Developer Diary 70 - This is what it should look like

This is a sample of a randomly spawned village next to a dharmapala fortress and a bridge structure.

These images have two purposes:

To give me a clear reference of what I want the blueprint spawners to do (the one for the bridge, for the palace and for the villages) and to boost my ego after days of failed attempts at dealing with destructibles.

Developer Diary 69 - So close, yet so far away .....

What you see in the image above is a testing session, which helps me determine the optimal destructible mesh settings for each architecture segment. It's what I've been looking at for the last two days. And I'm sick of it.

I'm nauseous from the VR lag during in-editor test playing, because even though it all runs on 90 FPS without the editor load, when the editor is open it will still split the framerate in half to 45 FPS. I constantly feel like throwing up and none of the things I want to implement seem to work. And I can't figure out why. The 4 towers up front are all destructible meshes, with "impact damage" enabled so that I can test the effect of dharmapala and player projectiles on these structures. The palace segment in the back is part of a "dharmapala palace blueprint", which contains destructible meshes and collision volumes, that trigger a predetermined destruction as soon as the corresponding element (in this case "earth") collides with the collision volume.

But instead of destroying the pillar at the base, it just disappears. No matter what I do. I'm way below the chunk limit of 2000, I have set the segment on visible, I've tried other destructible segments in place of the pillar and every time I trigger the collision volume, these fucks just disappear instead of breaking apart. I've even set the mobility settings on all 3 different options and tested each one to no avail. The 4 towers up front seem to react to the impact damage of player projectiles, but they split into uneven parts and the collision of each chunk is a nightmare, even though I haven't changed the base scale of the model (as written in the unreal engine documentation). The walls of the tower appear hollow when it's split into chunks, which kills all possible immersion this effect might accomplish. There is no fix for these holes. Complex chunk collision and chunk merging is just not implemented for Unreal Engine yet. The only possible fix would be a custom split of the model; in other words I need to rebuild it and split it up manually, then fill up the holes and create a parent blueprint that enables physics behavior for all mesh segments. When the segment collides with a projectile, velocity is applied to all mesh chunks..... I'm so tired of it.

I've made lots of progress over the last few weeks, as I fixed most of the palace segments and created fully working LODs that allow the entire palace to be rendered in 90 FPS, even with foliage and during dharmapala chant animations. But in order to reach the next step I need to give every segment the ability to be influenced by various elemental effects and it just won't work.

For the next weeks I need to focus on some audio design work for another development studio and also continue on the renovations of my house, which is incredibly frustrating, because I'm running low on patience. I just want the alpha to be out there. I want this thing to lift off ...... I've been working on it for more than three years now ..... and it's god damn time for the alpha ..... I'm so close to it .... only two complex blueprints to go and I can't figure them out ..... it drives me mad ......

I guess this frustration is all part of the way. But some days it just eats up my motivation. Knowing that there is a chance, that I will need to recreate those meshes with basic geometry again, as I have already done two times now, fills me with dread.

Just need to keep at it I suppose ......

Developer Diary 68 - Preparing for Alpha

I reworked almost all of the architecture assets to make them look decent when the player character is moving through them. They contained a ton of texture stretching errors and Z.fighting at times. I also reworked the LOD settings for the dharmapala palace assets. The next step is to create blueprints for the palace and destructible meshes of each building segment so the player will be able to destroy the palace through earth elemental forces and spirits to reach the top in order to gain access to the dharmapalas lair.

The first palace will be underwater, and contain the Manta. The second palace will only consist of a single floor and contain the earth spirit so the player can use the Manta to reach the top. The third one however will have multiple levels and require the player to use the earth spirit to destroy building segments in order to climb it.

The remaining cathedral and church building segments will be used in "townspawners", that create cities of varying sizes, including churches and chapels. These cities are abandoned, but the player can use them to take cover from the creatures chasing him or find valuable resources close to them. Traders are also located inside those cities.

Still a ton of work to be done, but once these blueprints are completed it's finally time to compile an alpha version of the game.