Mushkinn's Dev, Corner

Welcome to my little corner of development. I'll drop stuff of what I am working on or stuck on or random bits of programming that come to mind.

[mush-develop-blog]

Dinosaur Battleground - Vision Issues.

This is somewhat unrelated to the project but affected the project during the final week. During this week and a bit of the previous one I started having issues with my vision. Specifically I started to see blurry after a certain time reading UE4′s Blueprint Nodes and some of the c++ code. I been wearing glasses as far as I can remember so I am used to seeing blurry without them, but this was happening often and with them on. Obviously being unable to read values in programming is a big issue it is after all what Programming is about. You use fancy keywords and number and boom you have a game or an app etc. 

Normally I would just try to will it and put more effort in focusing but this time it would actully give me a headache and I could not focus at all. I decided to do something else, watch a bigger screen, not read anything in particular and then go back into Unreal. I worked for the most part but it meant I spent more time trying to get my eyes to work than actually working. Luckily the effect got under some control after a while and I was able to put in good work before it started bothering again. I think it’s time I get new glasses before I go blind. In conclusion, it’s a good idea to keep your eyes healthy before they start affecting your work. 

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Dinosaur Battleground - Unreal Doesn’t Like Me

Following on the issues from last week this week was especially maddening. Throughout my time doing this bachelors’ Degree I have had many issues with my laptop, too many. There was a point that the hard-disc would make a sound and if I didn’t put the laptop to sleep it would blue screen; that’s it no warning it just boom gone. Because of this I was no longer surprise when something was wrong with my laptop and expected things to go wrong at some point and just my luck it was this week. It should come as no surprise to some that Unreal like other engines/IDE tend to crash to a certain frequency which isn’t a big deal most of the time... sort of. 

In my case however it put a full hold on any progress not only did it start crashing, it crashed before it loaded. As you can imagine I was frustrated and I gave up after trying different solutions, including turning the laptop off, removing the battery and leaving it like that for more than 10 minutes. I went as far as reverting commits in the repo just in case something I changed is making it crash out of nowhere. Nothing. 

At the time I was working on UI stuff, mostly readjusting the anchors so it could look well under different resolutions; well after setting it up to change resolution in the options menu which wasted some time. Because of the crashing issue I lost some of my progress on top of being unable to fix it. Turns out I didn’t have to, at some point it just started working again. The funny part was I was going to show someone how it was crashing all the time, and that’s when it starts working. I think one of the last few changes was to recompile the solution or clean it and rebuild it, not sure which worked but I have no complaint about the magical fix, just happy Unreal started playing nice for a while. 

[mush-develop-blog]

Dinosaur Battle - Crew Change

As game evolve during production sometime the team changes as well.  This week we lost two of our teammates leaving us at two. This isn’t a surprise and it’s to be expected. I joined this team late so it’s to be expected that others would join and leave. However, the two that have left had better understanding of most of the project. One of them in particular worked on the c++ code while the rest of us worked with Unreal Engine’s Blueprints. My biggest worry was working on the AI. As I mentioned I didn’t touch any of the C++ code and diving into it at this point would be chaotic. Not to mention all the bugs and half-working parts of the tutorial level. 

Fortunately our instructor who graded our worked devised a way to focus our efforts in hope we can finish polishing this project despite to low manpower. On top of splitting some of the highlight feature we had explicit deadline for each task helping. I was ordered not to touch Foliage at all... Understandable. With our tasks tagged it was time to just get the work done... Only that some of my tasks ended taking much longer due to technically issues, nothing new. 

Some of my tasks included working on the mini map, Sounds, Tasks for the tutorial among a few others. I had trouble fixing the mini-map due to how it was set up. The mini-map was a camera and unfortunately I wasn’t having any luck making adjustments to it so object in it were more visible. Sounds was another issue, wwise plugin wasn’t working so I could not add any of the new sounds. Oh and asking the ones that left was useless since they didn’t know how it was made to work earlier. I was able to fix the tasks to keep the user to cheat and complete them before being prompted. Took some time to traverse all the blueprint to figure out where everything was being called. All in all I simply did what my lovely pc and Unreal allowed me to do. 

[mush-develop-blog]

Dinosaur Battlegrounds - Swapping Foliage

So I recently joined a new development team for my final project. And my first task was or at least sounded simple. Get this foliage swapping with a Blueprint (UE4 Visual script) of the same foliage so we can interact with it when close by. The task was straightforward and some implementation was already present but didn’t function to expectations. Given I was still getting familiar to UE4 I was shown a tutorial that would help get things working.  Unfortunately it was missing a very importing detail which entailed swapping between different foliage types. The foliage system worked like one object, making it hard to set up the swapping since I can’t properly test which foliage type is which in the editor. On top of this the foliage types didn’t seem to match the order they appear in the editor list making hard-coding indices a poor solution.

I did some digging trying to ID the Foliage that is close to me and see how I could consistently ID it when I swap it in and out. Searching on the web for hints didn’t prove too fruitful and I was left with trying out all sort of unctions and variables that the foliage type I detected could offer, and finally I found it. I managed to discover the internal array the foliage system has for the foliage types it used. Took me some days to set up everything and then figure out how to swap thing in and out. At this point I simply needed to create a swap function to hold all the Blueprint versions I needed which was simply time consuming. That said I later discovered I needed to add a lot more foliage types because the Foliage system was on a per-level basis. Fun.  Yaniel Rivera

[mush-develop-blog]

Dinosaur Battlegrounds - Foliage

This is a very late update, I was suppose to write these out earlier but mistakes were made. Anyhow I been working on my Final Project with a team called Dinosaur Battlegrounds. It’s a pretty big project and I joined midway into development. My first and current task was to setup a foliage system.

