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ANommyMousse GameDev DK30 Fall 2020 0 0

Description

Making a 3d frontend in UE4 for PC. I will keep a daily dairy to see how things change, also with little screenshots. By the end of the 30 days I hope to have a nice menu system that has all the options working that goes all the way into the main empty game. I have some experience (All bad) as a Gamedev a long time ago, PC is target platform using UE4 with minimum code, cause I’m TERRIBLE at coding :D

Recent Updates

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 22. Added in some text, added some more effects to the options screen. Spent some time playing with the field and tweaking it. Packaged the game up to test if that’d work, found a couple of bugs with my c++ texture function, packed game crashed on credits screen as I’m using the beta 3d text thing. Works fine without that.

Day 23. Used bandlab to write a very very bad tune. Created the videos, one for main game, one for mini game just to show what it actually looks like. Uploaded the videos to the youtubes ^_^

Not sure if youtube links will work but here goes. Main game (Keep volume low as I’ve done no sound normalisation yet)

https://youtu.be/gTY7cjYwVB0

Mini puppy game infinite runner thing.

https://youtu.be/mLzkI8Qi09M

I’ll close the project at this point, I’ll still be working on it, bug fixing and so on but for now I have enough to hang my game onto with the confidence that I won’t have problems getting it to work later on with either packaging or save/loading.

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 20. Particle field now processes the credits.txt file from disk. Made the field come up from below. Save/Load now working, bit manual but working, EMS seems too much effort to use for what I need.

Day 21. Added some secret jank effects to options screen ^^ Pause menu now works in main game. Bug Note: Loading screen system - shop thing, if the game paused flag is set and you try to loadlevel it gets stuck somewhere and seems to stop the game Going into and out of all levels working \o/

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 16 - Infinite loop turns out to be the default Blueprint 100k loop limit within project settings, a little low given the 512x512 that would be normal to process. Day 17 - Was disappointed with the result of the 512x512 text went back to the drawing board, looking at niagara as an alternative to display the text (This could be the next while). Day 18 - Played breath of the waifus all day :P Day 19 - Got a reasonable looking particle field to work, eats 8MB of memory but it’s still neat and while it lacks some final polish it’s good enough for now.

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 11 - Started working on spawning in 3d objects but with text as the generator. Day 12 - Got the texture imported and 3d actors spawning in the positions Day 13 - Added 2 modes -: mode 1 - single object, mode 2 - array of randomly selected objects that spawn in on the texture. Day 14 - Another bodge, had to place the objects to the ground but via blueprints couldn’t see a way to do so cleanly, present solution is to find ground from below, since in game this won’t work, I’ll probably have to come up with an alternate solution later, for now it works though, started having problems with infinite loops. Day 15 - For the life of me I can’t see how it’s an infinite loop in the BP, tried to work around the problem and there’s no way in it’s present state it’s an infinite loop, it’s around 250k though maybe it’s that.

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 10. Week 2 - goals - way underestimated time required, I could finish in the time but it would be at a quality I do not want, I want to put real effort to get it to an acceptable standard for me.

Added in a time function using UTC only to discover there’s a built in one, Derped that one hard.

Tweaked the bouncy text so it looks reasonable, no shadow yet but easy to add.

Still to do interactable names, hidden clickables, camera panning on rails, flocking text/objects.

New Tasks added -: Had a thought about the text, and gonna try to do something with 3d static meshes and make text outta those, it’s something that’ll probably take a while but should look good.

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 8. Credits screen - I kinda didn’t work hard today but I did get a credits.txt to load from game though it required delving into c++ and making a blueprint callable function.

Day 9. (The brand day) :D Made stretchy text, but was trying for bouncy, kept it though as it looks ok. Wasn’t happy with the way the text worked, made it into a widget so I could make the bouncy text as I couldn’t find a shear for the text in any other place.

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 6. Added my first bad work around : Race condition problems occuring when deleting the bone actors, decided to make simplier and just make them invis and move them upwards when you collide. This is a bodge, it works and you can argue that you just mark them as available again to reuse like you would in the main game but still I don’t like it and would have preferred a nice clean empty array but moved on.

Day 7. Finished up the infinite runner, music only cycles once and there’s only 50 bones but it’s good enough for something that people may never really see, since the music manager is planned for later no need to tackle that now. Also like to add a couple of more Idle things for the dog but that’s on the polish and really if I have time. Loading times are unknown at the moment so that’s a risk.

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 3. Added in an options widget, this is a fully functioning widget for sfx and video settings. One setting is missing but that’ll be for gameplay stuff which isn’t done yet :)

Day 4. Started a little async loading screen game with a dog :)

https://i.imgur.com/R3Lp4HG.jpg

Things I learnedtoday, apparently UE4 passes the actual thing that you can edit in functions, not quite what I’m used to, caused some fun and confusion when attempting to manipulate the player position.

Day 5. More loading screen minigame. Added bone that you can collect by colliding with it.

It took ages… easy when you know how though, but took a long time to figure out how to without coding to collide with the player so I can do the code that collects the bones. Have to bind an event to the player but it’s not really well explained or anything, I expect more head banging vs wall for more stuffs like this later as I try to avoid code.

Day 5 and still no actual coding, blueprints are handy :D

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 2. The biggest change today. Added an async loading system (LSS) from the store and adapted it to fit. Took most of the day. (I’ve been hoarding the unreal free stuffs for quite some time, nice to finally use some) - enables loading screens with moveable bits without me coding it…

Smaller ones. Added sfx to the buttons and detection for the items in the menu. Tip : Actual collision boxes rather than collision on font, cause otherwise you have to be over the font, unless you wanna annoy the player I suggest boxes ^_^ , other tip - use the inbuilt UI GUI stuff at first if you are unfamilar to see if it will do what you want.

Added sfx and open/close on chest (anim not perfect but ok for now), needs to be tweaked later to be non frame rate, but I’ll do that later.

Made a continue color non-selectable grey. Made the player possess a spector static pawn and not move.(Fixed Camera position in english)

Added quit from this disaster :)

ANommyMousse 5 years ago

Day 1. Imported a little 3d scene, added some sprites, imported a font, and added a little chest. All static for now, wanted to get some visuals to play with.

Hopefully this picture works ^_^

Estimated Timeframe

Sep 23rd - Nov 16th

Week 1 Goal

Yup it’s already planned for more than 30 days, but it’s CP2077 day, compuslory nerd hiberation month… Basic 3d menu - font, sfx, button presses on mouse. Basic 3d menu - Options that work/save/load. Loading screen - preferably an interactive thing.

Week 2 Goal

Credit screen setup, with functions to add names to list. Add fun cute stuff to credit screen, like interactable names, hidden clickables and stuff on menus. (One reason for this is to learn how this stuff works in a fun way)

Week 3 Goal

Polish menu - add music manager that works both in game and out, needs to be like my brain SMOOTH. Polish menu - fix any physics based stuff to be dependant on time and not framerate. Main game, make something that can move then add pause menu that allows save. Load and save main game from within frontend and main game.

Week 4 Goal

Compile the menu to release and fix problems that will occur. (Always problems when switching due to timing and stuff) and I’m pretty unfamiliar with how to debug stuff in UE4 so I may spend some time researching how that all works. I expect loading times to be an issue and I may spend time if I have some left working to minimise that. Record video of menu using OBS and put onto youtubes/discord so people can see the full horror of what I have done ^_^

Tags

  • UE4