Vaulting & Climbing

This project was built to explore advanced character traversal and animation systems in Unreal Engine. The focus was on implementing vaulting, climbing, and simple parkour mechanics while maintaining stable animation blending, grounded movement, and responsive player control using C++.

• IK-based leg placement for ground alignment and stairs
• Dynamic foot adjustment based on surface detection
• Vaulting and climbing traversal mechanics
• Simple parkour-style movement experimentation
• UI displaying ammo for multiple weapon types
• Basic enemy AI for traversal-combat interaction testing
• Focus on clean movement state transitions

IK Leg Placement & Ground Detection

The project demonstrates inverse kinematics for leg placement to ensure the character’s feet properly align with uneven terrain and stairs. Line traces are used to detect surface height and normals, allowing the animation system to dynamically adjust foot position and rotation for more believable grounded movement.

Stairs Handling & Traversal Stability

Special attention was given to stair traversal, where traditional animation often breaks immersion. By combining IK leg adjustment with movement state checks, the character maintains consistent footing while ascending or descending steps, reducing foot sliding and clipping.

Vaulting, Climbing, and Parkour Mechanics

Vaulting and climbing systems were implemented to explore basic parkour-style movement. Environmental detection using traces determines whether an obstacle can be vaulted over or climbed. These mechanics are designed to blend smoothly with standard movement without interrupting player control.

Weapon UI & Combat Context

A simple UI system displays ammo counts for different weapon types, allowing the project to test traversal while armed. This ensures that vaulting, climbing, and movement transitions do not interfere with weapon handling or HUD updates.

Basic Enemy AI

Basic enemy AI was included to validate traversal mechanics under gameplay pressure. Enemies provide minimal combat interaction, helping test how movement, animation, and IK systems behave when the player is forced to react quickly or reposition during traversal.

Goal of the Project

The primary goal was not to build a full game, but to understand how traversal, animation, IK, and combat-adjacent systems interact at the C++ level. This project serves as a foundation for more advanced movement and parkour systems in future gameplay prototypes.

• Stabilizing IK during fast movement and traversal
• Preventing animation conflicts between climbing and combat
• Maintaining clean and readable movement state logic
• Ensuring Ik updates remain consistent and optimzed during traversal

• Advanced traversal and movement systems
• IK-driven animation grounding
• Parkour and climbing mechanics design
• System-level gameplay thinking