This project is meant to provide a very basic starting point for a game built atop the paid General Movement Component v2 movement and networking system for Unreal 5 (hereafter referred to as GMCv2), along with the free and open source GMC Ability System (or GMAS) and GMCExtended framework (or GMCEx).
It is worth noting this is not meant to be a full foundation for a game—certainly not something along the scope of the LyraSampleGame project, or the venerable ShooterGame from the UE4 era. Think of this template as akin to the ThirdPerson or FirstPerson templates you can create a new Unreal project from: it doesn't do much, but it should hopefully be enough to get you started.
It is also worth noting that this project is still very much under construction. It will get you up and running with GMAS and GMCEx in one go, but it does not do a lot else yet. When time permits, more will be added.
This template tries to exercise a few basic features across all parts of the ecosystem, as well as having some convenience classes already made:
- A baseline Pawn class (in C++) which provides both the interface required by GMCEx's motion warping functionality and has components already provided and hooked up, as well as a skeletal mesh and camera for third-person functionality.
- A baseline movement component in C++ integrating all the bits required for GMAS to work and all the GMCEx functionality.
- Example blueprint subclasses for each of the above.
In addition, the project comes with a couple of GMAS abilities (Jump, Roll, and Sprint) already provided.
This template does not attempt to exercise every bit of functionality in all three pieces; it currently makes no use of GMCEx's motion warping (though has all the pieces in place to support it), for instance, nor does it dive into more advanced bits of GMAS or GMCv2. Consider it a starting place, nothing more.
In order to install the latest version of this template, you will want to have a Git client available. While there will be bundled release .zip files eventually, currently you must pull from the repository. If you don't currently have a client installed, you'll want to pull it down from https://git-scm.com/downloads and install it.
You will also need the most recent version of the General Movement Component installed to your Unreal Engine installation, or you will want to be prepared to add it to the project manually after you set it up; if you don't have it installed to the engine, then the first attempt to open the project after creating it will fail, as noted below.+
Find where your copy of Unreal 5.4 is installed -- on Windows, by default this is C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.4 though obviously your copy may be installed somewhere else.
Once you've located your Unreal 5.4 install directory:
- Make sure that you've installed GMCv2 into 5.4 from the Epic launcher.
- NOTE: You can install the plugin directly into the final project, just be aware that if you don't have GMCv2 in your 5.4 engine install, the project will fail to open the first time.
- Open a command prompt, such as the Windows
cmd.exe. - Go to the
Templatesdirectory under Unreal Engine 5.4 installation directory you've located; if usingcmd.exeyou would docd <directory>, for instancecd "C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.4\Templates"-- notice that if there are spaces in the path anywhere, you will want to put the path in quotes. - Type
git clone --recursive https://github.com/Rooibot/GMASExTemplate.gitand wait for the command to finish. This will pull not only the GMASEx template but also appropriate versions of GMAS and GMCEx.
This will pull the base template and the appropriate copies of GMAS and GMCEx all in one go.
Once you've installed the template as described above, you can launch Unreal 5.3 from the launcher and you'll see that under "Games" a new template is available:
When you select the template and create a new project, it will attempt to build the project from source. If you do not have GMCv2 installed to the engine this will fail. If so, abort the process and go to the project you just made, then copy GMCv2 into the Plugins directory under the project and attempt to build again.
Once you have the project open, you'll find that in addition to the usual Unreal Characters folder, there is a GMASExtended folder containing the template's assets. Under that folder are several more:
- Abilities: This folder contains example blueprint implementations of three GMAS abilities (Jump, Roll, and Sprint).
- Animations: While most of the animation sequences (and the meshes and control rigs) are pulled from the default Unreal character package, the montage used for the "Roll" command and the animation blueprint for our default pawn can be found here.
- Blueprints: The
BP_ExamplePawnused by this project can be found here, along with theBP_ExampleMovementcomponent. - Data: This contains the data assets used by the project. The two
DA_assets are GMAS-defined formats, while theDT_is an Unreal data table defining what gameplay tags are available. - Effects: This directory contains blueprint implementations of all the GMAS gameplay effects used by this demo (and some which are not).
- Input: This template is built atop Unreal's newer "Enhanced Input" system; all the Input Actions (and the default Input Mapping Context) can be found in this directory.
- LevelPrototyping: This just contains all the building blocks of the oh-so-familiar default Unreal 5 map.
- Maps: This contains the project's copy of the aforementioned default Unreal 5 map.
- Particles: This contains some Niagara particle systems utilized by gameplay effects (though at present none of those effects are used in the template).
For the main movement and camera controls, GMCv2 can handle the basics internally. If you look at the BP_ExampleMovement blueprint component, you'll see that IA_Look and IA_Movement are set in the two input action properties.
The actual mapping that defines what those inputs are bound to is in the IMC_Default file in the Input folder; if you look at BP_ExamplePawn you'll see that this project's pawn will automatically use an input mapping context if one is set in its properties, and the default pawn is set to use IMC_Default.
You will also see a number of IA_<whatever> events in the default pawn; these events are called when a given input action is triggered. This is how the Jump, Sprint, and Roll abilities get called.
In addition to GMC's normal "Orient to Input Direction" or "Orient to Control Direction", GMCEx adds a few other features, notably "Orient to Velocity Direction" (where the way the character is facing is determined by your velocity). This is on by default in the template.
GMCEx also has a turn-in-place assist logic, which is "Require Facing Before Move" (with a "Facing Angle Offset Threshold"); if this is true, then the character will turn until they are within the offset threshold of the direction they're trying to move, and then they will start moving. This is coupled with a GetAimYawRemaining function which will tell you how much is still left in the turn. (Which is already cached and made available in the animation blueprint.)
Most of the rest of the GMAS demo functionality needs to still be ported in -- roll, crouch, and the more advanced abilities like teleport and whatnot. This is relatively straightforward.
Internally right now, GMCEx has a bunch of additional animation functionality being added on -- precalculating orientation warping, things like that. Once I've finished those and pushed them live, I intend to convert the project to using those. I also intend to add some examples of how to use the motion warping functionality in GMCExtended. Which brings us to...
Yeah, everyone asks me about this. For those who aren't aware, I created a movement system for my game based around little blocks of movement logic -- things which could solve "can I climb this" and handle how you would climb, for instance -- which could be added and removed on-the-fly. It's worked very well for me, but many people asked about the Solvers on the GMC Discord. As a result, I've ported the base solver functionality into GMCEx... but there are currently no examples of how to use solvers, because all of my solvers are too heavily tied to my game code.
Adding a climbing/mantling or wall-running solver is definitely on the list to do eventually, especially as it'll serve as a useful example of how to use the motion warping functionality.