#this dev is so unreal

[zeurille]

[Coding Diaries] Using Nodes to Apply Jump Impulse

With the recent runtime fee Unity has imposed on their new pricing scheme, a lot of independent and professional developers are jumping ship due to future issues they foresee regarding the market of their games. 

After much deliberation and self-debating, as well as looking up other devs' opinions on the matter, I decided to switch to Unreal to develop my first game for my portfolio.

I thought the transition would essentially mean starting from scratch, thus my hesitation, but I found myself becoming familiar with concepts easier than expected due to my previous learning experiences in Unity. I already knew terms like components, nodes, and object-oriented programming. This helped me focus more on how Unreal's logic behaved when it came to making things move and operate in the gamespace.

My experiences from other disciplines helped shape my workflow in Unreal as well: especially the concept of non-linear editing and establishing variables, so the behavior still works even when certain values change. 

Case in point: making the cube, in the image above, jump. A Udemy course tasked me with making it happen through Blueprint, a built-in node system in Unreal. It taught me the basics of Events, getting components, the different switches, and adding values.

Using these basic concepts and a little Googling, this was the node system I established for the cube jump, using the Impulse node to operate it.

There is truth in the benefits of learning holistically, as there are concepts that will carry over to different disciplines and will help ease your brain towards taking in the new information, making the learning process more streamlined. Here's to taking further steps into making my own game!

UPDATE:

https://imgur.com/a/BRhuiRJ

The behavior of the Jump Impulse on each cube is different because of the Blueprint composition of each one. The one on the left has extra nodes that transform the mass value to a vector value, then extract the z, and finally apply that z value into the Input. This makes the cube jump a lot more and launches it into the air.

