vitaliadev

[vitaliadev]

UE5.6 new combat template note

i couldn't find it at first because i expected it to be a separate template like in 5.6 announcement, I have been waiting for an update from Epic to add those templates and even tried to get them through github. In reality a bunch of shown templates are hidden, they were already there, I just didn't know/paid attention on showcase:

First person and other templates also have variants. combat template has no jump/spacebar. platforming template has it instead with some interesting features, but it cannot be added into one project through the usual means as a starter asset pack or smth.

The platformer example also by startup doesn't show the map with special jump features, same as combat map shows a basic 3d pov map. look for these folders once the unreal engine opens you the template:

default map is just a basic map with the point of view chosen when picking a template. It is a different map from new templates and doesn't have features advertised:

[vitaliadev]

some Unreal engine freebies worth noting

I have those in my library, not all of these are permanently free likely.

Space cinematics applicable to multiple game ides i already have:

Stuff for board/mini games:

ouja board

https://www.fab.com/listings/d331a169-0405-44e5-8280-83e009c635cd

chess

rubix cube, free for personal use only. To study the blueprint.

Random:

chairs:

paint bucket/can

wheelbarrow

Cat, animated:

grandma/wolf from red riding hood

Some stuff i may use for my current titles:

https://www.fab.com/listings/9c616a84-4cd7-4823-9e2e-db202d7eb604

[vitaliadev]

UE short films challenge etc

I stumbled upon some short films made with UE, and there's an ongoing challenge I'm considering taking a part in:

https://www.formstudios.com/vfc/

The notable videos I've seen are made by solo devs in a short amount of time:

process walkthrough is here

A notable solo film maker with quite impressive camera work and mocap:

[vitaliadev]

Randomly started editing my website yesterday using VS Code, it has a browser preview. I'm genuinely not sure if it's the ai part of it ( they say they Copilot is integrated) or some non-ai feature in the editors nowadays, but the prediction offers i got from the editor blew me away.

I have logos on my website to show what tools i am familiar with. I needed to make the logos lead to the tools' websites for clarification. I clarified in the code what the assets represent (for non programmers: label system, like a sticker on a jar, not a functional code part).

The editor figured that i wanted links to lead to label's websites and bulk-offered me the info:

It is likely ai, not sure how to turn off/on yet, i thought it was optional to use not built-in by default.

This immensely speeds up the process, but ai is not environment friendly whatsoever, so I don't support it. I am annoyed at how much microsoft pushes the use of ai. I'm tired of the literal ads on my log in windows screen jfc.

Anyway, i am curious about making apps, but not web dev. Just want my website to have specific pages by the end of the year lol. I wanna have a proper monetizable blog too, in some future, but it will require too much work and probably the server side changed again, not something i wanna do any time soon.

I had a menu in blogger like this, but blogger itself isn't customisable as i wanted for my site to be, so i stopped using it:

Stuff to plan to add:

remake menu like this^(now it is jump points for a landing page, move that to sub menu)

menu includes links to youtube and itch etc

games showcase the same as projects, or something, use tagging as in projects (#if, UE, 3d, 2d, 1spov etc)

maybe images mess up my website, there's a small issue with sizing, which chows up as a horizontal slider. don't know how to fix it, probably something i messed up in bootstrap.

wanna add animation examples and maybe icon, but given how it is structured now, not sure how to present it yet.

[vitaliadev]

test2 Metahuman UE5.6

yea, after playing around with it more I can say UE5.6 is definitely unstable. Metahuman in UE is obviously better, but some things are missing from the original Creator and random glitches. I also have errors with my other metahuman test (it opens, but not original file, i got lucky i made a copy).

It is also not as flexible as I initially thought. I cannot make his lips the way I want. In creator I couldn't make eyes right, now it is somewhat close enough. anyway it is closer than I ever could do male characters in Creator. I'd say it is good enough to not change anything further manually aside clothes for his earliest cameo. I'd wanna add a lazy hair bun and glasses.

I'm also too tired to wait for my PC to load changes when I try to adjust the body, so for now UE5.6 character making play time is over.

