New Soundtrack Code, New Additional Music, Weather FX Underscores Implemented

 

All Bug Fixes Done Over The Last Two Days (Private Dev Log Excerpt)

 TESTING RESULTS: 0.5.3a

X - Enable Music!

X - Reset Rain!

X - Reset Spawn!

X - FPS drop is caused by shadows (reset dynamic shadow cascading)

X - No soul textprompts after game over??? Why??

X - Grass on the road to zone transition between 03 to 02

X - Zone transition from 02 to 03 and from 03 to 02 is fucked by all means

TESTING RESULTS: 0.5.3b

X - First of all make backups, this is a DECENT version

X - IMPORTANT: Player time and Atmosphere creator time, drift away from each other after multiple days (3 hours of playtime). A check needs to be implemented, so that they always move in sync, even if it isn't always seconds or minutes.(right now atmosphere creator is FASTER than player time)

Sunpitch/TimeofDay

0/ 18:00 

15/19:00

30/20:00

45/21:00

60/22:00

75/23:00

90/00:00

105/01:00

120/02:00

135/03:00

150/04:00

165/05:00

180/6:00

270/12:00

360/18:00

Time of Day (Hours) = 

IF Sunpitch <90 THEN Time of Day (Hours) = (Sunpitch/15) + 18

IF Sunpitch >=90 THEN Time of Day (Hours) = (Sunpitch/15) - 6

Time of Day (Minutes) = (Sunpitch - (15*(TimeofDayHours+6or-18))/0,25

IF Sunpitch <90 THEN Time of Day (Minutes) = (Sunpitch - (15*(TimeofDayHours-18))/0,25

IF Sunpitch >=90 THEN Time of Day (Minutes) = (Sunpitch - (15*(TimeofDayHours+6))/0,25

Example

172,5 / 5:30

IT FUCKING WORKS!!!!! YES!!!!!!

X-Implement new time code into the explorationchar BP

X- add ramp to yama's house for collision and easier entry

X - Create a small path to Yama's house

X - Create separate mesh instances of the bush willows and set them to "simple collision as complex"

X - For some reason pillars are no longer emissive?

X - protection pillar shadows don't reliably de-spawn during daytime -> compass, night

X - add "check" prompt if the player has 4 health or less left

X - Add woodstep sound to ramp

X - Fix Map loading functions in Exploration CharacterBP and TutorialWidgetBP and YamaBP

X - Test Map Loading

X - Double check collision at stairs at mill, when walking down there's a bump

X - Big Willow opposite the mill on the other shore close to the tunnel has roots sticking out

X - souls don't have textprompts after game over (probably related to morning time of day)

X - The light is fading prompt is not being played after game over

X - Add difficulty modifiers for each setting)

X - "Unlock?" appears to be visible on all locked doors at beginplay

X - More shadow giving trees around village, overall less foliage instances around village

X - Broken hut behind village hideout is too high (z)

X - Close Yama's door if player leaves his store

X - Behind Yama's tunnel on map section02 a hut is completely out of the ground /

X - In Ruins Hideout in section 02, grass peaks through the table

X - fix ivy in Ruins Hideout

X - Add item to Yama's store (Light In A Box)

X - Why is there a chess figure in the dry lake hideout in section02?

X- Triple crate item spawn close to road on section02 close to the zone to 01 on the northern side X near a small hut02

X - Lightbulb of lampposts doesn't flicker with the light itself

All Bug Fixes Since 0.5.2 (Excerpt From Private Dev Log February - March - April 2023)

 All features were implemented and all bugs on this list were fixed and tested extensively during the last months:

X - When player gets detected by monks, siren needs to immediately interrupt her patrol and move towards player location

X CURRENTLY 3 ISSUES: 

X The delay loop to check for night time detection remains triggered if siren starts hunting player through the new event

X - The rotation and move to location code ALSO gets interrupted when the siren is moving towards the player location

X The siren spawns way too high if it's tied to the head's location. It either needs way longer detection volume or needs to be tied to player Z value, probably both is important or the siren will move through hills

X - Lanterns in front of village are floating

X - Lightflash on Shadow interaction doesn't reliably despawn on death

X - Paralysis is NOT reset if the Siren de-spawns at 6:00 am but previously paralyzed the player

X - Lamps for teleport tunnels indoor and outdoor in front

X - Interior for teleport tunnels

X (Teleport Noose Implemented .... Holy Moly ... You need to discuss this with the testers ....)

