM: Left: Timesplitters - Free Radical; Right: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Infinity Ward The problem I ran into this week was deciding the best way to handle the first person character's han... Continue reading

  
• The Input Dilemma for UI by Dominic Thompson
  September 11, 2026 by That1domino

  The Problem: While working through this first week of development for Orbital Defense Madness, I was having an issue with inputs when changing the player HUD. When I initially set up the system for ch... Continue reading

  
• v0.0.1 Patchnotes
  September 11, 2026 by OneCouch

  ADDED: - team folder and project. - Maps folder, Placement code folder, Placement system folder - initial test map - Created my testing map - Zach's dev test map - BP_BaseCharacter - basic components... Continue reading