Developer Diary 84 - 3 Hours Environment Training Each Day

Putting in the effort is worth it. Waiting is worth it. Staying committed is worth it. And taking breaks and a day off is worth it.

Developer Diary 83 - A New Approach

These two screens depict a massive increase in quality and detail. I have been fighting for this kind of quality for years now. And now finally I am content with what I'm seeing on my screen with an average desktop FPS of 50-60 FPS and a VR FPS of 90 on GTX 970.

I realized that it is possible to create a detailed beautiful forest by reducing it into branch elements and leaf elements. The day night cycle was supported by using a merging cubemap on my Exponential heightfog, that is incorporated into the day-night cycle script and disappears during night time, while reappearing during day time. There are cloud shadows and water reflections, yet not a single shadow on any mesh or building contained in the level and creating something like this that works without detailed shadowing and without dynamic shadows (apart from landscape shadows) was hard to do.

Meanwhile a lot of bad stuff is happening in my private life, but you can't hit a homerun every day. To all struggling developers out there: Never give up. Never, never, never, never, never, never. It doesn't matter if life throws shit at you, if there are arrogant assholes out there, that tell you your work is meaningless. It doesn't matter if you're scared or frustrated. None of it matters. Only what you do every day, every hour, every minute, that matters. The work you put into it matters.

Of course this is just the beginning. Ever since the last UE update none of my environment FX blueprints work, because they were all based on a node which was declared invalid with the most recent update. (On a sidenote: I love you Epic!) But again, it doesn't matter. I'm moving forward, regardless of everything else.