X - Voice Prompts For Yama When The Player Uses The Noose

X - Added the wrong lamps to the teleporttunnels

X - Night Events Still Trigger Even With Protection In Place

X - BaseSound Near Pillars (Chanting) is too loud when idle

X - Fix Indoor Volume Hut

X - TeleportTunnelLamps Require Electricity For Some Reason?

X - add price to rebuilding pillar (1 firewood)

X - Fix text for firewoodshelf

X - Move light sources to Overworld folder and update references

X - Add Right Click Functionality To ExplorationCharacter

X - create a firewoodbasket where players can store firewood for future use (x4)

X - Test firewood basket and make adjustments

X - Create Vinegar rack

X - Test Vinegar rack

X - Create Candle rack

X - Test Candle rack

X - create a detailed plan, how lightsources, active protection, successful day count, and time of day influence night intensity

The first goal needs to be the implementation of functions, that calculate night intensity, active lights and protection:

X (Highlight all changes to the BP in yellow with comments, including new variables)

X - Create a protection check function that determines the multiplier "Protection Factor"

X - Create a lightsource check function that determines the multiplier "Hideout Light Factor"

X - Separate the night time check function that determines the addition "Night Time Factor"

X - Add a variable to GVC called "Total Player Death Count" and "Total Player Success Count" and tie them to X Explorationchar on death and the rewardchest

X - Add a variable to GVC called "SirenFactor" that updates on Siren detection each time, and resets on Siren Death

X - Add a GVC variable called "External Diff Factor" (this variable is still accessible through collision volumes if X need be)

X - Once all of this is done create a new "NightIntensityCalculator" Function, that uses all these parameters. Change X night intensity to a float variable and cap it at 0.0001

X - Finally note all changes to the hideoutBP in yellow with comments, including a list of added variables

X - Add protection to lightsources so they only decay if the cycle is interrupted

X - AND Lightsources need to decrease in relation to the active protection pillars

X - If necessary add these changes to the yellow list

X - Once the first pillar is broken, the others fall faster (exponentially)

OPTIONAL - Once the first pillar is broken during the night, this pillar can not be restored, consequently leading to night events in successive nights (add a king kanji, with the same texture as the bronze cage)

X - IMPORTANT: ISOLATE PARAMETERS THAT DETERMINE DIFFICULTY AND MAKE THESE PARAMETERS PUBLIC ON EACH HIDEOUT

X IMPORTANT: At this point, test, test, test and BALANCE difficulty

Testing Results:

X - A lot of light is unfairly wasted, trying to locate protection pillars in the dark of night

X ---> protection pillars need their own light sphere or emissive material (white highlights?)

X What if they glow at night in white light?

X - Night gets boring when they attack in same frequencies

X - added glow

X - added increase in intensity

X BACKUPS 18th February HDD

Testing Results 2:

X - Candles in the rack, should be lying down, otherwise they can be confused with active candles

X NOT FOR NOW DUE TO DIFFICULTY- Monks need a continuous check for player safety, indoor, weather fx and crouch, for X as long as he is inside the monk's view cone

X NOT FOR NOW DUE TO DIFFICULTY- Monks need to transmit the player location to the siren, until he crouches, goes X indoors, a weather fx begins or uses a lightsource. This transmission should NOT make the siren more aggressive, but X more accurate in her attempt to find him

