That time of the year again where you’re broke, fat and cringe induced PTSD. Nah jk I don’t mind it too much. Not that into holidays myself but the purpose of the holiday makes sense in a therapeutic aspect; getting together seeing all your friends and relatives at least once a year chilling and having family fun. It is nice but probs wouldn’t want anymore than that for me personally. Everyone’s got their lives to deal with. Hope everyone has a safe Christmas and stay positive if possible, I know bullshit cant be avoided sometimes but try to think it as a game bug that currently it’s annoying and even painful but give hope that things will get patched over.

Was gonna watch the traditional Die Hard again for Christmas but just saw the trailer for Violent Night which has the producers of Nobody and Bullet Train, both really good movies so I have to watch it.

In movie related topics, Avatar 2 was really good and lived up to it’s expectations. Not gonna spoil anything but it was a must see movie if you’re a CGI fanatic. Very good lighting, character models, vfx, music, WATER!, very vibey type story. I personally think the first one is still better due to it having more story and action but this one is soo good because of it’s insane visuals.

There were a few things that I'm a bit iffy on; VMAX was forced to have 3D and and a lot of cases it was really well done and then other places where it's probably better watching without it due to it being blurry in some scenes and just overall darkened/desaturated because of the glasses. Another thing is, there is a lot of mixture of 30 and 60FPS scenes (I noticed between that too like having 45FPS etc); 1/3 of the movie was most noticeable and looked a bit clunky like the animations or just general pacing was too quick and weird looking. The other 2/3 of the movie seemed to be good after that though even with the 60FPS scenes.

Overall it was definitely worth a watch but I would probably rather watching it again without 3D, and when Bluray comes out maybe limiting the FPS to around 30-45ish (unless 60FPS looks better without 3D in this case idk, you would have to experiment for your re-watch case). Bare in mind it is a 3 hour movie; I’m pretty good with bladder control myself so it doesn’t matter too much, just take a sip every like 30 min or so. Having a small drink mainly helps also

In regard to my game dev progress: I can’t believe it’s been a month already but I can at the same time, it’s weird. Time just flies when I’m hard-locked into my space but it also goes by soo quick when you got other IRL shit to do especially around this time. So what I’ve done in the last month is a fair bit like every other month but the more and more time I invest into learning stuff the more I know how to fix and handle things. The start of the month I re-did my replication since I’ve had my replication mindset in the wrong direction and thought I had to execute from owning client, server and multicast so the they all sync up but I was wrong and learned that you want everything on the server and then replicate it to clients. I blame the government... (In my defense there was barely any good tutorials on how to properly replicate stuff and get you into that mindset of having everything on the server then client so it stops people from cheating).

Setup a little bit of weapon stats and death ragdolls. A lot of general bugs fixed. Looking into client-server prediction such as using the MPPP Plugin instead of EBBarrel for a better experience when shooting at higher ping. Also looked extensively into GAS and GAS Companion in general but I’ve yet to really find myself in need of that yet; I know it has prediction as well but it’s just another thing that separates from the main bp code. I know it can be used universally which I might consider later but right now all I’m thinking of at the moment is do I really need it? Currently no. But will investigate it eventually. And after many many days of trying to figure out one little thing; got character and weapon reload animations to be in sync with using the GMC Component. With using the normal Unreal character; it’s a lot more easier to integrate but since I’m working with this component and would much rather use it due to how badly Unreal’s movement component is at high ping, it’s a bit of a nightmare. But for anyone out there that’s having this same issue I’ll post my comment from the blueprint trying to explain how I did it. Honestly I don’t 100% know how this works and it could be coded better someway but this is what worked for me.

There are 2 montages playing for the character for it to properly sync up to the weapon montage as well as having 2 weapon montages (mainly for it to work with GMC). 1st character one is needed in GMC so that the simulated proxies can see it. 2nd one is here (Weapon blueprint) which needs an additional "Montage Play" because sometimes when it plays on the simulated proxy it doesn't play/gets interrupted.

The first weapon montage one is called in the Anim Notify "AN_WeaponAnimation" (At the start of the character montage) is to have a better sync situation than calling it in a RPC. We also call a weapon montage here which is the same reason why we have another play montage for the character here (Weapon blueprint) is to make sure it doesnt get interrupted and stays in a consistent sync for the character and gun animation for both the simulated and autonomous proxy. Not 100% sure why this works better like this but it is what it is. *There is a little issue with the weapon animation at the start and end that looks a little janky which I might be able to fix somehow but it looks good overall*

So yeah, as I mentioned in that comment, there is a little janky animation thing in the beginning and end of the weapon animation. If you can’t get what I mentioned to work, you can always dm me and I can try to help get that working for you.