While I struggled a lot with bringing my original idea to life in Unreal, I still wanted to bring rhythm mechanics within my game. I was inspired by Crypt of the Necrodancer in it's blend of top-down gameplay and fun innovative rhythm based combat. Thus, I adapted my idea to something more workable in Unreal.
My idea was to have a sound play to the beat of the level, one saying "Go", and the other saying "Stop". When the go sound plays, the player is free to shoot, but when the stop sound plays, the player has to stop otherwise they will lose HP and break their combo.
I found out the beat of the song I was using for my level was 90 BPM, which was a beat approximately every 1.5 seconds. However, in editing, I had to reduce it to 1.3 seconds, as there were audio issues with syncing. Attached to an event tick, there would be a delay of 1.3 seconds, which flip flops between In Time being true, and In Time being false, indicated by the sounds.
I made a variable called Combo Count, which I binded to the UI. It added one to it everytime the player shot within time.
When the player shoots at the wrong time, however, the combo count would reset back to zero, and the player would lose a small amount of health. I chose a small amount as top down shooters often encourage spam shooting, so it would be too cruel if the player lost large chunks of HP.
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