X - add more keys to the world

X - houses need to be PACKED with items and resources so there is a definitive advantage to using lighter time

X - SOMETIMES static shadows are in dark places, they can't be in hideouts during the day, they are only in places without light sources

X - Monks can not be placed with their view sphere directly on top of the hideout, they should focus on the space in the VICINITY of the hideout or have overlapping lamps, otherwise the Siren will immediately paralyze the player when he leaves a lightsource, check hideout section01 8 lamps

X - Lightmaps on ferns is waaaaay too small

X - fun: lot of fun in the beginning, fun drops at sunset because he couldn't find a hideout and hid under streetlamp

X IMPORTANT!!!!!!- fun: player is being PUNISHED for being pro-active, turning on lamps in the beginning does not yield benefits. game X would be more fun if it was a "cascade" of events, that progressively get worse depending on mistakes the player makes. What if there X are "boundaries" around the hideouts? Light chains, cycles, protection of some sort and when that protection is interrupted, then X shadows "infiltrate" the hideout

X - Ravens are fucked up, code is executing slower -> speed variable needs to increase by factor of 10

X - remove the "Christmas Star"

X - reset player success count

X - auto-randomize protection configuration and test it

X - move "restore" text down

X - Configuration 7 has the kanji connected vertically which is weird, add 3rd connection and center the other two

X - Zealots need haunting volume so compass detects their presence

X - Test the zealots haunting sphere

X - Add fuse sizzle sfx to candles

X - change tutorial line "shadows are not affected by the light" to "most shadows"

X - currently zealots are only affected by the lighter, if it's already on before the player approaches him

X - test if the zealots leave when the player is camping a protection pillar with his lighter

X - test fizzle sound for candles

X - Tie the external difficulty factor into the UpdateProtectionFactor Function for shadow attacks on pillars, so that X changing it, causes changes globally. Also add it to the night event chain as a safety prevention.

X Keep it at 3 for default

X - There is a massive drop in FPS at night in the village (from 42-45 average to 32-36). Find the cause.

X - The cause is related to foliage. Likely culprit could be moonshadow ... do both lights in theory still cast a shadow even if they are hidden after 12 hour cycle?

X - Moonshadow only had minor effects .... it's something else .... find out which foliage asset causes FPS drops at night .... (it was related to pine trees with crazy cull volume, that was left after doing landscape editing)

Transfer The New Night Protection System To All 30 Hideouts, Add Pillars And Test Them

X - Generic Campsite

X - Generic House Short

X - Generic House Open

X - Generic House 1A

X - Consider a new system for souls, where they are simply like queen dancers, rotating in groups slowly. (FOUND TO BE NOT FEASIBLE)

X - Moths Are Too Loud, they drown out other sounds

X - Add Price To Pillars For Rebuiling and Adjust Rockpile To Include Wood

X - Check which generators are close to open boards, if yes leave them there. If a generator is close to a closed wall change the location so it can't be turned on from the inside

X - Any chance that Yama spawns? Reports of being pulled backwards... this is either de-penetration velocity or rogue spawn of yama ...

X - Very small amount of souls present across the world .... find an fps easy way ....

X - When players follow the red souls they get lost and don't understand their purpose

X - Items spawn on top of buildings, houses, large trees .... it destroys immersion

X - Players are able to leave yama's map and fall off the edge

X Then rework trees and environment of Section02 to conform to the new runes

X Then add hideouts, lootbuildings, chests, treehouses, bridges a.s.o

X Then start working on the "Mill hideouts" and "Mill non-hideout" incl. weather fx functionality

X Then adjust and build foliage for Section 03

X - Fix landscape LOD Issues and add low poly grass

X - Implement Willows and adjust textures

X - Implement Mill and adjust textures

X - Adjust dynamic shadow resolution and cascades

X - Create Mill Hideout

X - Add Mill SFX

X - New Soul System

X - Add Particle Text System

X - Create Particle Text BP

X - Create 125 Text Prompts (Tips & Hints, Lore, Inidividualized lore, easter eggs)

