CHIEF CHAT NOTES BRIEF SUMMARY FROM THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2021
Updates via Grummz in Discord Chief Chat:
==== MAIN POINTS ====
► New build drops today! Eligible Backers will get access to Glider Tuning Phase 2. Em-8er Monthly Patrons will get access to Glider Tuning Phase 1 after the end of the stream!
► Em-8er currently runs on Unreal Engine 4.26
► Are we switching to Unreal Engine 5? If so, what does that mean for Em-8er?
==== GENERAL POINTS ====
► Based on everyone’s feedback we tried to make phase 2 gliding a little truer to Firefall.
► We read the feedback for glider phase 1 developer test build demo on the forums, thank you for that!
► Based on your feedback, you told us you wanted to see:
• Acceleration during a dive
• More speed when you pull out of a dive
• The stall mechanism
► There is a cost to gliding now, it consumes a % of your available jet fuel. It can be upgraded to be improved in the final game.
► We’re still ironing out network changes to gliding; especially when turning.
==== FIXED BUGS & CHANGES! ====
► Here’s what we added to the Glider Tuning Phase 2:
• The stall mechanic.
• Camera shake on speed.
• The camera pulls back when you go fast.
• Added camera pulling back when gliding, FOV does not change but is at 110 when you glide.
• "Plasma" "fuel" etc. will all be one universal power system at some point.
• Increased the "swoopyness" of camera while gliding.
==== FUTURE PLANS ====
► NEW CuteSexyRobutts skin will be revealed on June 15th!
► On Grummz’s Twitch streams, you’ll see some explorations of:
• Em-8er in Unreal Engine 5.
• Em-8er’s THMPR encounter.
• Games in general from Grummz’s perspective as a long time game developer.
• The state of the MMO genre.
• Raffles are held during these streams on our Official Discord, be sure you join!
Discord Vanity URL: https://discord.gg/em-8er
==== UNREAL ENGINE 5 DEMO & DISCUSSION ====
((Unreal Engine 5 talk starts at 57:25 on Twitch VOD; lasts about 71 minutes))
(https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1037107506?t=00h57m25s)
► Grummz ran the Unreal Engine 5 Demo on the following specs...
• CPU: Ryzen 12 Core 3.4 Ghz
• GPU: Nvidia 2070 Super
• RAM: 32 GB RAM
• Alt GPU: AMD 6000 Series
► Unreal Engine 5 Recommended Specs:
• CPU: 12 Cores
• GPU: Nvidia 3080 GPU
• RAM: 64 GB
► Also, both a 1080 and 1080 Ti: run the UE 5 demo.
► Multiple people can work in the project at the same time.
► Show how they did the Level of Detail (LOD).
► Grummz is showing the demo in "game mode" and not "edit mode".
► The demo has a stylized character against a photorealistic background.
► Implications for Em-8er in Terraforming. We had questions about how to achieve the terraforming step.
► The demo has the same level but has an overlay on it. It is loading a layer of assets in, either replacing or on top of existing assets without being a full level.
► LUMEN:
• The new lighting system in Unreal Engine 5 is called Lumen.
• Real time global illumination.
• Soft shadows everywhere.
• There's no raytracing in any of this.
• Raytracing may be dead. Lumen doesn't need it.
• So far, Lumen doesn't work with raytracing. All the raytracing features are disabled in this. The lighting you're seeing that would normally be calculated by doing raytracing and real time lighting are being done by Lumen.
• Grummz will be asking the Unreal and Nvidia reps: What is the future of raytracing for Unreal Engine?
• A much better form of anti-aliasing.
► ONE BIG DIFFERENCE:
• Work flows are going to change.
• There are actual polygons that are usually faked with a texture map with "normals" baked into it.
• In an environment (UE 5 demo) where there is all polygons.
► ANIMATIONS:
• Using an advanced kinematic system.
• Match the geometry you're vaulting over.
• Saves time so that game devs only have to rig one animation versus several for one movement.
► BOSS ENCOUNTER:
• Cut scene to show the boss.
• All done in engine which has HUGE implications for faster work flows.
• Using the IK system for the boss attack and character movements.
• This is an official game journalist mode; you can't die.
• Game devs reduced the difficulty for some of their private demos for game journalists in the interest of time.
• These are not normal maps they are polygons on the Boss' etchings.
• About 100 GB for this limited play area.
• Sixteen 4K textures all on one big map for the Boss.
► While you can run this currently on a 1080 and able to run on PS 5, but not everything you see here will be possible on a ship version of an UE 5 game.
► NANITE MESHES:
• The new thing in UE 5 is called nanite meshes.
• Individual meshes are expensive to draw for UE 4.
• The terrain was made with a huge library of FREE photorealistic assets.
• Unable to view the wire frames for polygons.
► Visual quality of single player projects will go up.
