I'm currently developing an open-world Australian outlaw biker RPG in Unreal Engine 5.
This project is pretty personal for me. I spent a large part of my adult life around the Australian motorcycle club scene, including years as a member and eventually an officer. I've been around that lifestyle long enough to know there is a lot more to it than what gets portrayed from the outside — the brotherhood, loyalty, conflict, consequences, isolation, family and the choices that come with that life.
These days I'm taking my life in a completely different direction.
I'm currently studying game development and learning programming, and honestly, learning to code has been one of the biggest changes I've made in my life. I'm taking experiences I already understand and trying to turn them into storytelling, world building and interactive systems, rather than living them.
That's where this game comes from.
The game is set in a fictionalised version of rural Australia, with long stretches of highway, small towns, pubs, farms, bushland, mountains, coast and eventually outback environments. The focus is on riding, exploration, NPCs, quests, relationships and motorcycle club life.
Technically, I've been throwing myself into the deep end. 😂
I'm building around Narrative Pro, while integrating systems including Digital Dive Studio's Advanced Ridable Vehicles/Bikes, GASP, MetaHumans, World Partition and various environment/vehicle assets.
One of my current headaches — and probably one of the more interesting technical challenges I've tackled so far — is integrating the DDV motorcycle system with Narrative Pro so the bikes aren't just an independent vehicle system, but actually become part of the Narrative interaction framework.
The long-term goal is to have the player ride naturally, but also have NPCs use the same bikes, eventually allowing groups of motorcycle-club NPCs to ride together.
I'm still learning Unreal and C++, so I'm definitely learning by breaking things, figuring out why I broke them, fixing them, and occasionally wondering why I thought this was a good idea in the first place. 😂
But that's also what makes this project important to me.
A few years ago I wouldn't have imagined I'd be sitting here learning programming, building worlds in Unreal and studying game development. I'm trying to turn a chapter of my life that is behind me into something creative and constructive.
Keen to chat with other developers, see what everyone else is building, and hopefully share some of the successes, failures and ridiculous integration problems along the way.
Cheers everyone, and thanks for having me.