X - Implement 125 Text Prompts For Souls (randomized)

X - Create Ability For Souls To Escape

X - Add individualized Foliage instances for Firewood/Tinder/Huts

X - Tower needs key

X - area north of tower needs static grass

X - mill needs firewood

X - mill needs vinegar rack

X - huts need campfires

X - monks and treespirits are needed

X - yama teleport tunnel needs to be added to map03

X - Map needs souls

X - Willows at the road stop need lower Z

X - Mini pines need larger culling

X - willow bushes need larger culling

X - soul disappearance needs much lower attenuation

X BIG ISSUE: Soul Text doesn't spawn during weather event

X - Item Switch (Make Matches, the last item)

X - Fill cave with miniature plants

X - Nails on the bridge need wood surface physics

X - Clocktower noise should spawn in the distance but be audible for the player

X - Replace "You're paralyzed"

X - Replace "Black Won"

X - RAVENS DONT DESPAWN!!!!

X - Much lower probability for weather events in general, higher probability for rain and thunder

X - At night weather events need to be significantly shorter (maybe 30s shorter?) and only start much earlier

X- IMPORTANT: REMOVE BLIZZARD - it makes NO SENSE, IT KILLS FPS, Trees Dont move, no ground snow, Its XSHIT, its ALL AROUND SHIT, decreases FUN, REMOVE THAT SHIT

X - Grass in the redwood hideout

X IMPORTANT: Create Landscape Streaming Subdivision For All 16 Segments

X- IMPORTANT: When a protection pillar falls one or two intelligent shadows should spawn behind it, X they also need to despawn during sunrise and be tied to the protection pillar. When the protection X pillar is rebuilt, they should disappear

X - Cave Hideout needs a makeover, lighting and textures are ugly, no amount of plants can compensate that

X - Chairs in the redwood forest should not have collision, table needs collision box

X - increase visibility volume of both tower hideouts

X - clothes look too bright and colorful

X - in the cave one candle is covered by plants

X- Teleport tunnels need indoor lights (maybe very, very, small ones? so they can't be used for X safety? or maybe candles?

X - When triggering drapes and curtains with safety on, player still gets hit

X - There are STILL issues with hutBPs and fences after a map transition

X - Unreal Engine Crash Related To Section086 - Foliage Small Hut01

X - Big willow behind the heather hideout has roots out of the ground (found multiple)

X - lone baby fern on road close to zone transition to section 03 right before the rocks

X - Clear Road of all plants

X - Create fences for map transitions, so people won't get confused running in the wrong direction

X - Make Gates to cut off access to unfinished maps including public variables

X - world is lacking foliage at map transitions, isolate map segments and add foliage

X - Yama's house needs an iron fence or grating to make sure the player doesn't wander off 

X - Right now there are FPS issues when visiting Yama's store through the teleportTunnels

X - larger visibility volume around monks

X - compass doesn't reset at sunrise if shadows were close by

X - add "under construction" sign to platforms on section02

X - Right Click to remove items from campfires ...

X - Transfer Right Click Code To Hearthfire

X - Make the streetlamps dangerous

X - Chests Inside The Village Are Empty? Check especially Double House (Islandbuilding02)

X - when walking through the tunnel into the cathedral during rain, it rains inside the cathedral. Add option to make "Target tunnel is indoor?" that then removes the "indoor" removal after End Overlap

X - add locked chests

X - use keys to give players additional advantages for the player, not to always lock him out!

X - Hide locked chests across the world

When It Sucks

 

Dear Reader,

Since you've made it to this little hidden corner of my dev blog, I'd love to share a secret with you today:

"I tested the game, and it sucks."

Well not entirely of course. But to my eyes, given my vision, my goals and my understanding of where it should be, it sucks. Plain and simple. And I know exactly why and I'll once again break my back over the next week to fix it.

