Developer Diary 137 - Estate

 

Developer Diary 136 - Weather FX - Destructor BP & SFX & Music Integration

During June I have completed:

- Full Ambient SFX Integration of all weather FX and extensive testing of these sounds

- I fixed multiple bugs related to weather FX not returning to default weather during sunrise / sunset

 

- Created a demo destructive tree asset to test particle systems replacing geometry collections & chaos destruction (turns out chaos destruction reduces overall performance by a lot, regardless of collision settings or reduced voronoi structure)

- I created a complete blackboard with Miro.com to set up a basic overview of all the features and necessary steps to complete each blueprint and production segment (it's constantly being updated, depending on which feature I'm working on)

- Created a basic outline for an 8th blueprint, controlling sound effects and music cues throughout the world

I am currently working on:

- Scoring cues, that fade in from far away each time a specific atmosphere condition is met. All cues share the same notes and are compatible with one another. The system is set up in waves and scoring cues can overlap, play at the same time, or alternate. Altogether they form a massive, soft, subtle symphony merging with the ambient SFX. The silence in between these cues adds to the overall atmosphere and carries much more weight now. Cues for Sunrise / Sunset / Forest Fire / Snow / Blizzard are complete, Rain / Thunderstorm / Daytime / Night Time are work in progress.

- Replacing all previous destructive effects with particle systems. A demo model is completed. I plan to replace the previous "void" effects with portals. Once a void projectile is thrown at a model, it creates two portals. The "see through" effect is accomplished by spawning two cameras recording the view from each portal and projecting their viewport onto a material placed on each corresponding portal. When another projectile is thrown, the previous portals disappear (which saves performance). Wind projectiles can now only be used to increase the player speed and increase jump height, which still makes them one of the most important game design elements. Earth projectiles can only destroy buildings and structures outside of dharamapala domains. If an elemental is thrown at a dharmapala palace segment, it is directly reflected onto the player and causes immediate damage, since these palaces are meant to act like mirrors, not only physically speaking but also in a spiritual sense ... all manifestations in the Bardo Thodol are ultimately founded upon inner tendencies of the diseased. Specificly their elemental affinities and the locations, that house these should remain immune to any outside effects.

The goal is to finish both, the scoring cues and the new destruction effects and implement them by the end of July .... tough goal to accomplish for more than 100 different mesh and foliage models .... I also probably won't get around "some" chaos destruction, and implementation of geometry collections, due to the many buildings contained in the game, that are succeptible to earth projectiles and earth dharmapala effects. I'll probably have to disable all collision in relation to them to keep this thing compatible with VR.

There are also still some bugs in relation to weather events and day/night rhythm, because depending on the length of each weather effect and the speed of time, it can really mess things up. Ideally all variables are capped at specific values, that ensure their functionality without major issues. If a weather effect lasts beyond sunrise or sunset and then the atmosphere blueprint attempts to return the fog colors back to the updated values (that are rapidly changing due to the change in sun angle) one function "chases" the other. The first one attempts to return the value to normal, while the other has already updated it, then the first one attempts to reach the updated value again, while the second function changes it again .... and on it goes .... this leads to the sun no longer rising and creates an "endless night" ....

 So far I've made some massive progress. 

The goal for 2021 is to have a fully dynamic and functioning world with elemental fx and working projectiles. Once this world is completed the goal for 2022 is the release of the first chapter. Players will be able to acquire the first dharmapala. Each subsequent chapter will contain the acquisition of additional dharmapalas and quest souls, new enemies, bosses a.s.o. .... 

 

Developer Diary 135 - The Fix

Took me 3 months, but I fixed it.

The crashes happened, because of 3 fun reasons:

- UE 4.26 wasn't compatible with my old engine.ini and config.ini files

- The startup map in my 4.25 project had a selection of temporary atmosphere actors, that overlapped and fed their data into the weatherBP (even though they were hidden AND inactive) and 4.26 decided it couldn't handle that anymore (even though 4.25 had no problem with it)

- Aspects of the code were still referencing the physix plugin. In previous engine updates, outdated plugin references didn't stop a project from launching, and those references were listed in the message log. Not this time. No, no, no ....

So the solution was to completely set up new .ini files for the project, by creating a new one from scratch. Then re-linking all of the input commands and controls, then importing the original content folders individually, then fixing various settings in relation to plugins, then removing all aspects of code, that previously referenced the physix plugin, then removing the overlapping atmosphere actors (6x atmo fog, directional sunlight, moonlight, exponential height fog), and then manually add the values (6x40 variables) to the weatherBP, because the values to each variable could now no longer be sent to the BP by these atmo actors. 

Good times. I love you Epic.

Converting this project to UE 5 will be a hell of a time as well I imagine.

Developer Diary 134: Stuck

Apart from all the madness that happened recently I've been trying for a whole month now to get my Unreal Engine project converted to 4.26 and I can't do it. Crashes. Constantly. Everytime I try to boot it, instant crash. Doesn't matter if I copy the files manually, if I create a new project and then migrate the files. Doesn't matter if I replace the .ini files or remove all references to the old physix plugins. Crash. Always crash. Every week I come up with a new solution and every week it ends in crashes. I'm not going to give up, mainly because I want to have access to "Chaos Destruction", which is a feature that was introduced in 4.26. But still ....

Developer Diary 133 - Not Dead Yet - Actual Progress

Yay! Project is still alive and well. I just had a brief hospital stay at the beginning of March and a lot of job related stuff to do. But in between the work and the medication I managed to finish the weather FX and refined a ton of stuff. I will post screenshots and videos in April. Next step will be to do some advanced bugtesting and implementation of Material Paramter Collections to turn the ground wet during rain events, and to cover the area with snow during blizzards and snow events, as well as scorching the ground during forest fire events. Lots of stuff to do, lots of stuff to come!

Developer Diary 132 - Had To Share This

 I recently feel the intense need to lie down in the moss, when I walk through this world ....

Developer Diary 131 - Progress

So this is what I worked on over the last month:

- I created 15 additional special locations, decayed houses and ruins (most of them hand-made)

 

- I did a complete overhaul of the forest floor and moss textures, using public domain photographs

- I created a custom day/night cycle from scratch, that is now matched with a clock and can be customized much easier than the default one I used until today (most time intensive aspect)

 

 

 

 

- At night there is now moonlight, that corresponds to the time of day

- Added various blueprints for weather effects that will soon be added to the Atmosphere Creator BP

- A compass system is attached to the player for testing purposes, but also for easier navigation

 

The next steps will be difficult ... I'll need to set up several social media accounts to have a good basis for future promotion and reroute them to this blog. I'll also need to implement Dynamic Material Collections into Lakini's Woods, so I can use effects such as earthquakes, forest fires, storms a.s.o .... DMC give me the ability to simultaneously control a massive amount of foliage instances and their surface properties (e.g. to make them look wet after the rain). But this stuff is still a long way down the road and includes some heavy lifting ....