well, FBX wouldn't load into UE4.. So I had to load it into Blender, then export into FBX again. It wouldn't load into Blender either. So I had to use Autodesk FBX converter first. Then when it finally loaded into Blender, it was all jacked up. So after spending a lot of time and fixing it, I got it into UE4. Never again I will do such thing.
#virtual-reality
mighty carbon
glossy agate
Haha, oh that sucks.
mighty carbon
yep
compact kettle
hey guys, my motion controllers of my oculus aren't working (creating no input / axis events)
Any idea why?
I have the requires modules loaded and the HMD itself works, but all the motion controller events don't trigger anything
fair hearth
Does your pawn have input enabled?
wintry escarp
think NVidia will drop prices a bit when vega comes out?
mighty carbon
damn miners are to blame for prices
so, has anyone used Assets Manager ? What is it for ? (managing assets of course, but what does it imply?)
mighty carbon
folks, did you see this https://github.com/FreetimeStudio/PortalPlugin ?
works in VR
stoic bloom
anyone upgraded to 4.17 and having issues with oculus rift height all of a sudden? HMD is reporting a height that puts my face in the floor, even in a fresh project using the VR template.
wintry escarp
epic is staffed by dwarfs
stoic bloom
lol, I guess that's one explanation 😛
sturdy coral
@tired tree @full junco one thing you can do is make a copy of your branch, rebase it so all your commits show as a single commit, then cherry-pick that one commit into a new 4.17 branch
that's a little bit easier than manually applying a diff because you'll get automatic merge resolution for most of the stuff and just have to handle the conflicts
actually instead of rebasing, I think you get the single commit branch by making a new 4.15 branch, and merging your branch with "--squash" (puts the changes all in one commit)
then cherry pick that commit into a new 4.17 branch
I've been looking into this because I attempted to merge the nvidia vr works stuff into 4.17 for a bit last night 😛
there were too many changes in 4.17 in the shaders for me to do it because resolving the conflicts meant knowing too much about the nvidia stuff
I've usually upgraded across engine changes by manually cherry-picking every commit I've made, but I've gotten to the point now where too many of them are bugfixes on each other and stuff so I'll probably do the --squash thing next time
sturdy coral
@full junco I tried turning on the visible area mesh for temporal AA, it seems to work fine.
in PostProcessTemporalAA.cpp change all the DrawPostProcessPass calls to pass Context.HasHmdMesh(),
instead of //false, // Disabled for correctness
tired tree
I didn't want most of my commits to be as a single one, I wanted to check one by one to make sure they were still valid is why I did it the way I did.
sturdy coral
ah ok, cherry-pick one by one can do that (and automatically merge the parts that don't have conflicts)
but yeah it gets complicated if you want to fold some up into a single one and others not
mighty carbon
looks like GPUs have dropped to original prices @wintry escarp
mighty carbon
F####Ckkkkkkkk I hate Gear VR...
Now Oculus broke their own system - going back from the menu to UE4 app restarts said app..
(used to work as "pause" - you would go back to the same moment you went to Oculus menu from)
sturdy coral
@full junco what all tweaks have you done with temporal AA? I just tried reducing the jitter width with TemporalAAFilterSize and found a bug
gaussian respects TemporalAAFilterSize by reducing the guassian width and by decreasing TemporalAAFilterSize you can get textures to show up pretty sharp, but catmullrom (CVarTemporalAACatmullRom) is the default and doesn't do anything special to respect TemporalAAFilterSize
full junco
@sturdy coral only relevant thing I did is to set the current frame weight higher I think
sturdy coral
what I'm going to do is use the default the filter width if your head is really rotationally still
but narrow it if it moves at all
it is basically how much it jitters the camera
full junco
what is passing Context.HasHmdMesh() in that PostProcessTemporalAA.cpp doing?
sturdy coral
it is telling it to use the visible area mesh instead of a full quad
for running the TAA shader
full junco
ok, did you see it improving performance?
sturdy coral
I haven't measured yet
full junco
ok, then I'll measure
I actually never looked how much time TAA takes now on my gtx 1080
@sturdy coral all my DrawPostProcessPass inPostProcessTemporalAA.cpp are already passing Context.HasHmdMesh()
sturdy coral
strange, mine pass false, working with 4.17 right now though
full junco
I'm on 4.15
and TAA is surprisingly slow still, I remember it was ~0.5 ms per eye on my R9 390 and its still 0.35 ms per eye on my GTX 1080
sturdy coral
looks like they started passing false in 4.16
I think they made a wrong assumption on it but maybe they hit some edge case
full junco
TAA is by far the slowest PP thing, so anything that improves that time would be good
I made sure I disabled everything else as good as possible
@sturdy coral you said "by reducing the guassian width and by decreasing TemporalAAFilterSize you can get textures to show up pretty sharp", but whats the downside of that?
