yeah my advisor stresses the shit out of this for me
#virtual-reality
winged shale
it's why I'm taking perception and neuroscience classes as a graduate computer graphics student
clever sky
Nice.
I took cognitive science in uni. Never really helped my career directly...
until now!
But even so, I've had to keep my own knowledge up to date - the stuff I learnt in uni only got me started.
Anyway, take it easy. cya later
winged shale
oh I've seen Walkabout
that's what I thought you were talking about
or rather how I thought your thing worked
clever sky
Yeah, I can do walk about with my system too.
But the difference is I've slaved the turning to my hand
which makes it much more flexible
winged shale
I see
clever sky
The analogy is that you can move a big curtain around before your face without inducing vection.
clever sky
Ciao
winged shale
add me as a friend
clever sky
Done
clever sky
So... how many of you have set chaperone to developer mode?
i.e. no chaperone, just floor line
dry fjord
tried it
forgot to turn it back on and let my friend use it for a day
he had a harrowing experience
I turned off the floor line too
this is just after you and I tried making our own cages 😉
pearl tangle
i have chaperone gone completely
well at work anyway. Normally just set it to standing mode only and you just have the circle but then go into the config and set the alpha to zero on it
dry fjord
I do roomscale so it's pretty necessary
even with the cage it's easy to go out of bounds
pearl tangle
yeah depends what you are building
when you are working on 1 for ages you kinda start to learn when you are going to nut yourself on the corner of the desk hah
also im doing event based things so we build physical props to match the virtual space
clever sky
Ah cool
@ the event base thing with physical props
I've still got my custom chaperone bounds... and got them working beautifully.
Found that they actually, counter-intuitively, enhance presence.
Because when they turn up, and you've got a virtual object inside the bounds
it actually feel like that thing is in the room with you.
My custom bounds are occludable.
Unlike SteamVR's normal chaperone, which ends up screwing with your depth perception
Funnily enough, works ok with the actual chaperone bounds too. It's like a double boundary
dry fjord
still, I wish it worked in packaged builds
I made one that appears faintly when you get near then turns FUCK OFF RED when you get too close
pearl tangle
yeah that was the main problem showing the circle became really annoying so was handy to turn it right off. definitely some better ways to do the chaperone with dynamic 3D objects rather than the steam bounds
clever sky
I made a failover with the chaperone so it just defaults to 100 x 100 and lets you set the actual scale in menu
So now I can have my custom chaperone when packaged!
Albeit with an extra bit of work.
A lot of the benefits I implemented are still functioning even when the boundary scale is wrong
Hopefully epic sees it and realizes they need to fix that shit.
clever sky
The failure is in the SteamVRChaperone component
Failing to init properly when packaged
plush sky
Yeah that's quite a problem, there should be an option to include in some way.
digital vault
Question: How do you handle Output (like Print Screen) in VR Preview? The Stuff is always out of FOV and i just can find it in the Output Log. Another stupid thing is, that the Editor minimize if you start VR Preview... Using still 4.13.1
clever sky
@digital vault click on filter and type in Print String (?)
Otherwise have it spam per tick
and you'll see it come down as it ticks.
Otherwise if it's a trace, turn on the debug
digital vault
Ye the tick isn't an good option.... I don't like the "flow". Turn VR Preview On, Switch back to Editor, find Output Log, VR Action,... Maybe i find an option to move the print string (text render isn't an real solution for me).
clever sky
Well, you're eliminating all the viable work arounds!
So, if you do that, you're gonna be stuck!
😛
digital vault
hm...
clever sky
What's wrong with text render?
Maybe try reporting it to a widget that you put in front of your face?
digital vault
Ye that could be an option... I often use different Prints in different colors to see a specific flow... this works fine (and fast) on 2D... but sadly not in VR.... Oh maybe i could get a second camera? As 2D camera? i'll play around
clever sky
Text render is slow in VR?
mighty carbon
What's the vertical size of the active volume for Constellation ?
clever sky
It's a 90 degree FOV camera
and it gets jittery about 5 meters out
4 to 5 meters
Is that what you meant?
mighty carbon
Like, if I raise my hands all that way up, will tracking be lost?
clever sky
That depends entirely on how you've positioned your camera
Uh... If you go and download one of the sexy Rift demos... Vieviev, there's a function in there that lets you see the cone of tracking.
mighty carbon
If it has 90 degree fov and only 4 meter out, I don't think it's possible to cover space from the floor all the way up to where hands end (when raised) :(
I don't have Rift yet. Just something I wanted to learn ahead of time
Now with Vive support :)
clever sky
yep
mighty carbon
Too bad they haven't expanded their lineup
When do you folks think MS will reveal specs for its VR hardware?
clever sky
noot sure. bout the same time real ppl get their hands on it
mighty carbon
So it's not even ready yet?
mighty carbon
I see.. So it could be just a PR move and actual HMD might be crappy
winged shale
...WOW asynchronous reprojection in SteamVR
wicked oak
how does it compare against Oculus?
i dont have time to test, im doing the build for tomorrow
winged shale
it's basically the same
it seems to be exactly the same algorithm
it's obviously not ASW
but that's a different tech
winged shale
I could complain about how late it was as a feature but it's just so nice to finally have it for those little times when your computer poops out
wicked oak
becouse my game hovers around 95 fps, and steamVR just put it back to 45
winged shale
why 95?
wicked oak
unlocked fps
winged shale
roight
wicked oak
its more or less where it is
winged shale
custom engine features? why did you unlock it?