But why would you write that on the internet!!! You are supposed to promote it, only share beautiful screenshots and talk about AMAZING new features.

You're not supposed to talk about the blizzard weather effect, that doesn't even move the trees slightly, while clouding the player's vision and that doesn't FUCKING STOP ONCE IT GETS GOING.

You're not supposed to talk about the ugly, ugly, ugly sections of the map, that you dread to re-do, because of UE4s beautiful accumulation of bugs, that happen when many instances of foliage actors are present.

You're not supposed to talk about the MASSIVE FPS drops, that occur when players go through map transitions during that fucking blizzard, that of course keeps going until 30 seconds before sundown so you can't even find a hideout let alone click yourself through the slideshow of images until you see something else besides fog.

You're not supposed to talk about the fact, that the souls suddenly stop talking after a weather effect takes place, because both particle systems max out UE4's internal limit, regardless of where and how you set the bounding box or turn them into GPU emitters in cascade.

Share a pretty picture on Twitter instead.

You're not supposed to talk about how you trapped yourself inside willow bushes on your mission to explore the world, after you've spent a good 20 hours re-integrating them after you realized they caused a framerate drop.

You're not supposed to talk about how it is god awful for the player, that he can only carry 4 (!) pieces of wood and 1 (!) tinder item, which ALWAYS leaves him short of lighting the first campfire, and how your dev integrity is in constant battle with your inner player conscious trying to up or decrease the difficulty.

You're not supposed to talk about the fact, that the shadows are SNEAKY FUCKING BASTARDS, that seem weak, move slow, are based on the most braindead AI known to man, but still scare the living hell out of you each time they catch you, bringing back mountains of childhood trauma and sleep paralysis.

Share a pretty screenshot on Instagram. Don't forget to post the linktree.

Don't talk about the compass, that just keeps going like a fucking fidget spinner after one of these trauma infested nights is over, even if there are no shadows nearby.

Don't talk about the watchers and the gallows and their heads and how you're secretly afraid, they will kill your FPS each time they see you, because their head movement triggers something in Unreal Engine, where it is completely overburdened by a moving collision box, that is NOT SET TO FUCKING SWEEP, BUT TELEPORT!!!!! And no matter how often you scream that at the engine, it still goes: "Is this thing sweeping? Prolly. Let's perform collision checks every step of the way".

Don't talk about the fact you've been working on this pile of shit for more than 9 years now and how you inject yourself with copium, telling yourself: "Well I had to learn the engine first" , while knowing fully well, that what you actually learned was to "work around" the engine's untreated and unfixed bugs, to which Epic's answer was: Fuck this, let's just release a new one.

Of course UE5 is also fucked, with new bugs and porting the project to UE5 would basically be suicide, knowing the list of updates they'll release. I learned all that when I originally ported it from UE3 to UE4. 

Don't talk about that. Check your followers on your socials.

Don't talk about the fact that your Dad called the game "Hinky's World" in a recent telephone call.

Don't talk about the stretched textures and low lightmap resolution in the cave, about the visibility spheres of some hideouts, where they suddenly pop into view 5 meters in front of you, how the player finds FRESH NEW CLOTHES in each dilapidated hideout, because you were too lazy to adjust those fucking textures too.

Don't talk about the footstep sound disappearing when he walks on the tiny, mini metal nail texture of the boardwalks, because you forgot to set the wood physics for that.

AND CERTAINLY NEVER TALK ABOUT DE-PENETRATION VELOCITY. The worst feature ever created. The demon of engines, the destroyer of physics, the breaker of a dev's will to live. A feature, that is fucking DEACTIVATED on every single item, every single mesh in the game world INCLUDING the player character and ALL HIS VOLUMES and collision, with PHYSICS IN GENERAL DEACTIVATED and yet he still ice skates across the meadow, because he moved a little towards that tree over there, and now the engine thinks: "OH MY GOD, HE'S OVERLAPPING, WE NEED TO PUSH, PUSH, PUSH HIM AWAYYYYYYYY"

Some days are just god awful. Fuck all of this. Let's get back to work.