(this character by the plot is supposed to look androgynous, not just because i have preferences lol)

[vitaliadev]

matthew kessels scene de luge

One of my favorite sculptures i saw irl, 3d model:

I think it's in Brussels museum.

[vitaliadev]

on game accessibility

some resources provided from this jam:

https://itch.io/jam/20-games-challenge-summer-jam

and a new freebie on fab^

[vitaliadev]

Adding YT shorts as a video to itch.io games

A note, because txh.io game page doesn't recognise shorts' links. You can transform the links to regular links with some tweaks without a need to make a new video:

[vitaliadev]

random stream, currently can be watched here:

haven't done art properly in a long time 5h wip

[vitaliadev]

itch.io organising

For itch.io pages (profile & games) you can ask custom CSS from mods. main info here and here and also here and here and here

But what I wanted can be done easier. Andwhat I wanted is to group my projects in a way, that certain projects were separate from others. Why:

you have a game series

you participate in a regular jam and want all the entries grouped separately from your non-jam games

you have different projects on your page (game, assets, soundtrack, tools, books etc)

you want to highlight a project's development, if it had a remake, was redone in different genre or some other update tha is too significant to keep as a file addition on the same page (think 2d platformer turned into 3d shooter like Resident evil 2versus its remake)

So, add your own game to collections:

Create new collection for each category/folder /group you want on your page. Order of games, deleting and editing titles etc of collections can be done here:

https://itch.io/my-collections

Next, go to your own profile:

Here you can see how I organised my stuff:

First list is my projects, 2nd is collections (which include games i wishlisted etc, not my games).

I hid all my projects from first list, because I grouped them the way I want on collections, than are now shown one after another (you can change order by using 3 horizontal line button on the left of each title)

I unhid 1project to show in the right (sidebar), to showcase my active project.

my own projects grouped in collections are shown, the collections with games in wishlists are hidden.

You can also see custom CSS part before button save, if you will wanna useit. Don't forget to click Save, that's it.

[vitaliadev]

gd.tv 2025 postmortem

https://itch.io/jam/gamedevtv-jam-2025

So, I already participated in this jam last year. In both times, it was because I wanted a course, tohugh today I see it probably won't be my goal next year because I have enough courses that cover every other course I do not have. It is likely I won't participate in next jam, or at least not for the course (but for flex....lol)

My game:

https://vitaliadev.itch.io/so-about-chrystal

The bad:

Due to perfectly foreseen circumstances, I messed up my project I of course broke my project and didn't have the recent working copy because I wanted to play around with plugins I didn't play before.

I have been in quite bad health recently, so I spent 2 days sleeping and resting, after what I half-forgot what I was doing, so I lost my concentration and didn't follow the plan (which led to issue above ^)

Because I had a broken file, I ended up doing a text version of my game in last 2 days, but I forgot music (in 3d project i had it hanks to using template that allowed me to quickly replace stuff).

I may have wasted a lot of time interacting with the jam community, as well as other jams I planned to be a part of later. It can be fun and all, but it also got an anon hater & wasted time by random chit-chat as a procrastination form voting on games and dealing with my personal stuff irl. So, this point is kinda about me procrastinating in general and using seemingly productive means for it like chatting with the community.

The good:

had HTML5 version compared to last year (if i had a truly good game it would be irrelevant tho)

kinda unrelated, but this game helped me to understand what i want on my itch.io and why i need custom css that now i got granted

Used my original project, so I didn't make a fully new idea that would grow like new type of mold as it always happens

I wrote a good script very quickly because I planned well, and i got massive update on my main idea for the project's universe.

The game is relatively simple by design, so I can actually finish it right now, If i commit to this project.

Doing a jam again made me spend recent few weeks very productively and I helped me to get back into creative flow, and gamedev in general.

I got a course as a prize that fits to my cat game idea.

revamped my youtube and added some videos on the game

got my game advertisement tagline (God, I'm funny):

Results of the jam :

page 23/52; place 457/1023

versus old entry 51/54; 1030/1082 This jam was a year apart, 573places & 2scores up.