wicked oak
with a few enemies around and FX, it can go to around 70-80
default
but 70-80 for those times is fine in oculus
it just timewarps it
little change from 90
people dont notice
people start to notice lagging when it goes to sub 50
steamVR just put you at 45
where your controllers have noticeable judder
winged shale
yeah, but I thought the SteamVR plugin handled negotiations of starting rendering of next frame
wicked oak
in a few days ill plug my Vive back and test
winged shale
does it really just run out of phase?!
wicked oak
right now im fixing some late bugs for show, and testing Nvidia 4.13 build
winged shale
because I've noticed the judder of controllers in UE4
junior prism
Yeah my controllers judder too
wicked oak
becouse that nvidia 4.13 build has:
multires
single pass stereo
lens matched shading
VR SLI
the SLI part is useless on me, but the rest of things are very nice
i want to at least show a really technically solid game at the expo
check this
top one is the new interface
bottom was the old one
winged shale
noice
clever sky
Played battle dome again after someone mentioned it last night.
winged shale
much better UI
wicked oak
big buttons made for blind people are good on VR
winged shale
ahaha
clever sky
It's umm... different. Got bots now.
wicked oak
are made with blender and rendered
winged shale
yeah, forward MSAA helps so much, can't wait for stable 14.0
wicked oak
becouse i dont know how to do graphics properly in 2d
clever sky
But still much the same. Their locomotion options all suck though 😛
wicked oak
hell yes, 4.14 forward MSAA is glorious
winged shale
✔
wicked oak
i made them on blender, rendered them with Cycles
and then imported the .png to the engine
to use a sprite
winged shale
ohhhh nice
leaden jackal
Have there been any improvements in 4.13 or 4.14 for LOD distances being more consistant between VR and non-VR?
winged shale
that's a great way to generate shapes for sprites
wicked oak
not the first time i do things like that, the Achivements of Deathwave are like that
all of them are the same blender file, just switching the mesh for the icon
winged shale
nice, efficient
wicked oak
becouse i cant draw lol
winged shale
you can really automate that
wicked oak
thats the whole idea
the blender file has the scene set up
thats why you can see the reflections be exactly the same in each image
winged shale
if you can't draw, an alternative to making models is using a vector graphics program like Inkscape
also easily parameterizable
wicked oak
definitely should get that
winged shale
I adore Inkscape
winged shale
it's also OS
hehehe
I know that feeling
knowing a toolset so well that you use it for everything
soon I'll be writing my dissertation in Maya
😉
clever sky
Hey man. I bet I could model architectural way faster than you 😛
winged shale
mos def
clever sky
Mainly because I have an interior design background.
winged shale
at least it's not Rhino, and it actually supports some OK vertex generation
I've worked with so many architects that insist on using Rhino for VR model generation
clever sky
Haha. D:
winged shale
eventually I just stonewalled them into learning vector modeling with Maya
clever sky
Vector modelling?
winged shale
like, NO your fucking toaster SHOULD NOT REDUCE ME TO 20FPS
clever sky
Oh, Rhino is all nurbs?
wicked oak
now that its for indies
winged shale
yes
clever sky
heh
wicked oak
(looks at the nearly useless blender nurbs)
winged shale
and "easier"
winged shale
ackackack
clever sky
Because he bought it before he hired me.
wicked oak
u know what, i love that the ue4 nvidia branch has all this fancy stuff
clever sky
Like... they don't do actual product manufacturing work, just design concepting that then gets farmed out overseas to manufacture.
wicked oak
yet no documentation file that says what each thing does
winged shale
I wish they would just include it in the damn engine already
wicked oak
at least a commandline list or something
winged shale
some kind of card-agnostic API wrapper
I don't want to do NV-only for my game
don't want to be that guy
clever sky
Seriously Nvidia.
winged shale
even though I love NV and I worked there, and I bleed green like all the others
tawdry dragon
If you guys think Rhino and sketchup produces bad meshes when polygonized... I dare you to get a 85k object large step file ready for Real time 😃
wicked oak
my demo is on a nvidia laptop
clever sky
It just lacks critical features like... UV mapping.
tawdry dragon
We once optimized an entire jet engine... All parts
wicked oak
so im alright doing nvidia specific optimization for the show
its just that amd has nothing like that
nvidia has their own fancy tech branch
and amd doesnt
they just have that SDK that no one uses
wicked oak
dice is super friends with amd
but amd could try to do like nvidia, a vr branch of ue4
clever sky
Well someone needs to be.
tawdry dragon
If you're doing anything but simple objects, you really cant get around doing proper vertex modeling, smoothing groups, uvs and triangulation 😃
wicked oak
with both branches doing similar things, maybe Epic can go and do an abstraction
over both vr optimization sdks
wicked oak
right now, they cant do shit against nvidia for VR
see the trend, almost all the UE4 VR games on steam are implementing that nvidia fancybranch
Raw Data, and Pool Nation both use that branch
clever sky
Is it hard to implement?
wicked oak
no
clever sky
Can you do it at the end?
wicked oak
?
tawdry dragon
Hans't AMD been out of the game for developers for a long time?
wicked oak
the only thing you have to do, its to download the VRWORks branch from github
compile it
and package your game with it
clever sky
Ah... what about when UE4 updates?
junior prism
4.14 has the forward rendering though
clever sky
Still compatible or have to wait for update?
junior prism
Surely that's a better option than the Nvidia branch?