The one on the right has less nodes, only activating the Velocity Change on the Impulse node and entering a value to the z axis. This results in smaller, “more realistic” jumps. Right now I still don't know why this is the case, when they are basically the same value with extra steps.The only big change I'm seeing that could affect these behaviors is the node that translates the mass into a vector. Because even when the velocity change is off, the cube on the right jumps in the same manner.

~~~Okay let me try to break this down... The tutorial said that the Impulse has its own equation of Mass * Velocity Change, but even with the Vel Change unchecked and the numbers manually typed into the Z axis of the Impulse data pin, it was still different from the left cube. So something must have changed in the data of the various nodes I used on the left.

Even if I never find the answer, I guess this has been a hard lesson to always look for optimized, shorter ways to achieve what you want in the game. Also, a lesson to make the game lighter. Hooboy!

[graveofcalaxes]

If it turns out that the oblivion remake is real, I’ve got something to say to the devs that I hope they see.

A good amount of the bugs and general jankiness in the game are what give oblivion its charm. You’ve gotta keep at least some of them in. Code them in yourselves, if you must.

[whopissedmypants]

I FOUND A EPIC GAMES DEV JACKET AT A THRIFT STORE, WHAT THE FUCKKK?!?

[crownconstellation]

azuma post of the day. on my hands and knees crying screaming throwing up begging people to stop throwing rf5 under the bus to uplift goa so far because i have seen so much of it already.

i will not deny rf5 is clunky and i have talked about this many a time by now but i need — and cannot stress the need enough — people to start looking at rf5’s situation with a bit more understanding from the development end. like…

it was the first new game in the series in what was, by its time of release, 9 years

the series had been longtime presumed dead before 4 Special came out in 2019

it was in development during the middle of COVID 2020

it was developed using an engine the team did not have much experience with

the series had not been on console since the Wii & so 5 was designed based off the most successful handheld game because it was their most recent & most popular reference for game structuring

do i wish 5 had done some things differently or had more padding to it in some areas? oh, absolutely. but like…. the state of the team, the world, & the series itself need to be acknowledged before constantly throwing it under the bus. like no shit GoA looks better, it’s being developed on a different engine that its team is likely more familiar with with presumably far more budget available because of 3/4S + 5’s overall commercial success. & because of 5, they know what worked and what didn’t work when bringing the series back to console so they were able to move forward with experimenting and referencing the series’ past console games (particularly Oceans) instead of just what game was the most popular (4).

guardians of azuma as we’ve seen it so far can only exist in this form because of 5, both where it stumbled and succeeded, and i wish people acknowledged the circumstances behind their development periods as being vastly different so putting 5 down to uplift goa up isn’t exactly fair.

[moraymoth]

I brought all my shit into the kitchen, pet my cat, she came to cuddle in the kitchen, forgot I was hungry during the cuddling, so I don't know how long I've been sitting here forgetting I'm hungry until now

[giselberts]

a few in-editor screenshots of my final uni project! don't mind the HDRI it's not visible in-game since we're going for a 3/4 camera view :) we still have a long way to go, but we're getting there!

(we might put it on itch.io if the entire team is okay, but it'll only be in french, unfortunately)

[phylaxery]

Some more progress gifs for posterity. Overhauled this character controller for the 18th time and while still working out some kinks, it's a little more easy to handle than physics-based flight. Just put in some dive/climb speed changes and returning to a flat pitch when idle. Still need to figure out how to get the camera to work how I want.

Bonus outtakes from attempting to figure out the camera controls.

[ikilledamanforthisurl]

awesome who's lila moment

[pumpkinslinked]

HEY FOLKS!!!! Guess who's been given recourses on programming?? THATS RIGHT! This bitch! So!! When I start on it I may give live updates ^^ Speaking of, I have a question >:3

[sidewalk-scrawls]

Fellow game devs who are fleeing Unity, what are your thoughts on Godot vs Unreal for making 2D games? I know Unreal is pretty over-powered for most 2D development, but given I'm used to Unity, how is Godot feature-wise? Are there any features it's noticeably lacking?

[lilyvalleygames]

What are we thinking

[whisperairwatchmebloom]

There’s this dichotomy in Inferno where Virgil or Dante explains that the people in hell have no remorse and that’s precisely why they’re in hell because of you feel remorse, you can repent and be saved by the light of salvation. So to me with so much repetition in the album between dark and light, “so much of our life is discovered through the dark” “like I’ve lived my whole life before the first light” “true colors shine in darkness and in secrecy” even in Francesca towards the end when he just repeats over and over again “heaven means nothing to me now,” it’s almost a rebuttal of the whole idea of having to be saved by light or salvation. He’s saying look at us we’re in darkness fumbling around trying to figure it all out and that’s what makes us human. It’s who we are and it’s why we live our whole lives before the first light, because there is beauty in all the mistakes we make more so in the strive for perfection.

[cosmosarcana]

i've determined i will probs never play minecraft again bc the sheer amount of content, while amazing, also is overwhelming to the highest degree but gameplay videos are highly enjoyable. also since finding creativerse it just hits better and terraria is like my happy (moddable) medium.

[timeclonemike]

Meet The Party: Mason

Full Name: Marcus Nicholas Mason Class: Survivalist Age: 34 Pronouns: He / Him Faction: None Biographical Summary: Mason started life with a passion for nature and a love for animals, a passion that was slowly ground down by a society that only valued state-sponsored violence as strength and punished all else as weakness. At least, that's his story. It's within the realm of possibility that his schoolyard classmates teased him for having initials that were a pun on a popular candy and he never got over it. Regardless of the reason, Mason has been alternately living off the land and working in the park services for the last decade, to protect the natural world from being too severely exploited. The latest round of sabre-rattling by various nation states and aspiring global dictators has lead to mass industrialization of the type that bodes ill for natural ecosystems, which is cause enough for Mason to pick fights with so-called civilization; running into the Hero and finding an ally of convenience is a bonus for both of them.

[refinedstorage]

Providing your prescribed Sunday dose of geekery :>

[phylaxery]

Hi I'm back again. This time with a quest to figure out how to get the camera to nicely move back to the front of the character when you're not steering it. I wanted to make a few gifs to show my process!

First figuring out how to actually get the camera to reset in the right direction.

Getting it to do so smoothly!

Starting the lerp on a delay, and having it actually update the camera so you can interrupt the lerp any time without it jumping horribly.

Experimenting with different easing methods so it's snappy but not too snappy, yknow?

And finally some extra pizzazz, I wanted it to get snappier the longer you're idle for, so you can reasonably control the character from the camera POV without needing to use the camera constantly. Tadah!

BONUS outtakes