To better explain, we needed to make the trees and bushes Static meshes (statues) and switch them out with a Skeletal Mesh(real tree) when the player got close in order to let him move the branches and such. SImple enough in theory. UE4 (Unreal Engine 4) has a foliage system that helps you “paint” the world with meshes instead of placing them one by one. At first I was following a guide to get this started, but it never explained how to know which Static Mesh was close. That little detail put a wrench in this task for a while. And then came a bigger issue; one that is present even today. The current Static Meshes used by the Foliage system in UE4 have a fixed size, which matches their environment however the Skeletal mesh of the plant is more than 10times the scale, so when they got swapped, you just find yourself inside a giant tree out of nowhere. 

Ideally, I would get the Static Mesh and Skeletal Mesh of the same plant in the same size, yet I am expected to handle the scaling myself, based on the already created assets. Hint, I can’t really alter the scales. I can apply a scale onto the Skeletal mesh but it’s possible things will look off due to the huge difference. I’ve tried to explain this to the one giving us the assets which I assume can grab the original asset in Maya or whatever and export it again but smaller, matching sizes. Sadly this isn’t happening and I am just giving up on the matter. 

My teammate mentioned I can create a static mesh out of a skeletal one, which will help get matches sizes, though the Skeletal Mesh is still huge, but it’s easier to downscale two assets of the size size than scaling two assets of different size to match. But well, Many hours later I find myself dealing fixing the same thing over and over again. Hopefully this last change will let it be done for good. 

[mush-develop-blog]

Simply put, made the character follow the platform rather than just let it move from under him. Had to play a with the hierarchy to get the player to move into the platform’s transform without being affected by scaling; currently using cubes and calling them into my desired shape, which was affecting the character. 

[mush-develop-blog]

Made a simple spot to test out the navmesh and played “tag”. I can hide the mesh renderer of the plane to make it float around like a ghost. Also about that car model I made... it was on the laptop so I can’t grab it. 

Note: The green patch “costs” more to move on so I danced around it to see how much the capsule would divert from a direct path, good way to path the AI without making too many waypoints.

[mush-develop-blog]

Late update.

Been brainstorming as to fixing my level transitions. Simple stuff however I always have a struggle when picking how to design the “flow” of things. managed to get things flowing nicely between scenes now, so I should be able to build the levels without touching the gameManager for a while. Gonna hop on Maya and see the assets I can make for the second level. Maybe bring back a car I modeled for a previous course and plug a nav mesh into it to keep it moving while the player hops car to car. Though that means I need to fix the thingy with the... *mumble mumble*

[mush-develop-blog]

Found how to alter the appearance of the water; made changes to the mat file, though just colors for now. Added the gameManager and a script to signal the manager when death/reached end events occur. Took me a bit to decide how it work it out since I wanted to keep the manager out of reach of other objects but it needed to know what other objects did. Might change how this works but for now I simply make the “lava” and “endPoint” children during runtime and add the script to get the trigger signal. 

[mush-develop-blog]

Current Status:

writing a gameManager to handle level loading and transitions. While trying to remember what I’ve used the most on Unity I remembered how much I worked with nav-meshes so I considering to use them again to make the platforms move. Granted this isn’t the ideal way but it adds some complexity and value.  

[mush-develop-blog]

And it’s gone!

Dropped the laptop off for shipping. Hopefully they find what causes the issues before sending it back. most likely will lose what’s stored but I saved the important stuff already. 

On a side note time to keep working on the project. 

[mush-develop-blog]

Found some water asset to use for the “lava”. Made a simple script to snap the player back to a spawn point once he touches the “lava”. Not sure if I should either polish this level or go ahead and create a new one with a different theme. 

Though the current level doesn't clearly fall into a theme, will have to fix that. 

[mush-develop-blog]

this is the gameplay I have so far. Need to make a respawn system and the level  progression. Also made a table and updated the couch to give it more sitting space (was to short to be a proper platform to jump on). 

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Went into Maya to make myself a couch. Haven’t used maya in a while but I know my way around a bit. Fortunately it’s easy to export into Unity, so I can keep making some assets for myself.

[mush-develop-blog]

Project proposal

Above Ground (working title) 10.17.2017 ─ Yaniel “Mushkinn” Rivera #FSED3PROJ Overview This game focuses around Kimiko (temp name), who through a ‘floor is lava’ gameplay recovers pieces of past memories. She travels across different places including her childhood home until reaching a “m...

[mush-develop-blog]

Change of plans.

Contacted HP support again to do follow up on the issue. I explained that the troubleshooting they suggested gave no signs of failure despite being able to personally see the sign still in play.I asked if someone could come and check it in person but the option was to ship it to them.

 About time I asked in all honesty, I was never given the option so I didn’t consider asking myself. Anyhow given that I need this issue resolved I’ll have to completely scrap working on Unreal Engine for the time being. Fortunately I found some inspiration on the game concept I had floating in my head and will make a small but formal documentation of it in a later update tomorrow. I’ll be using Unity on my iMac to work since it’s already installed and I’ve used monodevelop in the past for the necessary scripting. I hope I can create something worthy in the small time frame. 

[mush-develop-blog]

Almost there...

I might be at the finish line to transferring by stuff to the extra hard-drive, that said windows explorer crashed in the process so I have to start where it left off.