► Foliage and trees don't work too well in UE 5 yet.
► UNREAL ENGINE 5 AND EM-8ER
• You won't see us ship a demo with UE 5 yet. It's not yet production ready.
• If we do experiments in UE 5, we'll share them with you as we go along.
• All Em-8er builds will continue to be made in Unreal Engine 4.26.
• We're also not tying our hands. We're not doing things that customize our engine so much that it would make switching to UE 5 impossible or difficult to do.
• We are going to migrate Em-8er to Unreal 5 on a test ONLY basis.
• You'll see us do UE 5 experiments.
• Are we switching to UE 5? Yes because we're not locked into using Lumen or Nanite Meshes.
• The lighting is all real time.
► RANDOM:
• Making terrain like this just got a whole lot easier.
• What do you guys think so far? Any questions about Unreal Engine 5?
• It's incredibly optimized for what it's doing.
• Blueprints look the same.
► VERSE:
• Verse is a scripting language.
• Unsure if it's in the current alpha of the Unreal Engine.
• They used to have a scripting language and then they went full blueprints.
• Em-8er uses a combination of blueprints and C++.
==== Q & A ====
► Question: What about the potential VR for the Heavy Omniframe cockpit?
Grummz: That's difficult. If we did VR, we'd have to support 200 frames per second rendering. We're not even there yet. And there's a lot of limitations too with VR rendering.
So I would say right now, no current plans.
Is it something we should look at? I think so. I'd like to get a VR headset and see what the state of things are now. Back when I tried it as an original Oculus backer, it was really cool but the motion sickness was way too much.
In a heavy omniframe you wouldn't have that motion sickness because you'd have a cockpit frame ostensibly in the UI which helps ground you in VR.
But maaan, going VR in a game that supports this many players and giant battles? That's really tough to do with the number of players that we have on there; unless we really dumb down the graphics.
► Question: What impact would it have for people using older, less powerful systems if you used UE5 compared to the current engine?
Grummz: Probably none because this is not a new engine. This is additional features put on top of a reskinned Unreal 4 Engine. I expect the performance envelope is the same if you're not using Nanite Meshes.
► Question from Grummz: The bottom line is, will Em-8er use Unreal Engine 5? The answer is yes BUT,...
We may not use the advanced features of Unreal Engine 5. We may not use nanite meshes, we may not even use Lumen because we want to keep the performance high. The reason why we think we can do that is because this is basically still Unreal Engine version 4.26 with some extra features slapped onto it.
The big question for us is, what is this going to cost in terms of performance? Can we use Lumen the lighting model, the nanite meshes, some of the animation features, and all this stuff that's been added onto this engine, selectively, so we don't have to go all the way to this mesh-based approach for everything.
So yes, you can expect that Em-8er will eventually transfer over to Unreal Engine 5 because if we want bug fixes and support, it will be Unreal Engine 5 from here on out. But we may not use these advanced features. And I'm very happy that these seem to be optional features.
We can take advantage of some of the other stuff they're doing. Such as the advanced IK stuff; would be very good for our Kaiju. There is some new sound engine stuff and we don't know if we're going to do that yet. That's another thing, not all of our tools support Unreal Engine 5 yet; Wwise, our sound engine, for example.
Are we switching to Unreal Engine 5? Is it right for Em-8er? Yes, I believe it's a natural path for Em-8er.
Don't expect anything to be built with Unreal Engine 5 until AFTER the Kickstarter. We're going to stick with Unreal Engine 4.26 for now. We are going to be doing Unreal Engine 5 tests and we'll be sharing those with you guys as well as our conclusions as we go along.
► Question: Will the assault rifle change and be a little tighter. And is there going to be a way to reduce the spread on the assault rifle?
Grummz: It's actually pretty tight. We've done a lot of stuff to try to improve the feeling of it. I think one thing that throws people off is the camera kicks up as you shoot. A lot of games now they don't move the camera at all; they just leave it locked in. So we might try experimenting with removing the rise of the camera on kicks so it's just... your reticle going up.
As far as the pattern getting tighter, that's gonna be up to your crafting ability and the range of the weapon. So when you craft an assault rifle, if you want less spread you can put that in. You can put in resources so your weapon doesn't kick up as much. That's something we want you to be able to tune in the advanced crafting of the game.
► Question To Community from Grummz: Do you want less RNG in your recoil and more fixed, so you can learn how to compensate for the recoil?
==== QUOTES ====
► “I’m going to try and swear less on this stream. Every time you hear me swear clap your hands with emojis so I will be aware." [Grummz singing] "If Grummz swears and you know it clap your hands!” ~ Grummz
► “Sorry, 4.26. I've been saying 4.6 the whole time. But I didn't swear!” ~ Grummz
==== FUN STUFF! ====
► Fai’s thanks raffle winner! ♦ Andreakos ♦
Updates via Grummz in Discord Chief Chat:
==== MAIN POINTS ====
► New build drops today! Eligible Backers will get access to Glider Tuning Phase 2. Em-8er Monthly Patrons will get access to Glider Tuning Phase 1 after the end of the stream!