sturdy coral
the downside is you hold your head really still, like you really need to almost be sitting in a chair with a headrest
you will get some aliasing
I gotta test it with more complex scenes
if you want to try it (I think these vars are in 4.15)
r.TemporalAAFilterSize .1```TemporalAAFilterSize is pretty sensitive, much below .1 and it freaks out, too near 1 or above and it has less and less effect (on sharpness)
full junco
ah, not even needed to edit ther source for that? 😄
sturdy coral
1 is the default
yeah no need to edit, I'm going to mess with scaling the width of the CatmullRom in a similar way that they do the guassian
full junco
I'm not really seeing much difference between 1,1 and 0, 0.1
with 0, 0.1 it looks a bit more aliased
sturdy coral
try with r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight .25
I'm not sure, I'm testing sitting in a chair so I might be holding my head too stable
movement might just introduce enough blur of its own
sturdy coral
what screen percentage are you hitting?
it needs to be when looking at something with a detailed texture too
full junco
I have no idea what screen percentage I use, pretty low. I am looking at the distance
I think with low SP its easier to see difference in TAA
sturdy coral
yeah, and I think with low sp this should have a bigger effect
because a full pixel of jitter is a lot more the lower you go
full junco
with r.TemporalAACatmullRom set to 1, I see that r.TemporalAAFilterSize 1 looks way better than r.TemporalAAFilterSize 0.1
sturdy coral
with r.TemporalAAFilterSize 0.1 try toggling r.TemporalAACatmullRom on and off
mighty carbon
Do you happen to know if this kind of look is more performance taxing than smoothed look: https://cdn1.epicgames.com/ue/item/Screenshot04-1920x1080-d451a73f00256ef2e826057e902cf6ea.jpg
sturdy coral
that's where i could see it was getting sharper without it and blurrier with it (opposite of what catmull is supposed to do and does when r.TemporalAAFilterSize 1)
full junco
its super cheap @mighty carbon
mighty carbon
well, yeah, but don't all vertices get duplicated to produce hard edges all over the place, where with all smooth look vertex count would be halved ?
sturdy coral
yes, but the stuff is still low poly
full junco
@sturdy coral catmullrom 0 looks way better with filter size 0.1
mighty carbon
I guess.. I'll have to test it
full junco
@mighty carbon triangles are pretty cheap
mighty carbon
right, but it adds up is what I am saying.. Like, with smooth look I could have (just saying, not exact number) 1M tris, but with faceted look I'd have to have less tris to cut down vertex count
I might be wrong, but that's how it used to be
full junco
doesnt matter because with such a look you always have extremely few triangles
otherwise you dont see the individual triangles
@sturdy coral the most important thing for the TAA is to smooth the SSAO, so when SSAO isnt smoothed correctly I notice that way more than if theres some aliasing
full junco
I didnt compare before/after actually
I dont really want to revert that change just for testing performance
I really wish this stuff would still work: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?96870-Screenspace-blur-for-SSAO-C
would make everything look much nicer in my case I think
sturdy coral
@full junco 4.17 made a lot of changes to ssao, bent normals and multibounce with saturation based on bounce color and stuff
I wonder if that made it expensive and it is even more noisy without TAA
full junco
the bent normals and stuff probably make it more expensive
its just bad how epic connected SSAO and TAA together
doing a gaussian blur on the SSAO would be way nicer and allow it to be used with the forward renderer and MSAA
I guess its still possible to do that stuff from the link I posted and smooth the SSAO with gaussian blur, but I just couldn't get it to work
here's the code for that for 4.13: https://github.com/PB-Aidan/UnrealEngine/commit/9887685e9e9632413e00c2d86ba767b17b876581
full junco
yes
mighty carbon
aye, cool..
full junco
@sturdy coral don't they say in the commit why they changed the Context.HasHMDMesh() to false?
sturdy coral
I have to look, can't remember if it was just a big merge blob from perforce or not
full junco
the big merges still usually have the description for every individual commit
wintry escarp
hmmmm, shop has 'affordable' gpus. 1060 for £260 or 1070 for £350
sturdy coral
Says it is there to avoid uninitialized data getting accessed, I don't think it would happen for temporalaa, otherwise temporalaa itself would have a chance of reading uninitialized data. Maybe on the first frame or something if the project isn't configured with hardware clear
full junco
@sturdy coral you should ask epic to make UE-43653 public in the issue tracker so that you can see what issue it caused
odd garnet
is get tracked devices gone?
