The past couple of weeks, I had been making different blueprints of buildings made using the modular assets Rob and I created. So far, I have seven different buildings created and plan on making even more once I create more complex modular assets. I did not make as many things over the past couple of weeks due to many things like the holiday break, many different assignments being due for other classes, and other serious issue.
Pros: We have a workable number of buildings in the game currently. Cons: Not nearly as many buildings as I had planned.
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These last two weeks have been pretty productive for my timeline. Although we had a huge bug for about a week, I think I am still on track for my sprint. In the first week we encountered a game-breaking bug. The connected clients were not able to fly, grapple, or several other movements. It took Kevin, Josh and I many hours to finally fix this problem. A good thing that resulted from this issue was that we now know a more efficient/better way for the server to communicated with the client and vice versa.
During my second week I was able to change the menu menu programming to allow the client players to manually enter the IP address of the host server. This is a huge plus right now for our game because before this change we were only able to host on the same PC that created the build of the game. Pros: Fixed a huge bug and found a better way of server-client comms We finally don't have to build and play on same PC Cons: It still feels like as a team we are behind
On the programming side of our team a lot of things were accomplished. First and foremost, our 3 main programmers worked together for many hours and were able to find a fix for our biggest game breaking bug, hooray! This bug made it so the inputs done on the client side game was not being read by the server. The fixes were applied to all the characters and we no longer have this issue. Kevin also continued his work on the AI behavior trees for our island movement and made great progress. The islands will now move around each other when connected to the main base islands instead of just getting stuck. Josh spent time getting combat into the game, as well as working to retarget the default Unreal animations to the male character that Sally brought into the game. Pat worked on remaking the main menu UI for the game. Ruben updated our menu AI so that IPs can now be manually entered in the game instead of hard coding it into the game like it was previously done.
On the art side a lot of progress was also made. Ricardo and Rob did another motion capture session and were able to clean up all the data and even started applying it to our male character. Ricardo worked on rigging our alpha dragon in preparation for the animations and implementation into the game. Sally worked on finishing up the rig for the female character as well as going back and adding additional armor to both the male and female character. Healthy started work on environmental ruins for the game as well as creating monoliths and altars for the island capturing system. Matt and Rob worked on creating modular building assets so that buildings can easily be created in engine. Riley finished up the rough alpha dragon model and created a bow and arrow model for the male character.
In other news!! We were contacted by the Drexel Audio Post Club and we were assigned 3 juniors and 1 senior! We can't wait to get to know them and know what they are focusing on so we can figure out all of the audio for the game.
These past two weeks have been pretty productive. After meeting with Dr. Wagner we decided to create modular building assets so we can easily put together a lot of different variations of buildings in engine instead of spending the time to model and texture full buildings in Maya. I started with a basic Plaster and Wood style wall with variations that have a window and a door which are shown below on Sketchfab.
We also did another motion capture shoot where we ended up gathering the easier shots from Kevin for our male character that we did not have time to get during our first session. I also finished cleaning all my shots from the first and second sessions and started applying them to our male character. At first I went through this process in MotionBuilder which took around 3 ½ hours to get a looping walking animation, however, when I started working on the idle animation I stumbled upon perhaps one of, if not the most important tool that I could use in MotionBuilder. It essentially allowed me to creating looping animations quickly, which in turn turned the 3 ½ hour time down to around 30 minutes. This will be a huge help going forward and I’m really happy that I was able to find this setting.
Pros: I was able to start working in MotionBuilder and I found that setting which will make my life so much easier! Also it is getting closer to the holidays, and to celebrate I made my first gingerbread house of the year. Also Wawa has Eggnog already!
Cons: I did not get to work on the buildings for the 2nd part of this sprint since I switched entirely to motion capture so we can get as much animation in the game as possible for our alpha build To do for the next sprint: I am planning on learning Persona, which is the animation editor in Unreal Engine 4 so I can implement all of my animations into the game. Hopefully this won’t be too hard! The past 2 weeks had a good amount of progress on the coding side, although still not as much as we'd like. One big thing we tackled was the discovery of a major game breaking bug in our game, where client side controls were not being replicated over to the server, and the client could not function correctly. This took an entire weekend to solve, but we eventually discovered what the problem was, that basic Unreal Inputs on the client would not be read by the server, and that specific events must be called that would be replicated over to the server must be used. Once this was found, the fix was then applied to all existing dragon and and player functions. On my own programming work, I have gotten some more work done with the AI. While I have not set up AI behavior trees, I have found a work around using Unreal RVO collision avoidance, which after a good amount of time spent experimenting with, I was able to get it so the floating islands AI now see each other, no longer phase through one another, and actually try to move around other islands when they realize their path is blocked Some other minor edits have been done also been done, such as adding a round timer and making it so islands move to the correct position when captured, instead of only partially close to the correct position. I also attempted to implement the Alpha version of our dragon, but was unable to due to my unfamiliarity with Animation retargeting. Sally will try later
Pros: Lots of programming bug fires put out Islands now have smarter AI Can finally move onto more game programming such as Win States, vertical island movement, and Sudden death Cons: Unplanned bug fixing has put us back a few days even more Coding in general is still more behind than I'd like Art is also behind Took way longer than i'd have initially liked, but I finally got the dragon model done. It's been passed off to ricardo to rig for healthy. Overall it's pretty decent for the alpha stage, but there are still a few issues. Primarily the legs need to be bulked up, webbing needs to be added to the wings, and a the back plates need to be modeled into it instead of just placed on top of the body. However that will be fixed for the beta along with adding in secondary details in the model. While the dragon model is going to be rigged and animated, i started working on a model for the bow the human character will use. In the game, the bow will be comprised of energy, so the base model is going to be used as a basis for creating the shape with particles and/or dynamic textures. A second bow for the female character may be made, as the two characters have different design ideas behind them. Pros: Got alot done this week compared to previous weeks
Cons: Not as much done as I'd have liked The past couple weeks, I have been working on expanding our list of modular assets to be used for creating the environment for the game. In a recent meeting with Dr. Wagner, it was decided that going forward it will be my sole responsibility to further develop these modular assets and implement them so that Rob can further focus on MoCap.
Pros: We are making steady progress towards having a full environment soon. Cons: I can't show my current progress since my computer with my work is currently imploding. Last two weeks were pretty rough for me. For last two weeks I have been and still suffering from cold and makes me lack of energy and I had to spent most of my day on my bed because the cold was really bad. Besides all the unfortunate, for last two weeks I work on lots of art asset rather than coding side of the game. I redesigned my main menu animation and it is fully animated and looped. I spent lots of hours re-concept and draw the image on Photoshop. I also took lots of hours on after effects to work on effect I put on for the animation. I have also worked on the logo for our studio. For this week my goal was to put my menu into our game but it was unsuccessful because my computer won't connect to perforce from unreal. I should be able to talk with other teammates and should be able to have all of them by next week. Pro: Logo Created, New Menu Created, Some of Dragon FX created Cons: Lost lots of days because of cold. Still coughing but getting better. Perforce not working properly in my desktop. Moving forward towards the Alpha, it was essential to start incorporating the models into the game. I spent these two weeks continuing work on our characters towards their final stage and importing the latest versions into unreal. Ricardo gave me a reference to rig the characters with the male model and I was able to rig the female model for mocap and import both into the game.
Pros The characters are in the game and the base models are finished with a final skeleton. This way I can constantly replace the models without having to re-rig the entire model and only have to worry about weight painting. I also UV-ed both base characters and since they are heavily armor based I can easily add on or replace existing armor to alter design changes. Cons While the female alpha is finished, I need to work on the male character some more to raise it to the same level, but I am sure I can get it finished before the next meeting with our advisor. The weight paintings are slightly rough in some areas and the texturing is still just base colors. Mocap work still isn’t finished yet and I’m anxious to see them in the game. This week was pretty productive for myself personally. Toggl helped increase my time spent on the game, so I can manage between class and work better. I’m looking forward to implementing texture work in the game. The last two weeks were pretty productive when it came to getting hours in on the project. Unfortunately, most of that didn't translate in to new features for the game. Two weeks ago, we discovered a game breaking bug in the networking. Client side players could run around and jump in the server, but anything else they did wouldn't carry over. For example, if the client were to grapple or try to fly, they would experience severe jittering without going anywhere. From the server player's point of view, they wouldn't be doing anything. Ruben, Kevin, and I spent almost all of our hours that week working on it, and finally figured out how to correctly communicate between the client and server in blueprint. Last week was more about actual features. Sally brought the first rider character in to Unreal and retargeted it to the default animations. My first job was reapplying old features to make sure they worked. After that, I got an aim feature working, as a step towards combat. The player can zoom in and look around. This bends the skeleton accordingly, and plays the aiming animation (a placeholder for now). Pros: A lot of work was done on the game Part of the weapon is done Cons: A lot of hours went in to fixing networking Spent a lot of time unsuccessfully learning IK in Unreal |
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