Joewintergreen

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Posts posted by Joewintergreen

  2. Posted

    I never do this, but I did a Me Talking Over Video video. This one is about the ways in which Unreal Engine level design has a lot of catching up to do when compared to Quake 1's (in one important respect, anyway) if it's planning on targeting smaller developers more now. More specifically it's about how editing CSG in Unreal (including 4) sucks, and why that is something that should be fixed instead of handwaved away as not being a big deal.

     


     

    Like I said I never talk to microphones so I'd dig any feedback on how I could be better at it (other than just getting a decent microphone).

  4. Posted

    Hey yo, I have a bunch of 30-day UE4 codes to give out. It's only a 30 day subscription but you don't have to stay subscribed to keep access, so you're basically getting a free copy of UE4.6. I'm aiming to mostly give them out to people who can't really afford the $20 themselves, so if that's you hit me up 

  8. Posted

    That kind of makes me think of a Valve doc I read all about the L4D AI director, which is of course basically keeping track of a huge number of variables from gameplay, drawing conclusions from them (each player's stress level as a percentage, for instance, based on health, ammo, proximity to rest of team, how many people are left, how long it's been since they've found anything, what weapon they've got, how far through the level they are, number of zombies in FOV, a ton of stuff like that) and changing where the game goes from there. I wish more games had as much going on invisibly in the background, because I feel like it massively subtracts from the experience of a lot of games for me when information like that is exposed in some way, especially through menu systems.

     

    For instance, for me, Skyrim would be a much much better game if you just made all attribution of skill points and perks automatic based on how you play (to some extent it already does this) and just never shows you that information, instead of saying "+1 athletics" when you jump 50 times or whatever. So the effect would be, you start playing and you suck at archery, but your skill level in the game (and the variables that affects) change the more you do it, so you feel like you're just organically getting better at archery and ideally probably can't even tell if the game is helping you do it.

     

    I guess I'm feeling rambly today

  9. Posted

    I read both of these ages ago but totally forgot to reply to them which is terrible form, sorry you guys

     

    Thanks for the feedback! I actually think I can have a good way of exploration working. I have a sort of running fiction in my head that you're a submarine and the friends are fish, so it could be about you exploring around the seafloor and I definitely have directions I could take that in to flesh it out past one screen.

     

    Those are both good suggestions. Simple things to just improve the basic interaction. Likewise, I want to make the graphics a little less plain before I build onto the code. As I said to you on twitter, looking at the whole is something I ought to do more so I think I'll run with that a bit first.

     


     

    I finally gave SpaceThing a look! It was as gorgeous as the screenshots showed. Unfortunately my 2 year old mid range PC is kinda garbage so it wasn't the smoothest experience.

     

    Sadly I don't have anything of worth to point out apart from a couple bug things. One isn't a big deal, but out one window I was able to see the edge of the skybox texture and it was kinda jarringly noticeable.

     

    The other thing was just that I walked into one tiny room that had no floor and was just able to fall right out into nothingness. As far as I'm aware, I didn't accidentally ask it to take out the floor or anything.

     

    Yeah the skybox is super not good right now. I haven't bothered making it nice because I'm not sure if I'm gonna do some cool randomised/procedural thing with it and change it up based on what's happening in the game. I put a sun in it today though! https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B3L7u4xCEAAEsJ3.jpg:large

     

     

    Yup, that did it.

    The lighting is so photo-realistic. It almost feels like Myst or some sort of panoramic displaying application, but with a different type of distortion. I'm not entirely sure what that distortion is, maybe it's the fact that I'm looking at it through a flat screen. 

    Building rooms is impressive, it works. I felt like Siri was helping me design the perfect space-doublewide for my particular needs. The voice in my head was like some sort of car commercial or something.

    "This wall, can we get rid of it."

    "No problem."

     

    I'm glad you put in additional lines for an ad-lib feel. Oddly, I really wanted her so say "Let me go ahead and take care of that for you." but she never did. 

     

    I know there are more recent examples of the pandering customer-service fantasy, but this is the only one I could recall specifically:

     

     

    Thanks! This is rad stuff to hear. 

    It's interesting that you cast the computer as female. It was always male in my head, but I think it's probably best left unspecified, unless it ends up having VA or something. I don't really want to do that, but maybe people don't want to be reading all the time?

     

    Thanks for playing you guys!

  14. Posted

    Oh man, I played that. The computers at my primary school had it.

    The backgrounds were in some format savable by ms paint, so I would open them up and write crass but subtle graffiti on the walls and people would spot it later and be weirded out. In hindsight I guess that was probably my first foray into modding.

  16. Posted

    This week I got my Oculus DK2, and today I took one of the levels of InFlux that I revamped for the UE4 Marketplace and, using Teddy’s rollercoaster plugin, added a rollercoaster. It’s basically the same exact thing as the living room Rift Coaster you might have played except it’s in some cool lava-filled caves. It might have higher system requirements, not sure. Download link.


     

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  23. Posted

    Today and yesterday I pretty much re-did every blueprint in Spacething so that it would be much much tidier, more legible, easier to build on, and particularly so that it would be easy to save and restore ships. So now you can load up a cooked build, renovate the ship all you want, press F6, quit, go back in later, press F9 and your ship is back like it was. Siiiiiiiiick.

     

    You can also save edits made in play-in-editor, so I can, in the editor, start playing, renovate the ship a bunch, press K, and jump back into editor mode, keeping all the changes I made "in-game". So you can just use it as a quick level design tool thing. Best!

     

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