Kitty Maze / Pumpkin Pickup Update 3: First Release

Hello! Today I completed the minimum viable product for my Kitty Maze project (now called Pumpkin Pickup) in Unreal Engine 5 and published the first release of the game on Itch.io.

You can download the game here: https://amberrociosmith.itch.io/pumpkin-pickup

1. Bug Fix
2. Environment Setup
3. Music and SFX
4. VFX
5. UI Updates
6. Publishing

Bug Fix

A problem I have ignored since I started this project is a weird landing animation issue with my cat character.

I noticed this warning in the output log whenever this bug happened:

AnimBlueprintLog: Warning: Trying to play a non-additive animation 'Anim_Landing' into a pose that is expected to be additive in anim instance 'ABP_Kitty_C /Game/ThirdPerson/Maps/UEDPIE_0_ThirdPersonMap.ThirdPersonMap:PersistentLevel.BP_ThirdPersonCharacter_C_0.CharacterMesh0.ABP_Kitty_C_0'

This gave me a pretty good idea of where the problem was. I checked the Land (state) in the Animation Blueprint and sure enough, the “Land” animation sequence had an “Apply Additive” node before the output.

I removed the “Apply Additive” node:

And that fixed it!

Environment Setup

I got this village pack and started setting up the map.

Landscape progress

The final result did not turn out as maze-like as I was originally expecting, but I think it worked out pretty well.

For fun, I made a simple rotation script and added it to the windmill and water wheel.

Music and SFX

I grabbed some background music and SFX from freesound.org and hooked them up, which was pretty simple.

The most interesting one is the pickup sound, which has a randomizer in the sound cue blueprint.

VFX

I got the Basic Pickups VFX Set as a starting point for the poison effect.

Basically, it spawns some purple bubbles above the character’s head.

I also set up a sparkle-like effect for the collectibles (and added the rotation script to those too).

UI Updates

Since the collectibles are pumpkins and the map is no longer a maze, I renamed the game to Pumpkin Pickup and made a logo for the main menu screen.

I also finally fixed an issue where clicking anywhere outside the buttons in the main menu removed the cursor (and moved the camera, which is now visible). Now the input is disabled and the cursor state is forced in a tick.

if (_playerController != nullptr && _playerCharacter != nullptr)
{
	_playerController->SetCursorActive(show);

	if (show)
	{
		_playerCharacter->DisableInput(_playerController);
	}
	else
	{
		_playerCharacter->EnableInput(_playerController);
	}
}

void AKittyMazePlayerController::PlayerTick(float DeltaTime)
{
	Super::PlayerTick(DeltaTime);

	bShowMouseCursor = _cursorActive;
}

void AKittyMazePlayerController::SetCursorActive(bool showCursor)
{
	_cursorActive = showCursor;
}

For the HUD, I replaced the words with icons and made some placement adjustments.

Publishing

Finally, I built the game for Windows, recorded a short gameplay video, and created an Itch.io page to publish the game.

Now anyone can download the build and try it out! I am excited that the first version of my first Unreal game coded in C++ is complete.