Day: Mar 30, 2019

SMART: Animation

Posted on by Mike
I got this here.

Specific

I will learn enough about animating 3D Characters so that I can animation characters for the games that I make which will enable me to create much more specific and personalised content for my games. I will do this by first seeking advice on which application to learn, deciding on one, and then finding a beginner level tutorial series on one the learning platforms. I will also find something short that can inform me about the basics of the 12 principles of animation. I will complete this in 6 weeks

Measurable

I will track my progress by progressing through the course I choose and the measurable outcome will be that I will be able to take some character from Unreal or a third party service, bring it into the software of choice, create animations for it, import those to Unreal and set them up there so that they can be used during the game.

Achievable

This is achievable because I am already familiar with the concept of key frames and I can draw to a good standard. I also understand that using reference material for animating really would be the best place to start so that I can learn to make convincing movement. The skill level that I am looking for is beginner to intermediate as this is a skill that I would employ while prototyping and would not intend that my animation work would make its way into anything for production. I need to watch out for this taking too much time as the primary focus for me is still coding.

Relevant

This goal is relevant to me because it improves my ability to make my games more interesting and would allow me to more clearly show the player what the mechanics do. I am the right person for this as I already understand form to the point where I can draw a little and I do not struggle to learn things of this nature. In the future I will need this skill if I want to be able to attract interest to something that I am working on. This is the right time for me to achieve this because I have time set aside for learning how to be a game developer and my life should only be getting busier over the next year.

Time bound

This goal should be complete within 6 weeks. I will achieve this by spending 5 hours per week on this goal.

Serial Link Commit 17: 29th April 2019

Posted on by Mike
Ahh, you little tiny Gore Piece you.

Some of these commit notes are from memory as I have found out that Git Desktop does not save the description that I created between launches of the program. Once the program is closed the information is lost. Very irritating! So, from now on I will work in Workflowy to take the notes that I need and just paste them into Git Desktop when I am ready to make a commit. Bah.

Macros are cool

This is my first macro. I dont mean the macros that you can set up in an actor that are a little like functions, only at compile time the nodes themselves are pasted in where ever the macro is used. No. I mean that this is the first macro that I have created that is part of a custom Macro Library. Yes, I feel very grown up right now. I know its simple but it turns out that this little guy is really useful. So, now I am looking out for logic that I an duplicating between blueprints, as thats really the issue to solve with this. I also finally know what a ‘wildcard’ is. Its anything. Simple. More specifically and as I understand it, a wildcard is used as a placeholder at time of creating the logic so that when the macro is used, it will determine the type of what has been passed to it and work with that. Perfect for an array operation like this as it does not matter what the array contains, only that it is an array.

Commit

  • Fixed the macro that was supposed to be fetching a random element from an array
  • Imported some new blood splatters for testing
  • Started to set up the gore profiles
  • Created Enum called Gore Profile Struct that contains a Name field and an array of will be – Gore Pieces. This should allow me to set up things like ‘HeadShot’ as a profile and then determine that eyes and brain gore should be included in the list of gore.
  • Created Gore Pieces Base that I will use to make children Gore Pieces. The functionality like audio on hit and spawning decals or drawing them from a pool will happen in here.
  • Created Gore Piece Eyeball just as a test really as I have not changed the model to an eye although I do have them. Its just to start building the Profile idea out.

Serial Link Commit 16: 24th March 2019

Posted on by Mike

I am really getting a lot from using version control. Being able to look back over the commits and see what was updated and what was changed is very informative. I know that in the software world this is standard but there is always a first time for experiencing even things that turn out to be ordinary.

Commit

  • Imported the UE4 room from the content examples project as it will look nice for videos showing features
  • Fixed an access none error that was happening when a soldier who is not part of a squad is killed and tries to reach for a squad mate to shout ‘man down’.
  • Fixed access non error when the killed soldier tries to check that the fire team is dead but he does not belong one.
  • Moved the squad and fire teams into the new space and all the decals and features seem to work except for the squad clean up
  • Squad leader was being spawned outside the room and was not dead when the player was entered the clean up volume
  • Added is valid check to the ‘Dex lost’ call to the Dialogue Manager, as it runs on a re-trigger-able timer and the owner can be killed before the timer cycle runs its course.
  • Added is valid check to the ‘found soldier body’ call to the Dialogue Manager as there is a delay to that call in which the caller can be destroyed.
  • Added is valid check to the weapon base class for when the reticle is trying to cool down but the owner may have already been destroyed.
  • Added an ‘Enable blood’ bool on the bleeding component that can be set in the details panel of any actor that uses it.
  • Took out the behaviour in the Soldier that was polling the Music Manager so that it would change stat at the right time, this needs to be changed to Event Dispatchers instead.
  • Began setting up the Gore Profiles in the Bleeding Component but its not finished yet.