alpine torrent
https://next.reality.news/news/dev-report-urho3d-could-be-development-bridge-between-hololens-arkit-0179187/ any ideas how you could get this work with Unreal engine?
wicked oak
@alpine torrent 4.17 has support for AR kit
gentle grove
@mighty carbon You don't have to duplicate the verts to get a hard shaded look, you can manually calculate the rate of change across the faces and use that as normals for rendering. If you don't want them in tangent space, bypass the transform at the end and uncheck "use tangent space normal" on the material
mighty carbon
thanks @gentle grove
speaking of AR, Apple's AR glasses are a way off based on some reports
I am guessing Apple hopes to have a ton of AR apps made using AR Kit so that when glasses are released, there would be a lot of software already
mighty carbon
4.18 popped up on the roadmap and it has nothing exciting yet
wintry escarp
4.18 is looking a bit anemic
normal thorn
@mighty carbon re low poly texture pack. You can also bake hard edges into normal maps and not have hard edges in the smoothing group. I remember testing that and it worked decently. Altho you'd have to rebake ever asset.
jsut saw wyeth said that
mighty carbon
nah, I am trying to avoid any baking of normal maps
yeah, I'll try his method \
@wicked oak just saying that so far nothing exciting in 4.18 road map
mighty carbon
all I did was reporting that 4.18 road map is up
normal thorn
does anyone know how to improve load times for VR apps? I have a loading screen which like Roborecall is super super cheap, but I still get the steam room on level streaming only when I make a build. Play in editor is fine. I wonder if thats bc/ play in editor already has most of that in memory? Should I disable streaming textures?
load times is wrong questions
improve not going to steam room/out of the game
mighty carbon
RR takes forever to load o.O
like, to the point Oculus complains it takes unusually long
normal thorn
yeah but once your in its smooth
mighty carbon
ofc
normal thorn
its also not in steam world. In oculus I don't get any issues
so I wonder those load times is it b/c they load all textures right from the start?
wintry escarp
nice that theyre slowly breaking ue4 into more modular sections so you can lose bits you don't need
tired tree
ue4 has always been very modular
mighty carbon
how is audio in 4.17 ? I don't see any tutorials about baking occlusions and whatnot 😦
glossy agate
Oh yeah, is the Steam audio plugin stable in 4.17?
glossy agate
That phonon material setup is pretty impressive. Was something I never actually thought about.
sturdy coral
@normal thorn make the steam room the load screen by overriding the background and setting up decorative overlays
That's what most games do, I think RR does the Oculus equivalent
normal thorn
how do you make the steam room the load screen? do we have accees to it?
sturdy coral
The Lab launches and switches to entire different processes while the loading screen uses that technique
@normal thorn you have to add it to the plugin, it is just a call to set " skybox override" or something named similar
In steamvr
And there is a call to force show the steam room that you can do until you know loading is really finished
uneven moon
How do I change the size of the hand in the VR template? I replaced it with my own hand mesh but it's too large and scaling it inside the MotionController BP doesn't actually scale it in-game.
sturdy coral
Is it the root component?
uneven moon
@sturdy coral I tried scaling the root 'MotionController' as well as the mesh itself 'HandMesh' under that separately, neither worked.
mighty carbon
@tired tree you'd think since it's UE4 integration, they'd make UE4 docs for it 😒
tired tree
there is an entire manual
sturdy coral
Look into where it does the attachment and make sure it uses attachment rule preserve scale, or inherit scale, depending on which one you are scaling
uneven moon
Found it, thank you.
mighty carbon
@tired tree where?
alpine torrent
does 4.18 have AR stuff?
uneven moon
I swear the latest version is 4.16.3?
mighty carbon
btw, interesting https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/mysql-integration
alpine torrent
as 4.17 have experiments stuff for AR
mighty carbon
aye, thanks... My point though is that if you haven't given it to me, I'd be unable to find it (quickly anyway).
tired tree
its not only at the bottom of every official announcement
but every single patch post the guy puts on the ue4 forums he links to it....
as well as the main OP about it links to it
normal thorn
@sturdy coral I can't find that skybox override, or any other way to get the steam room to stop showing up when frames drop. I see things on how to get other render theads to go on if you code it all yourself... but not seeing anything I can implement with blueprints
maybe "-nosteamvr -nodashboard" but that seems hacky
sturdy coral
/** Override the skybox used in the compositor (e.g. for during level loads when the app can't feed scene images fast enough)
* Order is Front, Back, Left, Right, Top, Bottom. If only a single texture is passed, it is assumed in lat-long format.
