Unreal Engine 5 · Solo · University

MechHead

A low-poly third-person action game set in a neon-soaked sci-fi city at night — five Blueprint-driven enemy types, six districts, and boss monitors that blue-screen as they take damage.

Type: University Assignment
Module: Game Engine Foundation
Engine: Unreal Engine 5.2.1
Year: 2024
Team: Solo

UE 5.2.1 Blueprint Dynamic Materials Niagara VFX Lumen Blender

Final Grade 0%

Watch Gameplay Dev Thread · Uni login

Enemy types

Map districts

UE5 crashes survived

Source size

Overview

What is MechHead?

MechHead is a low-poly third-person action game built as a Unreal Engine 5 framework assignment at Staffordshire University (Games Engine Foundations, Level 3 Foundation Year). The brief supplied a framework of assets and core blueprints to work from - everything else was built entirely on my own.

The world is a neon-soaked Sci-Fi city at night - inspired by Cyberpunk 2077's aesthetic - shot through with emissive strips, Lumen reflections, Niagara particle effects, and Bloom-heavy atmospheric lighting. The map grew substantially beyond the initial city block: a nature/jungle zone, a bioluminescent forest path, a car park, a football stadium, and a playground were all built out across the assignment period.

// Gameplay — quest UI, timer, mid-combat

The standout material is on Boss Mech 2, which displays a BSOD texture upon hitting health thresholds - driven by checks to see if health reached a certain percentage, which then a dynamic material instance is created and switched to BSOD. Then there are the satirical in-world monitor screens surrounding the Mechanical Jackson boss arena - displaying fake ad popups, scam sites, Windows update screens, and ad-blocker prompts as fully textured meshes in the world. These were re-used for Boss Mech 2.

// BSOD monitor — Boss Mech 2 damage display

Full Gameplay Video

Watch on YouTube

// Full gameplay walkthrough — Staffordshire University assignment submission

Enemy Roster

Bestiary — Five Enemy Types

Bomber Mech

Ranged

Orange ranged attacker. Fires explosive missles at the player, tends to prioritise being tactiful by creating space between the player and itself.

Chaser Mech

Pursuit

Dark teal spiked chassis with red glowing eyes. Fast pursuit AI that tracks the player aggressively across zones. Prioritises on flanking the player up close and personal.

Boss Mech 1

Boss

A large purple mech with scrap and garbage attached to it. Deals both close ranged (DoT) and long ranged damage. Has a lot of health and is aggressive.

Boss Mech 2

Boss

A massive mech, with multiple monitors attached to it, dealing close ranged damage. Also has long ranged machine laser weapons to deal distant damage. Upon being damaged, each monitor gradually shows BSOD texture before the monitor detaches from the boss.

Mechanical Jackson

Mini-boss

Named mini-boss. Top-hat black mech with a red glow aura. Aims to be an annoyance to the player, by having the ability to randomly teleport across different teleporters, damaging the player and aggressively stalker them.

World Design

Districts & Zones

The map expanded well beyond the original city block brief. Each zone has a distinct visual identity while keeping the low-poly emissive aesthetic consistent. Pick a zone to fly the camera there:

// Neon City Core

Satirical Screens

The Ad Screens on Boss Mech 2

The Boss Mech 2 features a ring of in-world monitor meshes displaying fully textured satirical content - each one a different fake internet nuisance. These are genuine Blueprint-driven dynamic textures rendered onto mesh monitor props - not post-process overlays. Each monitor is a distinct static mesh with its own material instance.

A BSOD reading "Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart" - 20% complete

A Windows Update screen - "Working on updates, 6% complete. Don't turn off your PC"

"Give in to our obnoxious and appealing Ads" - Windows 11 upgrade prompt mockup

"You may block all ads - Install Ad Blocker and continue"

FreeSteamGames-totallynotfake.com - a fake human verification / scam offer screen ("Download WannaCry Game for 2 minutes!")

Technical Breakdown

Systems & Architecture

The AI system uses UE5's simply uses pure AI logic in Blueprints. No AIController, Blackboard, nor Behaviour Tree was used. Each enemy type has the core behaviour from the parent enemy with some having additional behaviour on top.

Interactables include breakable crates, playable football pitch, and a goal reward crate with a Niagara exclamation particle effect. The road mesh was exported to Blender to remove one side for custom intersection building - no stock road mesh supported the layout.

// BSOD material graph

Rendering uses Lumen Reflection for metallic surface clarity (SSR was too noisy on glossy materials), with Bloom enabled for volumetric atmospheric lighting. Motion Blur was disabled; Shadow quality increased for sharper edges at a slight performance cost. Global Illumination was evaluated but excluded from the final build as it interfered with the emissive-driven lighting design. Plus, it was extremely taxing on the GPU.

Cut content

A healing station (broke the player character when weapons were equipped), a pressure plate puzzle (unlocking a hidden weapon passageway), and an in-game currency system tied to crate drops were all designed but cut before submission due to scope and time constraints.

Healing Station

Broke the player character when weapons were equipped.

Pressure Plate Puzzle

Unlocking a hidden weapon passageway.

In-game Currency

A currency system tied to crate drops.

Challenges & Lessons

What Went Wrong (And What I Learned)

Fatal error count · UE 5.2.1

UE5.2.1 crashed approximately 105 times across development. Nearly all crashes were unknown, and each introduced an array of work I have lost. A good deal of progress was lost - not everything initially planned made it into the final build.

Mechanical Jackson Mini-Boss's teleportation was quite difficult. I spent a lot of time making sure the logic was correct, as the mini-boss initially teleported outside the world or in a completely different area. In few cases, it would disappear and not spawn after teleporting.

Key lessonUse version control. During the foundation year, I did not have the necessary knowledge of setting up Perforce, nor GitHub and relied on OneDrive to backup the project in a ZIP archive.

Descope earlyThe pressure plate puzzle was cut not because it was broken, but because getting timing and player feedback right was eating into the remaining schedule. I learned that I need to descope before I run out of time, not after.

Milestones