wicked oak
depends
clever sky
Depends on what you've done with your game
junior prism
Isn't foward more performant?
wicked oak
in my game, Forward cant be done yet, too many drawcalls
depends
if your game has several dynamic lights, and lots of drawcalls
nope
if your game is using almost everything on baked light, and not that many drawcalls
forward will be faster
tawdry dragon
Meshes and materials if I'm not mistaken
clever sky
So every unique mesh and material is a draw call?
tawdry dragon
as in, meshes with multiple materials are also multiple draw calls
As far as my basic understanding goes, yes
but I'm sure somebody will come along and prove me wrong 😃
wicked oak
meshes, materials, and a few extra stuffs
clever sky
What if I reuse materials across multiple different meshes?
wicked oak
nope, still several drawcalls
clever sky
Per mesh?
tawdry dragon
yeah, still a new mesh
wicked oak
each static mesh is 1 drawcall per material
even if its the same mesh, but repeated
if you want to improve that, you gotta merge meshes
clever sky
Instanced meshes as well?
wicked oak
or go HLOD
instanced meshes is 1 drawcall per material
the number of meshes is irrelevant
100 or 500
1 drawcalls
clever sky
Mmm
wicked oak
that is the whole point of instanced meshes
clever sky
Nice
wicked oak
and no, you cant put every mesh of the map in instanced
believe me ive done it FOR SCIENCE
clever sky
Haha
What if you have a bunch of cubes and just voxelize a game? Except all the cubes are the same instance of the cube?
tawdry dragon
well, you would still get to use different materials/colors
clever sky
Less a trick question and more a - I wonder if this will apply to the game I've been thinking of.
clever sky
Fair call.
tawdry dragon
But that would still not support using different materials would it?
clever sky
Parameterize them?
wicked oak
the texture is a map with all the textures
like minecraft
so then you just use the UV
clever sky
Ah
clever sky
Nice
tawdry dragon
ohh, so that wouldnt cost you another draw call?
wicked oak
yeah
tawdry dragon
but Zaptruder.... that would require you do some UV work 😉
wicked oak
yeah, and custom geometry
clever sky
Well, I've been learning Maya
wicked oak
i did it for a shitty custom engine
making a minecraft clone in opengl is a GREAT learning excersise
just opengl plus SDL for windowing
not even physics engine
clever sky
But a couple months of Maya experience doesn't beat a few years of Sketchup experience D:
tawdry dragon
if you're going into the rabidhole that is game art, a real polygon modeller is neccesarry
clever sky
No doubt.
tawdry dragon
I havent done any high end game art in years, and there are so many problems/issues you need to know when doing your modelling
such as how smoothing groups behave when baking normals etc.
it's a goddamn circus I tell you
clever sky
Yeah, I'm just going to stay away from doing high end game art.
Use my design skills on strong art fundamentals!
wicked oak
have fun
i dont know how to enable the extra stuff yet
but the multires is hella good
+30% performance for free
pixel shader performance
so you can use it to keep the same perf, but increase the resolution
tawdry dragon
hmm... I have never done any of this compiling, is there an tutorial on how to get started?
tawdry dragon
Hmm... associating my epic user with my github... Cant seem to find the place where I enter my github account
nwm.... found it
Gonna try and do a build and see how my project runs in 4.13 VRworks
Having some troubles hitting smooth 90 fps on a GTX1070
wicked oak
remember, you gotta enable the fancy shit
to enable multires
is vr.MultiResRendering 2
there is also a 3, but that one is too aggresive
the 2 is basically invisible
are you pixel bound or geometry bound?
if you do stat rhi, what are your polygons and drawcalls?
junior prism
So what extra shit is there to add?
Also, is the new shit nvidia card exclusive? :/
junior prism
Arghhhhh
tawdry dragon
junior prism
That's unfortunate 😦
tawdry dragon
thats the stat rhi on my own pc, no VR and a GTX970
tawdry dragon
yes
tawdry dragon
Not possible im afraid. We're doing some industrial demo for a client using their crazy ass step files
wicked oak
im at 1.5 million polys, but 1300 drawcalls
you have more polygons that pixesl
you can lod that effectively
use instalod or simplygon
tawdry dragon
Optimizing the model is the next step if the client likes what they're seeing 😃
wicked oak
wich is automatic
junior prism
So what are people doing to get around the fact it's Nvidia card exclusive?
wicked oak
nothing
tawdry dragon
Trust me on this one, the mesh of the models are so bad that if you try to do any automatic optimization, it will explode
wicked oak
becouse 70-80% of the market is nvidia
alright
this stuff is nvidia only
but it doesnt harm amd
it just doesnt work
if you do a multires command on amd
it does nothing
junior prism
Oh alright, it's no so bad then
tawdry dragon
Ohh well, we get 90 fps using the same project with the forward renderer in 4.14, which should be out by the time this project starts up for real 😃
junior prism
So what are the secret commands we can use? :/
wicked oak
yeah, forward is very good with low drawcalls
not for me 😦
1300 drawcalls too extreme
tawdry dragon
luckily our projects are so small scale that I dont have to do so much worrying about doing crazy optimizations
wicked oak
but then i have maps like this
that is a absolute shit ton of meshes
becouse that
is infinity blade assets
tawdry dragon
ohh, I was about to say you could do some merging inside a DCCP app and save draw calls
wicked oak
im on it
im merging inside unreal at the moment
but its still slow
there is a crapload of meshes there
im talking about 7 thousand
well, thats after optimization
it was around 10 thousand
before some basic optimization, a general vista could go to 5 million polygons and 3k drawcalls
and no, i cant use hierarchical lod
it crashes
junior prism
Why not use Simplygon's mesh combination feature or the feature that's built into the engine?
wicked oak
too much for it
im already using that
but manually
getting groups of meshes and merging them
that improved it
ill have it on the showfloor
but it has a WIP sticker on it
and a warning
becouse it runs at around 60-70 fps
good that i have spacewarp
i dont do art well, but i do tech well
at least i can show a game rock solid there
lots of indies doing VR games tend to forget about good tech and performance
and end up lagging
tawdry dragon
Hmm, my impression was the other way around. Its usually the tech guys doing the demos but forgetting the showmanship part
wicked oak
when a sony executive of something tech related tried it, he said it was the best tech of all the Vr games in barcelona
from all the indie demos
he was quite happy with how it worked
mighty carbon
Palmer would approve !
wicked oak
but its a simple game with non consistent art
becouse its made from ifinity blade meshes and other packs
clever sky
Marketplace art!
You know what UE needs?
It needs design specs for marketplace art.
assets
wicked oak
tends to happen when i got no artist in the team
tawdry dragon
I guess I'm just damaged from my line of work, where the client cant tell you anything unless you're doing final renders..
clever sky
Make stuff for marketplace, and it should conform to technical specs.
wicked oak
in the general artist sense, concept and stuff
isnt there some of that already?
marketplace stuff has to be aproved
clever sky
Ah yeah
tawdry dragon
It's not really easy setting up technical specs for 3d assets
clever sky
Makes sense. Wouldn't want crappy assets that end up making their way into consumer games
associated with engine.
wicked oak
yeah, definitely not easy
clever sky
into many consumer games
wicked oak
its not the same for a first person game than a 3rd person one
tawdry dragon
because the requirements could be very different depending on how you're gonna use the asset
wicked oak
at least modular kits tend to be consistent
clever sky
True that.
tawdry dragon
VR actually sets up even bigger requirements for objects
clever sky
But maybe then it should have something in the asset store that says - optimized for;
optimized for first person, small scale gameplay.
tawdry dragon
because they have to be optimized, but also have to hold up to close scrutiny
wicked oak
yup
gotta LOD that
becouse VR needs low drawcalls
and anyway, you cant see shit from afar
wicked oak
hierarchical LOd
tawdry dragon
you could texture atlas stuff
wicked oak
the "Top Down Scifi " pack is one of the best value packs tere are
clever sky
What does hierarchical LOD mean?
wicked oak
its not too high res, but its very low poly, looks good, and its all in 1 material
its a engine feature
it does hierarchical lods
XD
clever sky
😛
wicked oak
basically, it makes it so from far enough
it merges the meshes
imagine a whole building
clever sky
Ah
wicked oak
amde from modular pieces
clever sky
Does it do this on the fly?
wicked oak
from close, the wall will be all the individual pieces
but if you get far, it will eventually make the whole building 1 mesh
its a engine feature
works with sympligon best, but also with instalod
its slow
very, VERY slow
clever sky
Oh, so it's like baking light.
wicked oak
slower
clever sky
Gotta preprocess it
wicked oak
yeah, it does preprocess
it generates mesh groups
and then it generates more mesh grous that include the ones before
in kind of a tree
clever sky
Yeah, I can see that.
wicked oak
when you are far enough, it stops rendering the individual meshes/chunk, and only renders the big chunk wich is everything together
it also uses absolutely massive amoutn of memory
in one of my maps
its 3 gb
clever sky
Bloody hell. It's like the dark arts of modern game development are opening to me 😄
clever sky
Dayum
clever sky
Well, makes sense really...
wicked oak
becouse it has to bake light for every LOD level
yeah
its merging the textures
into an atlas
for the group of meshes
clever sky
Yep.
wicked oak
obviously, it works FAR better if you already have them atlassed
clever sky
All so it can cut down draw calls.
wicked oak
its the whole point of it
clever sky
I thought DX12 was supposed to be draw call magic
Of course this is only what I heard back before I got into game dev
wicked oak
yes
it is
the whole point of DX12/vulkan is to make the driver much lighter
if well used, it will make drawcalls far cheaper
tawdry dragon
Give us all the good stuff, for free and no work! 😃
clever sky
I'm happiest when the 'work' required is clicking check boxes! 😛
Like multi-res
Want multi-res yes/no? Yes.
tawdry dragon
well, it does require you to build the source your self 😛
tawdry dragon
true that. I am by no means a developer, but lots of tools that I come by is like "Yeah... Just compile this obscure thingy and then import it and you're good to go"
clever sky
Shit yeah. The core of my work is built on top of someone else's plugin.
tawdry dragon
Learning Python had a lot of those moments... Ohhh you want PySide or PyQT? Here are some crazy obscure guides that only old time developers know how to do
clever sky
Well... I mean, my work adds super value, but it wouldn't function without that other work done.
winged shale
oh yeah @dry fjord and others that were interested last night, here's a video of my zero-g movement feature in Iron Rain, bear with the development art and other unfinished features (really the movement scheme isn't done yet, but this is really fun to glide around in) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rul5eB5yP6g
clever sky
Yeah, I think we were talking last night about Battledome
winged shale
yup
winged shale
I heard of that in the Vive reddit, haven't tried it. fun?
clever sky
And no shits given to motion sickness caused.
