Unreal HUD Test

I wanted to makes some HUD in Unreal using UMG/Blueprints, in the style of a 1st/3rd person game, or and MMO.

I started with just an HP bar, and needed a little damage zone to test that functionality, which turned into learning a lot about shaders and materials to create this lava area.

I also built a little ability system modelled after the way World of Warcraft works. The point was to test the ability HUD and progress bar, for tracking each ability’s cooldown, communicating when abilities are available again, as well as a short global cooldown whenever any ability is used.

I didn’t expect it to be so fun to set up the actual abilities, but it was surprisingly easy to do within Unreal’s physics system! I learned a lot about how Actors are set up, using the Animator & Level Sequencer, and Niagara particle systems.

I plan to continue expanding on this demo.

Player damage and screen overlay while standing in lava can additionally be seen here: