First things first, wtf is unity thinking of having up to 20c per install fees… Cunt are you actually retarded? You literally killed off a percentage of your loyal game developers and switching to other engines. Devs are even threatening to delete their game over it. I did see that apology thing but they shouldn’t of done this shit in the first place. The lack of information and the procedure of getting those fees are obscured. Apparently people have already made scripts for Rust to just install/uninstall just in spite of Facepunch. What did you think would happen? Unity’s stocks have been going downhill for a bit but now it’s completely plummeted. Good job fucking yourself and everyone with ya. The CEO was apparently working with EA and pitched out an idea of whenever you reload a weapon, you get fee’d for that. So microtransactional in-game elements. Oh and don’t forget that they partnered with a malware company. I didn’t realise that there were subscription services with Unity having per seat fees of $185 USD and they are asking for more.. Glad I went to Unreal Engine. Epic Games has been spoiling us good over here.
Btw I’m writing this while I’m compiling UE5.2 Source because there’s this plugin that allows you to read the editor logs in packaged builds and you need the source version. This would be very useful to debug if something isn’t working in packaged but it’s only working in editor. Plus if people see errors or I can even code something that detects an error, I can auto send that to a database of some sort. Plus I'm figuring out issues with extending drive sizes, fun..
Ok now this party shit. Last 3 days I’ve only done 3 hours of dev stuff because of my sisters engagement party that they wanted to host here and those 3 days was just pre preparation. I don’t mind helping out but for 3 full days is a bit fucked only for just a night get together. Didn’t mention that we had to clean up today as well. I’m pretty annoyed by it because that’s 3 days gone of time that I wanted to work on. But it’s all good I guess I’ll sacrifice some time off either game nights or some time off shows I guess… Been thinking about moving out a lot lately but it wont happen for a while tho. Not until I can be financially stable. For those unaware, I still live with my mom, yes at 25; not really uncommon these days tbh. I really don’t mind helping her out and what not and I appreciate what she’s done with me my whole life but the main thing is the amount of shit we have to maintain around the house is burdening me mentally. From weeds growing everywhere to doing shit for the family. Doesn’t sound that bad but when this stuff has been happening a lot overtime, it does get overbearing. Like I said I love fam and all but I just want to get out of it all and less and less time is being done on this game I’m making and another thing is I haven’t really been “free” to do what I want.
I’m an introvert that barely speaks irl, I’m pretty different when speaking online since it’s a comfort zone for me being alone in my room or just being with people I can jam so it wouldn’t be that different for them anyway. Another thing that is in the back of my mind is leaving mom on her own which sounds shitty but do I really just do this for the rest of my life? We aren’t rich and mildly struggling so is it worth it for the fam’s morality? This is the stuff that goes through my mind every so often when this topic comes up. I’ve always kinda been selfish but not at the same time, so I won’t really be impacted mentally if I do leave but everyone elses is another story. Me and my mates on discord have been murmuring about all moving in together and do whatever tf we want. But like I said this shit isn’t gonna happen for a while. We just paid off the lease for the next 2 years so maybe I can make plans until then. But we’ll see, it mightn’t happen but a good dream to have regardless.
Btw I have more hours on Unreal Engine than I have on Ark Survival Evolved which seems kinda crazy because I remember grinding the fuck out of the game, I guess I am grinding the fuck out of UE.
Been fucking around with fixing git size problems because when I prune references locally, it wont update on the remote so I had to ask github themselves and that took a couple weeks to get that shit sorted because I wanted to make sure to get this stuff sorted properly and I’ve never experienced this before. So I didn’t upload commits for that timeframe but I was still working on the project obviously. Also apparently github had to make custom script to go through all my objects and pointers which is funny because that's another thing that others haven't experienced since they said they haven't had to deal with something this big before. Feels like I'm the only competent dev out here lol.
Been doing some more little changes with the demonstration map and mostly finished the audio section. Looking into different technologies such as FluidNinja and integrating that with Oceanology so it has a more realistic but optimized look.
Lately I’ve messed around with object physics sounds such as hit, sliding and rolling sound effects which are based off velocity and how hard it impacts. Which I mainly got inspired by a wind asset and I wanted to add some sound to those that are being effected physically which can add a lot of immersion and it’s cool to play around with. Back to the wind asset, I semi looked into it and I want to have a dynamic wind system which I mainly got inspired also by Project Borealis which is a fan made Half Life project (which is also made in Unreal engine) and their wind system is really impressive. So I looked further and it looked complicated af with their paper. They did say they wanted to release it to the public but they haven’t really been active for 3 and a half years. So I wanted to make my own type of wind system. I got a pack from the marketplace Ambient Wind System which is a good base but I wanted more. I haven’t really done much with it but I’m making it spline based which will change direction depending on some values that I haven’t done yet but it’s not that important to properly get into right now.
I’ve also got a grabbing physics system kinda like Half Life. And it’s based off weight. I tried to make it realistic with the weight of objects and how much you can carry but I made it so it’s like the average gym person type strength so you’re not too weak or too strong. I’ve also made it so you can grab from where ever you are pointing at. Because in unreal engine by default; when you constraint something, it grabs it from the center of the object so I wanted to implement something more realistic and logical. Took me a while to implement it properly but it works really well.
In conjunction to the grabbing physics; there’s a marketplace asset (Yes another one, get off my dick) Physical Assembly System which is like the Zelda construction system where you can attach objects together. I know there has been a trademark from Nintendo about that system but I don’t give a shit and they can get fucked to try and trademark a game mechanic. But this system is interesting because one it’s cool but with it implemented into my game it will be future proof for my survival game but it would also benefit for the competitive side as well. Because moving and wielding objects to each other can create different strategies that no competitive game has done before. There’s been a few competitive sandbox games like Halo and kinda like Battlefield (with the destruction) but none that have moveable and wieldable objects. Which I think will create some interesting strats. Also I do have this thought on casuals moving and building shit instead of playing but to combat that is obviously explosives or just avoid that person completely but also if your teammate is building and fortifying your team objective, is there anything wrong with that? In concept might be different to actually playing it but I have a good mentality on visualizing playstyles so I think it might be alright.
But that’s about it for now, just bug fixes here and there and trying to get UE5.2 Source to work right now.
Payday 3. Why the fuck is it online only? Stupidest move they’ve done. Why do we have to go through a matchmaking system to play privately.. Do they deserve the 32% positive reviews on steam? Probs not completely but you do gotta think how much is downgraded. I only played one session and quickly completed 6 heists on the easiest difficulty but yeah it does feel a little downgraded in some areas but I still think it’s a fun game overall. I would still recommend it because of how fun, more difficult and interesting the stealth heists are which is a good thing overall. I’m not going to say more since I haven’t played much but it’s not bad so far.