Category: Dev Blog

A chain task

26 Aug
Blender, Dev Blog, UnrealEngine , , ,

At first there was a door

Blender quickly built a lift, imported it into UE and provided it with a noodle code so that the lift goes up, stays and goes down again. So nothing special.
Since I’m sticking to my motto of not getting lost in details when modelling this time, I’m making simple placeholder graphics.

For the door, I thought, come on, make it a bit prettier. So I collected ideas on Pinterest and quickly decided on a door. Rebuilt it in Blender, made UVs and off to UE. Cool, runs like clockwork. The door leaves are simple rectangles, but at least they got a bevel. I made another actor out of it and now the door opens, waits 3 seconds and closes again. Until then, everything was going great and I was in the flow.

Then came … ID cards

Then I came up with the idea of including ID cards. For me, ID cards somehow belong to a spaceship. Besides, it makes the game a bit more interesting if you can’t immediately go anywhere.
Such a system shouldn’t be a big deal either, I thought, and got started.

I created another placeholder graphic in Blender. Although I didn’t want to get lost in the details, for me a card like this also needs the face of the card holder.
I didn’t want to take pictures, I have no talent for drawing and so I tried BlueWillow and had some pictures taken by Spaceheroes. The results were absolutely usable.

OK, texture ready, off to UE, created a material and assigned it to the map. Then I adjusted the noodle code. And again a sense of achievement. The door stays closed if you don’t have a card and opens if you have picked it up beforehand.

now colour comes into play

I was thrilled how well everything had worked up to that point. Shortly afterwards, I thought about the need for a multi-colour system. I also realised that the texture of the ID card had a resolution of
1024 x 1024. If I wanted to implement 4 colours, that would be a waste for a mobile game.

4 UV Maps into UE

So back to Blender, reduced the UVs of the ID map by 0.5 and pushed them into the bottom left corner. I created a total of 3 more copies of the UV map and placed them in the top left, top right and bottom right corner. I exported the new model with the 4 UV maps to UE and checked whether all UV channels “survived” the import. This was also the case. I was in good spirits because everything had gone like clockwork so far.

As if

But here my lucky streak ended.

My goal was to make an actor, assign the mesh to the ID card and control the colour code of the card via a variable in the properties window. I thought if I searched long enough I would find a tutorial with the blueprints I needed.
To cut a long story short, I searched for several evenings and found nothing to change the UV channels in the material via blueprint. My research then led me to the “Material Instances”. After a lot of back and forth and trial and error, I found it.
The solution consists of a material, dynamic branch which can easily be controlled by Scalar parameters. Here are a few pictures that outline the solution.

Elegant is different

The implementation is not elegant in my eyes. In my eyes, there should have been something that I could influence the UVs directly. I am still extremely far away from being an expert in the Unreal Engine, but I believe that there is no other solution and that there are certainly technical reasons why it is not possible directly.

I achieved my goal in the end and I enjoy setting doors in the editor, distributing ID cards, setting the colours and everything works as desired.

My opinion about AI tools in my project

21 Aug
Dev Blog , , ,

I say no

Triggered by Chatgpt a few months ago, these tools are shooting up like mushrooms. I always wonder how this flood of tools came about all of a sudden. At first they never existed and as if there was a starting signal, they have become so numerous as if it were now easy to program something like this.
Even though this subject is extremely interesting to me, I have not delved into it. I can only imagine that many of these tools are based on others, quasi only “labled” their name on it.

In the past months I have dealt a little, with the most common tools. Of course I was very impressed by Midjourney, what can be created with it. Unfortunately, the use is not completely free of charge, and so I have not dealt with it further.

I have to create everything in my game myself. I can’t do it any other way, because there is a lack of crazy people like me in my circle of friends and relatives.

I say yes …

It’s actually the case that the ideas just bubble out of me. I record all my ideas in OneNote. That way I don’t forget anything and can also filter out ideas that aren’t so good. In the meantime I had the idea that some of the doors can only be opened by an ID card. So I quickly created another placeholder graphic, exported it to UE and wired the logic.
In Blender it came to my mind to make it a little bit more beautiful. Every ID card has a picture of the owner of the card. However, I am subterranean when it comes to drawing and so I came up with the idea of using an AI tool to create spaceship heroes.

… yes, but

Finally, I had the tool Bluewillow create a set of space heroes for me. I’m using them on my ID cards at the moment.
So, I realize that these tools can be very helpful, especially for lone wolves, but I will tag all images and graphics that have been created by an AI tool.

After all, in the credits of a movie, all the people involved who worked on the movie show up and I don’t want to adorn myself with other people’s feathers. At the end of the game, there’s still enough space for my ego.

Gamepad | XBOX Controller

19 Aug
Dev Blog, UnrealEngine , , ,

Implementing the control system

Every game needs, now and then, the input of the human player who intervenes in the world. On the PC, it can be the mouse in combination with the keyboard or you can connect your gamepad. On the mobile phone, the gamepad is simulated by inserting small “control sticks” on the left and right. If you have tried racing games or simply Brawlstars, you will notice that this type of control is disadvantageous. I won’t do without the “sticks”, but I wanted to try out whether I could integrate a gamepad into the game.

To do this, I first ordered a wireless adapter, which I ordered from Amazon at 7 p.m. in the evening and received the following day. The PC recognised it silently and I was able to pair my controller without any problems.