► Em-8er currently runs on Unreal Engine 4.26
► Are we switching to Unreal Engine 5? If so, what does that mean for Em-8er?
==== GENERAL POINTS ====
► Based on everyone’s feedback we tried to make phase 2 gliding a little truer to Firefall.
► We read the feedback for glider phase 1 developer test build demo on the forums, thank you for that!
► Based on your feedback, you told us you wanted to see:
• Acceleration during a dive
• More speed when you pull out of a dive
• The stall mechanism
► There is a cost to gliding now, it consumes a % of your available jet fuel. It can be upgraded to be improved in the final game.
► We’re still ironing out network changes to gliding; especially when turning.
==== FIXED BUGS & CHANGES! ====
► Here’s what we added to the Glider Tuning Phase 2:
• The stall mechanic.
• Camera shake on speed.
• The camera pulls back when you go fast.
• Added camera pulling back when gliding, FOV does not change but is at 110 when you glide.
• "Plasma" "fuel" etc. will all be one universal power system at some point.
• Increased the "swoopyness" of camera while gliding.
==== FUTURE PLANS ====
► NEW CuteSexyRobutts skin will be revealed on June 15th!
► On Grummz’s Twitch streams, you’ll see some explorations of:
• Em-8er in Unreal Engine 5.
• Em-8er’s THMPR encounter.
• Games in general from Grummz’s perspective as a long time game developer.
• The state of the MMO genre.
• Raffles are held during these streams on our Official Discord, be sure you join!
Discord Vanity URL: https://discord.gg/em-8er
==== UNREAL ENGINE 5 DEMO & DISCUSSION ====
((Unreal Engine 5 talk starts at 57:25 on Twitch VOD; lasts about 71 minutes))
(https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1037107506?t=00h57m25s)
► Grummz ran the Unreal Engine 5 Demo on the following specs...
• CPU: Ryzen 12 Core 3.4 Ghz
• GPU: Nvidia 2070 Super
• RAM: 32 GB RAM
• Alt GPU: AMD 6000 Series
► Unreal Engine 5 Recommended Specs:
• CPU: 12 Cores
• GPU: Nvidia 3080 GPU
• RAM: 64 GB
► Also, both a 1080 and 1080 Ti: run the UE 5 demo.
► Multiple people can work in the project at the same time.
► Show how they did the Level of Detail (LOD).
► Grummz is showing the demo in "game mode" and not "edit mode".
► The demo has a stylized character against a photorealistic background.
► Implications for Em-8er in Terraforming. We had questions about how to achieve the terraforming step.
► The demo has the same level but has an overlay on it. It is loading a layer of assets in, either replacing or on top of existing assets without being a full level.
► LUMEN:
• The new lighting system in Unreal Engine 5 is called Lumen.
• Real time global illumination.
• Soft shadows everywhere.
• There's no raytracing in any of this.
• Raytracing may be dead. Lumen doesn't need it.
• So far, Lumen doesn't work with raytracing. All the raytracing features are disabled in this. The lighting you're seeing that would normally be calculated by doing raytracing and real time lighting are being done by Lumen.
• Grummz will be asking the Unreal and Nvidia reps: What is the future of raytracing for Unreal Engine?
• A much better form of anti-aliasing.
► ONE BIG DIFFERENCE:
• Work flows are going to change.
• There are actual polygons that are usually faked with a texture map with "normals" baked into it.
• In an environment (UE 5 demo) where there is all polygons.
► ANIMATIONS:
• Using an advanced kinematic system.
• Match the geometry you're vaulting over.
• Saves time so that game devs only have to rig one animation versus several for one movement.
► BOSS ENCOUNTER:
• Cut scene to show the boss.
• All done in engine which has HUGE implications for faster work flows.
• Using the IK system for the boss attack and character movements.
• This is an official game journalist mode; you can't die.
• Game devs reduced the difficulty for some of their private demos for game journalists in the interest of time.
• These are not normal maps they are polygons on the Boss' etchings.
• About 100 GB for this limited play area.
• Sixteen 4K textures all on one big map for the Boss.
► While you can run this currently on a 1080 and able to run on PS 5, but not everything you see here will be possible on a ship version of an UE 5 game.
► NANITE MESHES:
• The new thing in UE 5 is called nanite meshes.
• Individual meshes are expensive to draw for UE 4.
• The terrain was made with a huge library of FREE photorealistic assets.
• Unable to view the wire frames for polygons.
► Visual quality of single player projects will go up.
► Foliage and trees don't work too well in UE 5 yet.