Saw this scene while checking out hideouts

 

Saw this scene while checking out hideouts in map section 3. I'm also gonna start adding the linktree to all screenshots. Was probably dumb of me not to do it earlier.

Joseph Tonelli - My Situation

Through my window to my wall

It looks just right

Silhouettes of trees against moonlight.

Can't take my shoes off

Can't go out with the boys

That's my situation.

Can't write no song

Except about myself

Can't be distracted from no book down from my shelf.

And all them guitars that just hang upon my wall.

Thats my situation,

They just decoration.

And the trails gone cold

As the night goes on

For miles and miles without any destination

That's my situation.

That's my situation.

Now the shadows fade as dawn comes creeping through

The card is on the table

Once again I pulled the fool.

My eyes they feel so heavy

But my mind moves so damn fast.

I really needed rest tonight

But now my chance is past.

I really needed rest tonight

But now my chance is past.

And the trails gone cold

As the night goes on

For miles and miles without any destination

That's my situation.

That's my situation.

Now it's time to move

But man I just feel like a ghost

So many things I got to do today

I'll do 'em half at most

So I pray I get so worn down

Hell right now my nerves are wrecked

If I work my fingers to the bone well I might just get some rest

If I work my fingers to the bone well I might just get some rest

And the trails gone cold

As the night goes on

For miles and miles without any destination

That's my situation.

That's my situation.

Joseph Tonelli - My Situation

https://open.spotify.com/track/7KK22XEEOtHjHsLwWrIiL1

Good News/ Bad News

 

Good News: Gameplay is engaging and mesmerizing in 0.5.3. The dialogue makes it interesting, tons of items, tons of locations, all previous issues resolved, ravens are optimized, siren is optimized, shadows are optimized, bugs are fixed, layout for 3rd map segment is done, new models integrated, new hideouts integrated.

Bad News: The picture above is what defeat looks like. Spent two days total finalizing foliage for the new map. It is now 11:40 pm at night and I started working at 6:00 am in the morning. When you deduct breaks and a quick nap, total work time amounts to 12 hours and 11 hours yesterday. (technically, you'd also have to deduct ue4 restarts, because of a fun little engine bug that fucks up the foliage editor when you switch between the foliage editor and blueprint view in your game, good times)

How did I get this game down to 2.5 frames per second? I added miniature versions of willows to create a "bush level" inside the forest distribution. Before I did it I thought: "You really should create a separate foliage instance for that, before you do it" and then I went like: "NAAAHHH, it'll be FINE, let's just adjust scale of the original models".

The original models have complex collision and high detail shadow maps enabled. So with the stroke of a brush (several strokes actually), I added 70.000 additional instances of this model with dynamic shadows enabled. The big ones NEED the dynamic shadow enabled, the small ones definitely do not. Because they are spread out in between the trees, there is now no easy way to remove them.

The drop in framerate happens during map chunk transitions. The maps are divided into smaller chunks, that are streamed through code (not through UE4 level streaming). They are loaded at startup and then hidden, so there are no hickups during explorations. This only works if the foliage distribution on each chunk is manageable for the GPU. 

Surprise. It is not manageable for the GPU, when you add 70.000 fucking bonsai versions of your most detailed assets to the map with dynamic shadows enabled. GTX 1080 had a performance peak at 99% and that's when I made that gorgeous screenshot.

Average FPS is still 30-40, but that's way below target. Target must be safely above 60 on most higher level machines. It's above 60 on the other map segments.

So why is this defeat? 

Since they are all part of the same foliage instance, I'll need to remove them all, then create a new instance for the willow bushes and then redo everything from scratch. Estimate 16-18 hours of work.

And because this day only has 1 hour and 10 minutes left, that is why this is defeat.

For now.

Sorry testers. I tried. I really did.