Comparison to the previous year:

And for further progress analysis, here's results form another jam i did twice (48hours, not 10 days):

There the time was roughly half a year in between, raised myself 1 point and 4 places position 49/53 in 2024, 45/55 in 2025.

To sum up: half a year I upgrade my rating in 1 point and climb up the ladder. Though, i recalled it wrong, i only participated irl in 1 jam, first one with Out of Control game. So perhaps I could finish because I wasn't on location and had more smooth process this way (again, time was wasted on chit chat irl).

---

Things to do in jams:

Always check if I have music and sounds

consider how to deal with HTML5 (either i don't work in UE5 at all or I work in UE4.23, which needs new templates and learning)

prep meals etc beforehand

Things to do in general:

do postmortem for year of jams (8 total) + video

play some jam games i had no time for

test UE 5.6

clean up the file mess after broken projects

organize my desktop, i have a lot of jams' related stuff dumped all over folders

update all my Twine games with pics and music

check out UE templates

UE new course - for cat game

get screen etc for home

ue template - combat for Jack's game likely

sort my tag system tumlbr posts

Some other thing to do in general:

deal asap with my docs

figure out wth is my health situation now because it hasn't been normal

There were many things more in my head but whatevers

[vitaliadev]

Unreal Engine HTML5 gamedev.

TL;DR: UE 4.23.1 for native, 4.27 with github; possibly 5.4 with UE from source but need to test if it is true. (i'm not interested in pixel tracing option)

My tests will be here:

ok, im tired with build issues when im jamming, so i'll try to play around with old UE version at natively allows HTML5. there's a way to do it with 4.27 as well, but (4.23.1), but i want native UE support, not extra steps for now. ther4's also seemingly 5.4 support with UE source on github, but i'll need to test it. 4.23 compared to 4.27 (and surely 5) has more templates to play around with.

Because UE5 is wastly different in some aspects, i will stick with 2d and sidescrollers for now:

classic sega etc games (contra, mario bros, charlie the circus, little mermaid, chip n dale, ninja, motobike etc)

fighting games from side, not necessarily 2d.

will use Paragon assets for some ideas

animal assets like cats, horse and wild animals work (except wolf) from freebies

maybe fixed camera /demake horror games.

V is also supported, but i'm still not getting into Vr i guess? dunno

so yea, 4.23.1 is the LAST version that supports natively HTML5:

How to package is actually here, other buttons don't allow saving the project as HTML5, they just build:

///

518mb packed, 240mb zip. too big for itch??

2. maps only: 81m very quick packaging; 24.6mb zip YOYOYO IT WORKED the key is to find .html file in the packed by UE folder, change name to index.html Thenturn it into .zip and upload to itch.io

[vitaliadev]

6-7 day i was sick again, on 8th i broke my game because I didn't save a stable version and was adding some plugins and sh!t and now the game kunda works, but light is completely off, metahuman skeletons have errors and the file despite playing doesn't pack, UE crashes. I even reinstalled engine. Gladly it seems to affect only this project, but migrating metahumans from other project crashes both. Also i have no bridge/fab in my UE now? I swear, it's those plugins that seemingly offer a simplified feature and end up wrecking havoc on the whole system, again, it happened again aaaa

I also installed 5.6 preview because i keep ignoring the idea of sticking to one UE version until i finish a project...

9-10th days of the jam: im making a Twine version that plays out the script of the game i had in mind. Perhaps it is for the best. I added now pics to Twine, so I'll also update my other games and maybe try to finish at least one project fully in a game script version like that.

Chrystal will probably be the first chapter for the bigger project it is related to, I'm not sure if I should seriously try to make it in U real or get a freebie and spend half a year just learning stuff before trying to build anything for more than 5 days, it is clearly my breaking point lol.

Thinking of the plot for Chrystal, since i decided it can be a quick prequel to another project, i ended up expanding lore and making both projects kinda mandatory for one another. The story is quite good, complexity vise same as what I have ended up with after doing game jam with Carry On (npt online anywhere, the itch version is a very small preview).

Maybe I'll try to make a visual novel first for Steam instead of all those ambitions unfitting for my skill level, and patience, clearly.