Unreal Engine Gamepad on PC

With just a few tests, I found out how to read out the left and right analogue stick and, because it was fun, I installed two buttons. A great sense of achievement. Within one evening, I had managed everything

But…

The sticks output analogue float values between -1.0 and 1.0, which are transferred into the movement of the character. However, if the stick remains in the neutral position, the input still delivers values that are not equal to 0.0, which means that the character always “slides” slightly. At the moment I help myself by only giving the values to the character when the value is outside of -0.025 and 0.025.
Let’s see if I can come up with something better.

What to do when your data is gone

25 Sep
Dev Blog

My personal solution

Now I have set myself such an ambitious goal and work for many hours, days… on my idea, on the 3D objects… And suddenly something stupid happens and your work is gone forever. At this stage it wouldn’t be very much, but all the energy and joy with which I created the things … fizzles out.
Like a “punch in the gut”.

Fortunately, it didn’t happen to me. Because of the preparations I made, it shouldn’t happen so soon either. Because there’s nothing I hate as much as having to do again what I created once.

So why am I so sure that I will be saved from this fate.

  1. We got a NAS from Synology a few years ago, but it had been sitting unplugged in the corner for a long time. I have brought this one back to the start. There is a tool from Synology (Drive Client) with which you can keep your previously configured folders on the computer in sync with the backup on the NAS.
    So, every time I save a blend file or a texture, it is immediately backed up to my in-house NAS.
  2. You can think what you want about the big tech companies, but the free offers are OK. Of the various providers, I have made friends with Google. You create an account and the first 15 GB are free of charge. I’ve had the account for years and there’s still plenty of room. Google also has a small tool that you can use to determine the folders that are automatically synchronised in the cloud.

So whenever I save a new version of my 3D models, the same copy goes to the in-house NAS and a second backup goes to the cloud somewhere in the world.
For this reason, I am protected against data loss.

Ok, two things in the end:
Surely one of the two methods is quite sufficient to protect against data loss. I did it because we already had the stuff and we can use it again. Our children now also have an area on the Synology and can also store their things there.

Because it has just been a topic of discussion in court here in Germany. In this article, I have only described my solution for backing up data. This article is not to be understood as an advertisement for a certain company. Neither for Synology nor for Google. I have not received any money from either company for this private opinion.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

There is no way around

14 Sep
Dev Blog

Blender and Normal maps

In itself, I think normal maps are an exciting thing. Back when I was working as a 3D graphic artist, the sequel to Half-Life came out. I can still remember being shown a wall that was made up of a lot of crooked and shifted plates, and it was said it was made up of 20,000 polygons. By the standards of the time, that’s a lot.

A little later, when we looked into the subject further, we found out that it was Normal maps. In short, it’s a method of saving the detail of a complex mesh into a special texture. Then you can take the texture with the details and put it on a mesh that has only a fraction of the complex geometry as the original.

I have read a lot about normal maps and seen many tutorials so far, but I never had anything to use it.

OK, that has changed now. Normal maps make sense in mobile games, and I’m now going to look into it more and share my progress with you. Even if the topic is no longer a secret and there are tons to read about it on the Internet, ultimately you have to make your own experiences with it.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Let the game begin.

13 Sep
Dev Blog

at least the development

The kickoff

The starting signal has been given and the decision has been made in my head. From now on, I’m embarking on my longest journey. I will actually develop a game. The idea(s) have matured over the last few months and I am now convinced of it myself.

In the past months I have of course started with the project, like many others, but more in the awareness that I, like many others, hang it on the nail, or rather it automatically hangs on the nail because I no longer continue it.

Why should it work this time?

OK. Whose head doesn’t bubble over with ideas from time to time and is heavily excited about them. You sit down to it, work on it for a certain time and gradually the intervals become larger and larger. Because the time intervals are getting longer and longer, there is also a distance to the idea and finally it ends up on the mountain of “started projects that are not finished”. – Why is it different this time?

Well, there is still the danger that this project will fizzle out and end up on the mountain of “unfinished projects”. But in the last weeks I noticed that I do some things differently. And I’m doing them unnoticed. By that I mean that it suddenly happens automatically without much conscious intention.
For example, I started writing down my ideas in OneNote. Structuring the ideas and creating more categories. One category had more and more the character of a blog. After I noticed that, I activated my old website and outsource this part here.

So the first time I create an overview of my project.
About this approach, which has developed unconsciously and independently, I am above all surprised myself. It expresses a seriousness.

For this reason, I think that this time it will be something with my game.

Let the development begin.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Ideas in the shower

13 Sep
Dev Blog

The phenomenon is certainly familiar to you. You are standing under the shower and as the drops rain down on you, the ideas fire like sparks from your head.

Yes I was showering and I had ideas again. One idea was about the manual and translation. I know that the Unreal Engine supports multilingualism. Technically I haven’t dealt with that yet, but I’m not worried about that.

Another issue concerns the game instructions. Who likes to read game instructions, and then on a cell phone. At least I am not one of them. I prefer to learn the games while playing them. Nevertheless, every software comes with a manual. It also helps me to plan the game further and to record the features.

So I’m going to start some kind of wiki here in the next week, so the game continues to take shape.

Multilingualism

I would also like to make this page available in other languages (at least in English). Maybe I can even do that in the short term.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)