tawdry dragon
@winged shale thats pretty cool! Was it hard to do?
winged shale
yes.
winged shale
besides moving the fingers and doing the logic to figure out a grab, the movement was absurdly complicated
because you can collide with the environment
clever sky
He talked to anti-damage 😛
winged shale
actually this is before antidamage's fixes
clever sky
Oh nice.
tawdry dragon
BP? C++?
wicked oak
does it use extra software?
winged shale
nope
clever sky
I thought you said that was jittering
winged shale
it's my own
clever sky
Looks ok to me?
winged shale
no judder happens with controller models at 45Hz
winged shale
I don't a. hit 45Hz ever anymore after fixing the performance
b. show controller models when hands in range
also the IK is super broken
it's a combo
tawdry dragon
You programmers be crazy
junior prism
@winged shale Hey, that's pretty good
winged shale
I've got this absurd AnimBP that goes from Ref-pose to actual
clever sky
The IK stuff for sure.
wicked oak
i would buy it
clever sky
Actually, I want the Unity IK solution. Looks bloody amazing.
tawdry dragon
You could always go unity 😉
clever sky
Nah, it's a marketplace asset.
tawdry dragon
You even get the Lab forward renderer
winged shale
it does IK on hands, then it sets the rotations of each finger bone based on a crazy 1000-line logic set for figuring out how grabbing works in the character
junior prism
So that's why you want to do what @dry fjord taught me
where you do the hands seperately from the character 😛
winged shale
the really complicated part is the movement by grab-draggin on the world
clever sky
Final IK is the Unity one
winged shale
I've got a lot of optimization to do on the anim BP
wicked oak
but how exactly you do the IK on the hands?
ive been doing it myself and having problems
also with the head
junior prism
Using the Allright Rig
wicked oak
oh
junior prism
Yeah the way @dry fjord and I came up with
was seperate hand mesh and two bone IK to the wrist to the shoulder
wicked oak
how are you setting the torso position?
winged shale
@wicked oak I do two-bone, then I rotate the hand, and I have attached to each controller model a component that represents the offset for the hand, and I pass its transform into the animBP
oh that is so complicated
first I have to figure out which direction to place it
wicked oak
i got the 2 bone ik and rotation for head and hands, but thats not enough of course
winged shale
because you can tip your head back further than 90 degrees
junior prism
With the allright rig, it's just dragging the torso controller 😛
Did I mention it's free? 😉
junior prism
winged shale
so you need to dynamically interpolate between forward- and top or down facing vectors of the HMD
I'll be writing a dev blog for this week (first post!) about all of this crap
I'll link when I publish it and start the blog
clever sky
But I just used the right vector on the HMD and rotated it back
clever sky
Works fine for placing my feet 😛
winged shale
lol I don't care about marketplace things, it's more important to me that I get my game out there, I'll just share my methods for the interested in my blog
clever sky
Side question; so I've built a thing on top of someone's free plugin.
I can't release that on marketplace can I?
winged shale
@clever sky when doing that, there's the problem of if the user rolls their head
clever sky
@winged shale Yeah, I can imagine. I'm just relying on the user not rolling their heads.
winged shale
I've built a state machine that figures out the proper orientation of the torso based on where the hands are and where the head is looking at arbitrary transforms
clever sky
At least not more than 90 degrees.
winged shale
there's a few problems in that video, one is that for some reason I left the elbow targets in world space, so they're always pointing at the ship, and another is I left another vector in world-space that I hadn't noticed before I made the video
tawdry dragon
btw, that VRGrip plugin that was being thrown about earlier, what happened to it?
winged shale
so arms will oddly interpolate in strange ways
next video will fix all of these probably
VRGrip?
clever sky
What's it do?
tawdry dragon
Yeah, there were some plugins for the unofficial VR template(before Epic released their own)
to handle all the grip stuff
tawdry dragon
Arhh, thats why I had trouble finding something about it.
clever sky
I think? It definetly has a grip component in there.
tawdry dragon
Im just using BP interfaces and a function library to quickly add it to different actors
but it does have some issues, doesn't handle multi grapping very well right now
winged shale
yeah how do you interp the object for 2 hands
tawdry dragon
Yeah, if you have an item grapped, and want to change hands
winged shale
I'll show a video soon of my two-handed weapons and two-handed object interactions, I think it's pretty good 😃
clever sky
Ah yeah. Did a bunch of work on that to make mine work properly
tawdry dragon
it attach/deattach is a bit... funky... So I wanted to see if someone has already been doing all the work for me 😃
clever sky
They did the bare minimum in the template
The second you start adding extra functionality it just shits the bed 😛
winged shale
C++ ftw
tawdry dragon
not gonna happen @winged shale 😉
clever sky
But it works now. I've got rumble from the grabbed object.
winged shale
also all these youngsters don't properly know how to architect a program these days for extensibility
clever sky
And it doesn't transfer that rumble over
which was a thing that was happening to me for a while 😄
Hey! I learnt some C++!
winged shale
@clever sky++
tawdry dragon
I already have my plate full with so many things... Learning C++ is way to big a moutfull right now
winged shale
someone should make an upbot plugin for Discord
and yeah if you don't know it going in, it's going to be a long-ass road
tawdry dragon
Im doing VR dev demoes, I'm doing video production, I'm doing 3d productions, I'm doing internal tool development
tawdry dragon
so much stuff going on... BP's are a goddamn godsend because they are so quick
winged shale
I know dat feel
I prototype nearly every new object interaction in BP, then transfer it to C++
clever sky
Best part is that you're not switching back and forth between two programs and that BP 'intellisense' works perfectly.
