Quests are the backbone of many games, particularly RPGs. They not only provide structure but also drive the narrative forward, giving players a clear sense of purpose and progression. As game developers and designers, you play a crucial role in creating these immersive experiences. However, building a quest system that is robust, scalable, and easy for designers to use can be a significant technical challenge. In this guide, we’ll break down the fundamental principles of designing a flexible quest system in Unreal Engine, empowering you to create engaging gameplay experiences.
The Core Components of a Quest
Before writing a single line of code, it’s crucial to define what a “quest” is in your game. Most quest systems can be broken down into these core components:
- State: At any given time, a quest has a state. The most basic states are Not Started, In Progress, and Completed. You might also have Failed or Ready to Turn In.
- Objectives: These are the specific tasks the player must complete. Examples include “Kill 10 Goblins,” “Collect 5 Herbs,” or “Talk to the Blacksmith.” A quest can have one or many objectives.
- Rewards: What does the player get for completing the quest? This could be experience points, gold, items, or even unlocking a new area.
- NPC Interaction: Quests often begin and end by talking to an NPC. The system needs to know who gives the quest and to whom the player returns upon completion.
Choosing a Data Structure
How you store your quest data is one of the most important architectural decisions you’ll make.
- Data Tables: This is a prevalent approach in Unreal Engine. You define a struct (e.g., FQuestData) that contains all the information about a quest (ID, Name, Description, Objectives, Rewards). You then create a Data Table based on this struct, which gives you a spreadsheet-like view to define all your quests.
- Pros: Easy for designers to use, efficient to load, well-supported by the engine.
- Cons: Can be rigid. Complex objectives (e.g., “Follow an NPC without being seen”) are difficult to define in a simple structure.
- Custom Blueprint Structs/Objects: For more complex quests, you can use Blueprint objects. You could have a base “Objective” Blueprint and create children for each type (e.g., “BP_Objective_Kill,” “BP_Objective_Collect”).
- Pros: Extremely flexible, allows for custom logic per objective.
- Cons: More complex to set up, harder for designers to manage without a custom UI.
The Quest Manager
You’ll need a central brain to manage the player’s quests. This is typically a persistent actor or subsystem, often referred to as a “Quest Manager” or “Journal Manager.” Its responsibilities include:
- Maintaining a list of the player’s active and completed quests.
- Listening for game events (e.g., “OnEnemyKilled,” “OnItemPickedUp”) to update quest objectives.
- Providing functions to add, abandon, and complete quests.
- Notifying the UI when a pursuit is updated.
Example: A Simple “Fetch” Quest
Imagine an NPC gives the player a quest to collect five herbs. The logic flow in Blueprints would look something like this:
- The player interacts with the NPC. The NPC’s Blueprint calls a function on the Quest Manager: AcceptQuest(“CollectHerbs”).
- The Quest Manager adds the “CollectHerbs” quest to the player’s active quest list and updates the UI.
- When the player picks up an herb item, the item’s Blueprint fires an event: OnItemPickedUp(“Herb”).
- The Quest Manager listens for this event. It checks if the “CollectHerbs” quest is active and increments the objective Progress.
- Once Progress reaches 5, the Quest Manager changes the objective’s state to “Completed” and updates the central quest state to “Ready to Turn In.”
- The player returns to the NPC. The NPC checks the quest status with the Quest Manager. If it’s ready, the NPC completes the quest, and the Quest Manager grants the rewards.
Conclusion
Building a quest system from scratch is a rewarding challenge that teaches you a lot about game architecture. It’s an opportunity to delve into the intricacies of data management, event communication, and user interface (UI) design. This intellectual stimulation is a key part of the game development process, and it’s what makes our work so exciting and fulfilling.
If you want to save time and get a powerful Menu System, be sure to check out our Main Menu and Save System. It handles all this complexity so you can focus on creating amazing stories for your players.