"NO ZERO DAYS"

[Faeryl]

DATE: 28-APR-2023

300? Those are rookie numbers. Here are 800 kneebiters with full lumen lighting (UE5 global illumination).

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1101519126662492311/2023-04-28_16-40-21.mp4

Discussed using UE5 new crowd simulation layer to drive swarmer AI.

Got new IK bones for the female weapons done. Male next.

Finalized skin and have it in artists hands for next month.

Started design on a new creature needed for encounters.

Jedi Survivor came out. Expect me to be playing today and tomorrow

*Note, this number of kneebiters is a stress test. This does NOT mean that we will have this many in the game.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 29-APR-2023

Today's Saturday was a gaming day. Sorry, not sorry.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 30-APR-2023
There was no post for this past Sunday.
Based on previous Sundays they are usually... "A day of rest."

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 02-MAY-2023

Apologies for not posting but Sunday was rest day and Monday we went over the mass entity system in UE5 to simulate large crowds of swarmers.

Unfortunately mass is experimental and has two problems. The first is that it is currently not networked and only works for single player. The second is that the mass system only works well in straight lines and on grids...good for city crowds but not for swarmers.

Instead, we decided to pause on the AI aspect and concentrate on finishing our experiments in efficient rendering of many many swarmers.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 03-MAY-2023

3700 at 40fps...Obviously we don't need this many, just pushing it to see what is possible:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1103417536390901890/2023-05-03_22-23-40.mp4

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 04-MAY-2023

testing interactions between gameplay tags in gameplay ability system, mapping out potential gameplay tag hierarchy for character states. Basically we are looking at the complex interactions between our jetpacks, gliding, abilities and weapons and finding a cleaner way to modularize them to reduce complexity as we add new features.

Researched more performance options for Swamers. Looking for a way to add AI to a lot of units without losing all our performance gains from rendering. Also looking at using Niagara and other ways to more efficiently render swarmers.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 05-MAY-2023

Lots of questions about how we are going to handle AI and networking for large numbers of creatures. Lots of profiling of the code we have to see what we can glean.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 07-MAY-2023

Sat: Worked with concept artist on a Kaiju.

And today, Sunday, is rest day.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 08-MAY-2023

R&D on swarmers for invasions. Using Niagara particle effects we are able to get more on screen at 100-120fps, around 5000. We tried using the GPU instead of the CPU for this but they don't collide if off camera. Looks like we will be CPU dependent on this technique.

Now we have to study the limitations and benefits of each technique we implemented and decide what is best for Em-8ER. Networking will be a huge challenge with a large number of entities, so we are still unsure how many we will be able to have in the final product, but its important for design to understand what we have to work with:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1105143981806989402/2023-05-08_16-42-02.mp4

Also discussed how we will make jetpacks and abilities more data driven, and more modular. Experiments about to start in a sandbox with the base character. The reason we are looking into doing this is because the current demo is very complex to extend with additional abilities or crafted tuned abilities. We want to find a simpler and more human readable way to implement abilities and crafting of modules for movement.

We also started training our junior animator on Unreal and, especially. animation transfer between characters using UE5's IK retargetting system.

All of this work will determine how big we can make our thumper encounters, and how big we can make our invasions.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 09-MAY-2023

GPU camera issues solved. Here are...well...WAY too many swarmer to ever be realistic in final game. Next step is figuring out if we can leverage this technique for the actual swarmers. Doing a lot of R&D into large numbers of mobs but we may not choose this technique in the end if we can't network them or get their AI to run well.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...57347696398376/2023-05-09_18-55-49_-_Trim.mp4

More work on moving jetpacks over to our new animations system as well. Set up the movement component and omniframe abstract classes, moved over the jetpacking physics code, set up interfaces for ability BP calls. Just the first prep step to integration with the new movement code.

As for Replit and A-Luna, after seeking help, it turns out deployments are still pretty buggy on Replit. So I used the "always-on" feature to enable A-Luna to run non-hosted. But she should be up and running now. Keep an eye on her!

The swamers now track terrain on GPU and also space each other out so they don't overlap.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 10-MAY-2023

Reviewed new skin art for this month. Also went over Human skeleton review for male. Fairly light day today. Lots of RL interruptions.

Got in touch with the engineer at Replit about their deployments. Turns out we helped them find a bug and we were able to have them fix it and push A-Luna to a fully hosted server.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 11-MAY-2023

Various RnD in flocking, vector and flow maps for swarmer behaviors. Goal is to get them flowing up and around walls.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 13-MAY-2023

Jetpack refactoring ongoing. Harry has a new idea for making it more modular. Also retargetting practice continues with animator.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 14-MAY-2023

Sunday is Mother’s Day. Call your mom!

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 15-MAY-2023

Simulating the kneebiters as particles has challenges. How do they avoid obstacles? We can't do traditonal pathfinding for them. One way is to use a proximity grid on the GPU, which is what this experiment does with 50,000 swarmers, which is demonstrated here as they avoid an invisible obstacle.

Again, I really want to emphasize we won't have this many in the game. We are maxing performance for a much, much smaller number that will be in the game. Also, there is no guarantee we can solve all the problems to use technology like this in an actual encounter. But if we can use it to get high perf for smaller swarmer encounters, then invasions will be much more lively even at a fraction of these!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1107779613448478812/2023-05-15_19-08-37.mp4

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 16-MAY-2023

So now the problem is "can they climb walls?"...can we use a type of distance field that will work at far distances and off camera and not be view dependent? Seems there are solutions to this. Here is a test case with simple spheres rolling and sticking to surfaces that is the first step in solving the next problem.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1108064695354662912/2023-05-16_18-10-25.mp4

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 18-MAY-2023

Update! Works continues to refactor the movement code from our demo into our new Lyra animation system. The code is migrated and compiling and now we need to feed it the initial jetpack and glider properties to get the new character moving! Also, we now have mesh distance fields working for obstacle avoidance in swarming. More R&D is still needed:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1108465863826354236/2023-05-17_20-45-44.mp4

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 19-MAY-2023

It's Friday! Let's party with Disco Debug Vectors! Yep, those are swarmer flow directions!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1109205895105220628/2023-05-19_21-45-09.mp4

Jetpacks are WORKING again. Harry now moving to adjust the weight of character and move onto other movement modes![/QUOTE]

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 20-MAY-2023

Bit of a slow weekend, here is some work for getting the kneebiters to run over obstacles.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1082548393324326922/1109691814144913459/Over_Obstacles.mp4

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 21-MAY-2023

Sunday is rest day.