[vitaliadev]

images for my browser game, don't look it's spoilers art by me.

[vitaliadev]

day 5

EnemyAI: replace manny with random model for side characters

to stop enemies from coming too close (cannot do more than 90):

one character has idle animnation as reading, this video is useful:

(copy apb_manny, change idle animation:

for all the animations to show up tick as in 2. 3.search animation by name

4. pick animation you intended

Loop animation:

[vitaliadev]

day 3 of gamedev.tv jam 2025

So, ^this is the result of 2nd day's rough blockout.

I won't have much time for the jam as I hoped for, because I have 2 ongoing personal thing that will eat up a lot of free time I have :\ Partially due to my poor planning & getting sick all the time recently, but that's no me.

17.05/1 day.

due to time difference & my work schedule, I didn't do much, except brainstorming once the theme was announced. There were many ideas, but I decided to go with a project from my drafts. The project itself is just notes on a story between different characters, and the character in the game is basically the intro to the whole story. It is a very short mental visual, fits for a quick game for the jam and presents some unique challenges.

18.05/2 day.

I used a template I recently made for Unreal that has some basic things I've done for my other games. It has a placeholder menu, sounds, enemy interaction and level progression. Basically, it's nothing and at the same time everything I've figured out how to do so fur in Unreal.

A very rough map of the events was done, and I tried multiple things (crouch animation to add, camera switch for the story). Also added mirror to the game from other project. Somehow all my ideas operate on similar themes, so character meeting a mirror self is sorta common and useful for the story-telling.

19.05/3 day, ongoing notes:

Crouch animation is implemented in UE's recent animation sample, but only in 5.5. version. So Perhaps i will jsut merge it with my current blueprint for the character, and it will be neough. It isn't absolutely necessary for the game jam level, but it can be very useful, if I have time to figure out camera/cutscenes.

recorded a rough scene (using Metahuman sample) that is crucial to storytelling and will compensate for my inability to show it in-game for now. So now I have to edit the video and figure out how to put it into the level (there's only one, no need for more).

Currently, the main issue is collission. In other games it wasn't important because character doesn't interact with space as closely. Here the character crawls through the tunnel, and it is crucial to fix it.

Probably i will need to make sublevels, or figureo ut how to "perma-close door" in the environment to cut off way back after a certain plot point of the character.

Likely need a cutscene or a lot of world building at first location, to set the story properly.

Voice over owuld be also useful, but at least addign osme spooky sounds is enoguh for the jam.

Script needs more time, right now it super rough because when i made it up i was trying to sleep and i didn't get up to write it down (big mistake ugh)

I really don't have much time.

Overall, I think this idea is a good start(i told it before with other projects i know) for my steam store. In the perfect version of the game, it is a very short cinematic experience, that by itself is very strong plot-wise (same as my Twine game Carry On, which is as well a premise to a bigger game idea).

Surprisingly this project has A LOT to work on, compared to Control game that can handle a lot of cut corners. It is also not unique enoguh to be a full paid experience on steam in the current form, compared to this jam project. It can be basically 5 minutes walking sim game and it can be enough to sell it, because the whole package is just "enough". yea. So perhaps I'm sticking with this game for upcoming "sometime".

Game jam wise, would be cool to get another free tutorial, but it is also okay if I don't there are couple tutorials I'm interested in, but I have still a lot tutorials I didn't use form the platform. The courses I'd go with is survival or 2d games. Survival is last blueprints course I don't have, and 2D is something that lacks info on Unreal but I didn't wanna to dive deep into C++ just yet (but already soon, I'm thinking about it). There are few more courses, but they are all C++ and I don't feel a crucial need to do everything in there, just wanted to try bits here and there. So I'll probably go with survival, because it fits at least half of my game ideas. There's always next year and salary

[vitaliadev]

level finish sound

quick note on sound once you reach the finish line:

"do once" related to the trigger box for the area that teleports to new level should be before the sound, like this:

Othervise the level end sound is triggered again by the enemy. Didn't notice it on the other projects because enemies couldn't go along with the main character to the trigger area.