winged shale
it's really easy because BP functions mostly always correspond to a C++ function
yes lol
^^
clever sky
Yeah... well their objective is to make BP and C++ interchangeable right?
tawdry dragon
well.. the biggest plus is that I dont need to know C++ to do the stuff I need done 😃
tawdry dragon
Having done some Unity dev a couple of years ago, it was nice that I could do small parts in JS(which I know from web dev), but it quickly changed that you neeeded to know C# in order to do anything really
clever sky
Honestly, BP is the main reason I'm with UE4.
tawdry dragon
I dont feel the same limitation from BP's
clever sky
So to your suggestion to try Unity, can't do!
winged shale
I'm with UE4 because I don't have to pay monthly for it
and it's superior in many ways
clever sky
Yeah, like BP 😄
winged shale
and C++
tawdry dragon
hell.. BP's are the reason some of my colleagues are finally starting doing logic work them selves. Before that they wouldn't touch anything that required progamming/logic
That means I can focus on the large systems and "outsource" small projects to them
clever sky
So... real question time - what's the overhead of doing everything in BP vs C++?
winged shale
~10x
winged shale
it depends
tawdry dragon
haha 😛
clever sky
I read that you don't want to do basic math operations in BP?
winged shale
nooooo
the more micro you go, the more slow
but if you have huge functions like sphere traces or whatever, it's nearly the same runtime as in C++
clever sky
Jeez. Gonna have to rewrite my whole movement system. Wonder if I can just pay someone to do that.
tawdry dragon
@clever sky there is this guy called @winged shale I heard he is doing some crazy stuff
winged shale
probskies, lots of devs that know BP and C++ well would appreciate some extry moolah
clever sky
Probably not a bad idea really... I can learn from seeing my BP code reinterpreted into C++.
winged shale
I'll give you advice if you get stuck, but I'm currently a full-time grad student, doing extra full time research, and also doing full time game dev in my spare full time, while being a full-time husband
tawdry dragon
So your days are 4x24 hours so you can do everything fulltime? 😄
clever sky
So like Zpanzer you too wear the hats.
clever sky
That's not a fez in his avatar. It's hats on hats.
tawdry dragon
The biggest difference is the stuff sphychiatrist is doing probably will earn him more skittles than what I'm doing 😛
winged shale
yeah the asymptotic shape of hats as hats -> infinity is a fez
clever sky
Phil Fish?
winged shale
so much respect, Fez is beautiful
clever sky
Yeah he does look a bit like that.
clever sky
Well, to be fair, game dev is an industry that will drive most up the wall.
Or so it seems.
winged shale
yeah
clever sky
I'm only here so I can drop my VR ideas
tawdry dragon
I'm guessing its because indies are usually passionate people with little to no business/project management skills
winged shale
the best moment for me in my game dev history was realizing that, while I'm passionate about game dev, passion is useless, and discipline is what makes your game when the passion follows its randomized sine wave pattern
winged shale
which is why I feel comfortable going social-media and public with Iron Rain, because I don't feellike I can work on it regularly anymore, I know that I will.
clever sky
It's just I procrastinate like hell when I have non-passionate work to do D:
clever sky
Haha.
tawdry dragon
One I thing I have learned working on larget 3d projects, is that you so easily get bugged down by details because you're passionate about what youre doing. You want everything to be just right. You lose your perspective and sight of the goal
winged shale
REALLY worth a read if you want to procrastinate about something
tawdry dragon
and you end up spending 4-5x the time really needed
clever sky
Yeah... I get that. Gotta get all the details! I want to be a god and make a virtual world!
So... we need these marketing shots...
and done.
winged shale
@tawdry dragon from a meta-standpoint, I realized it's super useful to do public reviews for my stuff, because even if nobody watches your shit, you are gonna watch it over and over and notice all the stuff you missed from being perfectionistic about stuff
like I just added several high-importance TODOs to my google keep list because I watched that video I showed over and over again last night
tawdry dragon
My process is to do a kanban diagram with all the tasks ahead of me, write a short description of what the task is actually supposed to do and how important it is for the project
tawdry dragon
and then I start doing it one after one, always checking if I hit the "its good enough" marker
clever sky
But also, I'm going silent for a bit. gonna try out AliceVR
winged shale
what I do is with Google Keep (I keep it simple because I can easily get bogged down by formatting a google doc :P) I keep a IRON RAIN //TODO, IRON RAIN //COMPLETED, IRON RAIN //IN PROGRESS
in TODO I have a header that says, "I just completed ____, now it's time to start working on ____", followed by a list of things I need to do, starting with the second blank
tawdry dragon
I know this is not for everyone, but I suggest you give https://trello.com/ a look
winged shale
I used trello for months, it didn't work for me too well :/
too much reorganizing and labeling, I prefer this, because...
every night after I'm done working for the day, I update the stuff by putting TODO things in COMPLETED, update IN PROGRESS with stuff that is still being worked on, but MOST IMPORTANTLY I reorder the todos in TODO that night and that night only
I don't allow myself to reorder them during the day
that way, what smart me last night said I should do next is what I will do
it's important because I often am much more likely to schedule a big shitty task like "rewrite everything that has to do with this so your future is better" when I don't have to do it immediately
so I kind of trap myself
tawdry dragon
The hard part of project mangement is that we're all different. Its so hard to give advice because you don't know if it works for everyone else. The most important part, I think, is to try something and see what works and then adapt it to your own style
winged shale
definitely agre
e
I like to put it out there because it might solve someone else's problems
I have the problem that I really go down the rabbit hole with doing really fun tasks, like "make a new weapon!" or "do the spaceship thruster balancing code"
and then the core mechanics and architecture of my code craps itself
clever sky
Back. Yeah, don't buy AliceVR
winged shale
lol
clever sky
Refunded. I have zero tolerance for locomotion that sets the forward vector to the face.
