Flying Colors

Flying Colors is a technical game demo showcasing a runtime vertex color painting mechanic in Unreal Engine 5. Transported within a faded storybook, your goal is to restore color to the world, whether by arrow, exploration, or magic!

Currently in development: coming April 23rd, 2026!

TRANSPORTED INTO A BOOK

Iris, a budding author who has recently finished her first book, has a very important meeting with her publisher the next day which will decide the fate of her career! She falls into a troubled sleep and is transported into her book in her dream. However, Iris has lingering doubts and anxiety about the worth of her story, tainting her dream and draining the world of its life. She must use her power as an author to bring color back to the world before she wakes. With confidence and creativity, she is sure to succeed with flying colors!

RUNTIME VERTEX COLOR PAINTING

The custom painting tool allows you to paint the vertex colors of any mesh in the environment at runtime! It is a component that can be easily attached and used with Blueprint Scripting. Parameters allow for different colors to be painted and the brush radius and paint falloff to be adjusted. It is based on Unreal Engine's native vertex paint tool, which uses octrees for location queries on the mesh, and is very fast for even dense meshes, a must-have for runtime performance!

MANY WAYS TO PAINT

The demo features several applications of the runtime vertex color painting tool via Blueprint scripting including:

• On projectile impact
• On player movement
• On pickup explosion
• Modification of brush radius

POINTS AND POWER-UPS

There are power-ups that have various effects on painting:

• Increase your ground paint radius
• Explode paint
• A special exploding arrow

Exploding power-ups can also have a chain reaction effect if other exploding power-ups are in range! Use the power-ups to paint the world quickly and gain points. Each is worth points depending on its difficulty and effect.

COLOR THE WORLD IN TIME

The game has two modes:
For those who want a challenge, highscore mode sets you against the clock. The faster you paint the world, the greater your time bonus.
For those who want to try out painting at their own pace, sandbox mode has no time limit. You can still score points based on your time and paint progress.

ABOUT

This project was my 14-week senior project. See my project page on Behance here! Thanks for checking out my work!