► UNREAL ENGINE 5 AND EM-8ER
• You won't see us ship a demo with UE 5 yet. It's not yet production ready.
• If we do experiments in UE 5, we'll share them with you as we go along.
• All Em-8er builds will continue to be made in Unreal Engine 4.26.
• We're also not tying our hands. We're not doing things that customize our engine so much that it would make switching to UE 5 impossible or difficult to do.
• We are going to migrate Em-8er to Unreal 5 on a test ONLY basis.
• You'll see us do UE 5 experiments.
• Are we switching to UE 5? Yes because we're not locked into using Lumen or Nanite Meshes.
• The lighting is all real time.
► RANDOM:
• Making terrain like this just got a whole lot easier.
• What do you guys think so far? Any questions about Unreal Engine 5?
• It's incredibly optimized for what it's doing.
• Blueprints look the same.
► VERSE:
• Verse is a scripting language.
• Unsure if it's in the current alpha of the Unreal Engine.
• They used to have a scripting language and then they went full blueprints.
• Em-8er uses a combination of blueprints and C++.
==== Q & A ====
► Question: What about the potential VR for the Heavy Omniframe cockpit?
Grummz: That's difficult. If we did VR, we'd have to support 200 frames per second rendering. We're not even there yet. And there's a lot of limitations too with VR rendering.
So I would say right now, no current plans.
Is it something we should look at? I think so. I'd like to get a VR headset and see what the state of things are now. Back when I tried it as an original Oculus backer, it was really cool but the motion sickness was way too much.
In a heavy omniframe you wouldn't have that motion sickness because you'd have a cockpit frame ostensibly in the UI which helps ground you in VR.
But maaan, going VR in a game that supports this many players and giant battles? That's really tough to do with the number of players that we have on there; unless we really dumb down the graphics.
► Question: What impact would it have for people using older, less powerful systems if you used UE5 compared to the current engine?
Grummz: Probably none because this is not a new engine. This is additional features put on top of a reskinned Unreal 4 Engine. I expect the performance envelope is the same if you're not using Nanite Meshes.
► Question from Grummz: The bottom line is, will Em-8er use Unreal Engine 5? The answer is yes BUT,...
We may not use the advanced features of Unreal Engine 5. We may not use nanite meshes, we may not even use Lumen because we want to keep the performance high. The reason why we think we can do that is because this is basically still Unreal Engine version 4.26 with some extra features slapped onto it.
The big question for us is, what is this going to cost in terms of performance? Can we use Lumen the lighting model, the nanite meshes, some of the animation features, and all this stuff that's been added onto this engine, selectively, so we don't have to go all the way to this mesh-based approach for everything.
So yes, you can expect that Em-8er will eventually transfer over to Unreal Engine 5 because if we want bug fixes and support, it will be Unreal Engine 5 from here on out. But we may not use these advanced features. And I'm very happy that these seem to be optional features.
We can take advantage of some of the other stuff they're doing. Such as the advanced IK stuff; would be very good for our Kaiju. There is some new sound engine stuff and we don't know if we're going to do that yet. That's another thing, not all of our tools support Unreal Engine 5 yet; Wwise, our sound engine, for example.
Are we switching to Unreal Engine 5? Is it right for Em-8er? Yes, I believe it's a natural path for Em-8er.
Don't expect anything to be built with Unreal Engine 5 until AFTER the Kickstarter. We're going to stick with Unreal Engine 4.26 for now. We are going to be doing Unreal Engine 5 tests and we'll be sharing those with you guys as well as our conclusions as we go along.
► Question: Will the assault rifle change and be a little tighter. And is there going to be a way to reduce the spread on the assault rifle?
Grummz: It's actually pretty tight. We've done a lot of stuff to try to improve the feeling of it. I think one thing that throws people off is the camera kicks up as you shoot. A lot of games now they don't move the camera at all; they just leave it locked in. So we might try experimenting with removing the rise of the camera on kicks so it's just... your reticle going up.
As far as the pattern getting tighter, that's gonna be up to your crafting ability and the range of the weapon. So when you craft an assault rifle, if you want less spread you can put that in. You can put in resources so your weapon doesn't kick up as much. That's something we want you to be able to tune in the advanced crafting of the game.
► Question To Community from Grummz: Do you want less RNG in your recoil and more fixed, so you can learn how to compensate for the recoil?
==== QUOTES ====
► “I’m going to try and swear less on this stream. Every time you hear me swear clap your hands with emojis so I will be aware." [Grummz singing] "If Grummz swears and you know it clap your hands!” ~ Grummz
► “Sorry, 4.26. I've been saying 4.6 the whole time. But I didn't swear!” ~ Grummz
==== FUN STUFF! ====
► Fai’s thanks raffle winner! ♦ Andreakos ♦