Look people. I like to look around while walking around. Why you gotta make it so hard?
winged shale
indeed
clever sky
Plus it also sets movement to on touch.
As opposed to on click.
That surface is an ideal resting spot for my thumb.
winged shale
like Onward
clever sky
So why you making me move around when I just wanna rest my thumb?
winged shale
ugh I can just feel the crappy code architecture when I play Onward
clever sky
Haha... But it's getting so much praise!
clever sky
Fuck... that's the shit (referring to the locomotion system) that the VR community is praising right now. Hopefully when I drop mine, minds will be blown.
winged shale
but there's just so much that Dante for some reason chose not to do right
same feeling
clever sky
Otherwise, I dunno man.
It's like people just want to be able to use gamepads in VR, everything else be damned! 😛
Or at least the classic control schema
winged shale
I think my game is the space game that everyone has wanted since Freelancer
clever sky
Wait, you're working on an open world elite/freelancer game?
winged shale
I truly believe this, and I'm so excited to showcase it
yeah doo
it's a spaceship building game
clever sky
Oh shibbssss
winged shale
and you can salvage modules from other ships
winged shale
brb relocating to my office
clever sky
Well, I'm headed to bed. Cya later. But also, sounds exciting your thing
Wants to play something like that.
Just make sure the space ship design is tight.
Incidentally, my space ship and mecha designs are pretty decent if I must say so myself 😛
winged shale
space ship design is modular 😃
every hull has attachment slots for other hulls
so arbitrary spaceship design is possible
also I'll open up workshop access after alpha
tawdry dragon
@winged shale how would you actually go about loading external assets? I guess that is only possible with C++
winged shale
I would package an editor with the game, like Unreal Tournament does
so people can make mods
which is why I say after alpha
I want alpha to be all about making the game fun
tawdry dragon
it's because I've actually been looking into doing stuff like variables inside XML files that my coworkers can do without doing anything in unreal. It would be cool if I could make complete "uasset" outside the editor and have it load them in at runtime
winged shale
that would be dope as a rope
but at that point my question is why don't you just use the editor, or teach them how
tawdry dragon
because that would mean we have to cook the project each time we do a change
winged shale
ohhhh
tawdry dragon
it would be awesome if we could do it with on-drive xml/fbx/texture assets
tawdry dragon
maaaybe :p
winged shale
that would certainly be interesting
maybe some kind of xml metadata about how to cook it by your game, and then make a lite material builder in your game
but that's a lot of C++ there
probably more time than it would save you
but certainly a crazy good learning experience
tawdry dragon
Yeah that would be my guess.. It also just thinking forward. Say we add new products to our VR experience. Updating computers could be done using XML files/zip files instead of whole builds
winged shale
yup, I chose the solo path for a lot of reasons, including this situation
it's very hard to do syncing right
using perforce/git with people who don't know how to use perforce/git from their professional careers is gruelling
so you're left with using something that kind of drops assets in and out, like google drive or dropbox, and then everything is bad
tawdry dragon
Im using dropbox atm ^^'
but if it was a "real project" I would have to look at github
winged shale
thing about git
is that it's reeeeeally good at storing different versions of text
but for blobs (actual term, binary large objects) like images, vertex lists (models) etc. it just screws up astronomically
dry fjord
It handles binaries excellently too
winged shale
does it?
dry fjord
Yup
winged shale
unless you use git-lfs plugin it's abysmal
dry fjord
How can it screw up when it just detects a change?
winged shale
because git is written to detect and merge changes in carriage-return terminated text
when a binary object changes, it doesn't have lines to change or not change, so merging binary objects is not possible
winged shale
I have not had that experience, every time my binary objects change, I must upload a copy of the new object
dry fjord
Sure
winged shale
the point of git for me is that commits happen often and so do pushes
winged shale
so, I don't want to wait for hours on my terrible internet to do it, but git with git-lfs works really well as it only sends diffs
dry fjord
So don't commit binaries
winged shale
I don't!
dry fjord
Yay solved
winged shale
and I use git for my code anyway
tight grotto
Hi everyone. How can I make a simple laser sight draw where my weapon is facing?
winged shale
dry fjord
Draw where your weapon is facing. Done n
Google the components of your problem
It's very basic
winged shale
anyway, when you work with git and multiple devs, you want people to have their own branches, and merge them together to kind of paste the project together in master as everyone works independently of each other to implement their things, as is the key to working productively with many people on one project
how do you reconcile this? and in what way is your use of git different from just using Dropbox if it had a changelog?
wicked oak
been testing oculus ASW
damn black magic
but it DOES artifact
its similar artifacts to things like smooth video project
subtle, but happens
winged shale
yeah that's a case too, rotational motion causes nonlinear motion against the fulcrum and extreme ends
dry fjord
@winged shale the same way you reconcile it in P4, SVN, whatever. git is no different.
the problem is not version control. the problem is UE's lack of exposure of facets of blueprints to version control.
