PCG Road Tool

Development Started: December 2024Status: ArchivedEngine: Unreal Engine 5Role: Solo Developer

A PCG tool for UE5, built in C++ with the PCG plugin for Unreal Engine. Create modular road systems with customisable props; just place down a spline! Built with designers in mind, the main purpose is to streamline the world-building process.

Gameplay

Gallery

Links

Features & Technical Breakdown

Feature Breakdown

• Fully customisable road layouts using splines • All controlled through a single blueprint • Works with default UE landscape system • Modular parameters (Meshes, Foliage, Props) • Complete with user guide • Full technical breakdown available upon request!

Technical Overview

Starting with the landscape tool, the user needs to place splines in the desired path for the road. The manager blueprint then generates the road and prop meshes along each spline point. Once a PCG volume has been applied, the manager blueprint assigns the tree mesh/es to it. The PCG tool then reads the area around the spline, and generates a basic forest. It also adds roadside props using a global Z offset dependant on whether the curb is displayed or not. These 2 areas that the PCG volume utilises are the only 'random' elements throughout the tool.

Main Takeaways & Challenges

For the most part, this tool does exactly what I had intended for and designed. It required me to dive deeper into the spline and landscape systems within the engine in order to create a tool that worked with them seamlessly. The main challenges that I ran into for this project were mostly scope-related. I had originally severely over-estimated how much was possible using a tool that was brand new to me in 8 weeks. The main challenge that I would like to try to tackle moving forward is to create the ability to have crossroads; whether that be with a separate intersection mesh, or using the junction system already built-in to the landscape tool. Currently, if 2 roads were to cross, the meshes just clash.