"NO ZERO DAYS"

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Faeryl

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Kaiju Slayer
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#41
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

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#44
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.
 
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Faeryl

Omni Ace
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Jul 26, 2016
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#46
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

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Kaiju Slayer
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#49
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

Omni Ace
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Jul 26, 2016
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#50
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

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Kaiju Slayer
Jul 26, 2016
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#51
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.
 
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Faeryl

Omni Ace
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Kaiju Slayer
Jul 26, 2016
901
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#55
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

Omni Ace
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Kaiju Slayer
Jul 26, 2016
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#56
Likes: Pandagnome

Faeryl

Omni Ace
Staff member
Community Manager
Kaiju Slayer
Jul 26, 2016
901
2,604
93
Planet Earth, USA, East Coast
discord.gg
#57
Likes: Pandagnome

Faeryl

Omni Ace
Staff member
Community Manager
Kaiju Slayer
Jul 26, 2016
901
2,604
93
Planet Earth, USA, East Coast
discord.gg
#58
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