if blueprints were a text-based format with every node being a single line and every connector between nodes being a single line you'd be able to merge changes and review them
P4 solves it by locking. git solves it by allowing anyone to do anything and generating conflicts that you can resolve
literally nobody tries to "merge" binaries so it's a completely false argument against git
which is a shame because git is by far the best version control system when you get down to it
in all of these situations one person needs to go and talk to another person either before or after a change has been made
I prefer after, since you can see what both people intended to do because they went and did it and you can manually integrate changes and use that as the conflict resolution instead
but the problem will always be UE itself
LFS isn't a tool to get around any of that, it's just a handy filestore for binaries or other large files that might slow down the repo
dusk vigil
That's interesting, I didn't realize blueprints are not generating human readable code behind the scenes...
dry fjord
they look like json or xml
you can copy and paste them
earlier blueprints compile to bytecode, new blueprints compile in the same way C++ does
there's no artificial code generation in between that you can tinker with
but ultimately that json/xml is stored in a binary format to prevent things from messing with it
and we all know how fucking shit it is merging changes to xml
be better to adopt a simpler non-nested format
every line contains a node ID and arguments or links to other nodes to populate those arguments and event execution links
and shit like positoning and comments
any VC can handle a single line changing easily
don't have to worry about the nesting becoming corrupt
and fuck it, make that format human readable
dusk vigil
Agree wholeheartedly
But we are off the topic for VR. Anybody using the https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/gesture-tracker-vr ? I'd like to hear if it is all shipshape to use
wicked oak
@dry fjord the blueprints to c++ thing is still experimental and has to be enabled, its off by default
dry fjord
I know
dry fjord
nup
wicked oak
its some kind of massive state machine
wicked oak
like each case is a node and stuff
dry fjord
easier to develop that way I guess
wicked oak
it would be cool to have a tool to serialize blueprints to text
and be able to switch beetwen them
dry fjord
you can now
wicked oak
nah, im talking more about a true blueprints<->text interoperabilty. so they can be merged easily
wicked oak
its the main problem of blueprints, they are very hard to mantain
dry fjord
then you could have a visual change management utility
with a timeline to go forward and back through the changelist
wicked oak
there is already a perforce diff tool for blueprints in the engine
but i havent used it much
btw, how did you do that VR ik?
dry fjord
it's only for diffing not merging, isn't it? I haven't tried it in over a year
wicked oak
for fullbody ik in vr
dry fjord
with IK
oh
kinect
I'm working on adding IK constraints to it as I get time
since the kinect data can be shitty
dry fjord
I have tricks to get results that look like accurate data from just inferred positions though
very usable
real needle
@dusk vigil I haven't but I will this weekend, I've been waiting for a gesture tracker since I saw the unity one
dry fjord
took 30 mins to set up the first time
real needle
I'll let you know if you haven't purchased already
dusk vigil
I can wait til next week no problem, we are just starting production in the last couple of weeks and are still casing things out. I'm basically planning to simultaneously do Perception Neuron mocap and run the gesture recognition mappings during the next month. Looks like a good fit for our game
winged shale
@dry fjord I was originally talking to someone who is not a programmer about tools for sharing blobs across creative machines, and reconciling that. Thanks for the calmer answer, and I agree with you.
so Blueprints play nice with git nowadays?
sullen stirrup
how'd it go yday when you guys discussed about having a 3rd person view/camera in VR
winged shale
that's fair, when you said third person view I imagined a third person shooter
and the VR camera is just taped to the character
swingin' around
dusk vigil
Yeah that would get into trouble pretty fast
winged shale
hehehe I'm doing a third person thing in Iron Rain where you switch to 'commander' view by pulling down a VR headset while in the cockpit of your ship
dusk vigil
Nice
winged shale
you put it on, and suddenly you see your ship and all ships in your radar range in a view like Homeworld
dusk vigil
I love it when things are done properly in context like that
winged shale
yeah I hope people like it as much as I think they will, I hope to have it so if you get sick of piloting the ship around you can go into this mode and just command your ship to do things, assuming you've got the relevant modules
and it should be useful for commanding other ships in your fleet
dusk vigil
Making it an important part of the game - if it's just there for fun, there's not much point to have it
Like a submarine game where you have to use all the different areas, conn, periscope, engines etcetera, all are essential
dry fjord
can't be having fun in games
winged shale
ever so spicy
man, whenever someone puts "VR" in the title of their game, it's got like a 90% chance of being bad
full junco
I actually haven't looked at any VR games for many months...
winged shale
same
I wonder if that's a dev thing or vr game interest is fizzling out in general
or perhaps it's because most titles coming out are unpolished shite
full junco
I just don't want to see other games because I then don't see that maybe other games are better than mine 😛
full junco
so I just work on mine without caring about what others release, and then when I consider my game ready for release, then I might look at what others do...
winged shale
that's a strategy, but maybe if you overcame that you'd be stronger as a dev
not that I'm one to be giving advice, what works for you works for you
full junco
well not sure if it works for me, I just hope so 😛
winged shale
the thing I would worry about is missing out on great features that work well
and learning what doesn't
so I don't have to try it out
full junco
maybe, yeah
pearl tangle
most of the stuff on steam is pretty garbage still
will be interesting to see the launch titles for the oculus touch, and a bunch of PSVR games coming out too that are properly polished
full junco
ok, I guess I should say its very nice to hear that most is garbage 😄
pearl tangle
hah well its not great to hear from a consumer point of view