* If two are passed, it is assumed a lat-long stereo pair. */
virtual EVRCompositorError SetSkyboxOverride( VR_ARRAY_COUNT( unTextureCount ) const Texture_t *pTextures, uint32_t unTextureCount ) = 0;
/** Resets compositor skybox back to defaults. */
virtual void ClearSkyboxOverride() = 0;
It isn't in blueprints, you have to modify the plugin yourself to call it
normal thorn
I saw that but didn't really understand it. I'm assuming thats code only not blueprints
I see
crap
hah
sturdy coral
It might be exposed in @tired tree 's plugin, not sure
real needle
Hmmm did Epic miss to expose ESpectatorScreenMode to the variable options?
I can pull off and promote to var, but I can't make a new and select the data type to that enum
sly elk
@uneven moon if you haven't figured it out already, scale the hand in the BP_Motioncontroller and then scale it again when the pawn makes the left copy
Is there a way to stop attached physics actors from generating overlap events between eachother? I don't want them to stop generating overlap events completely. Basically, if I attach a bunch of parts together and then grab the root object they are attached to it is generating a shitload of overlap events between all the connected meshes
trim lodge
Has anyone here tried making a vr spectator screen like in the patch notes for 4.17? I'm trying to set it up with a scene capture 2d rendering a texture to the spectator screen on event tick but it doesn't seem to be updating on my computer's monitor.
^ this is what i'm referring to
i'm looking for examples or tutorials too, if y'all have em
sly elk
Left front suspension fully working.. now to set it all up again for the right half: http://i.imgur.com/1UUwL2J.jpg
63 parts per side and for each part i have to make a BP and set a bunch of paramaters.. Plus there is a socket for every part and a bool per part.
glossy agate
You have any video of it in action?
granite jacinth
Strange...
What would cause my Vive Controllers to stop working in UE4?
I mean literally, they were working yesterday
And they are sync'd on SteamVR
They DO work... as in, when I hit Steam Home button,. I see them moving about
But, nothing in UE4
Tried various projects/vrtemplate to test
Fixed with a PC reboot.
sly elk
not a recent one. This one is from a few weeks ago. Im going to make a polished video once I have all of my current content working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRbw6FPNZqo
uneven moon
Does anyone know where in the VR template the scale of the motion controller mesh is being determined? I thought I found it but that didn't work and scaling it in the viewport makes no difference during gameplay.
The hands in-game are too large
Adjusting the scale here makes no difference
Somehow one is larger than the other now.
somber schooner
So is the general setup for a spectator screen to have a second camera in the scene and get the texture from that, then render that texture to the spectator screen on event tick?
Or is there a more efficient way of doing it?
uneven moon
I think the default VR template has a 'Spectator Pawn', I haven't looked at it but you could check out how they set it up to work.
somber schooner
@uneven moon i just created a new project with the vr template, where is it located?
i don't see it in content browser
mighty carbon
if you use Blender and VR hair, this might be the thing: https://bartoszstyperek.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/hair-tool-blender-addon/
limber rose
Guys, I just played Mario Kart VR at VR Zone in Tokyo, it was amazing 😺
developed in UE4
mighty carbon
nice one. @limber rose
uneven moon
I have an animation here with 1 keyframe. I set up the frame for Frame 0 and set it, then when I go to Frame 1, there's a slight change but I can't re-do everything to be 100% exact. Is there any way to copy Frame 0 and paste it over Frame 1?
@somber schooner I'm not sure but when I right clicked inside a BP and typed in 'spectator' it gave me a reference to it.
fair hearth
@uneven moon the hands in the vr template are the same blueprint, however one is spawned as a negative inverse as the other, make sure the scale command on the second hand isn't changing the size.
Also, I'd recommend working with the template and putting the motion controllers in the vrpawn itself,
It takes a bit of work but it's a much better system for me at least, also helped me learn blueprints as well.
uneven moon
@fair hearth I managed to fix the sizing but I have a new problem: because the hands duplicate they both hold a pistol, I want them to function separately with their own individual BPs. How do I do this?
glossy agate
Just make 2 motion controller components inside of your character pawn. Easier to work with for me at least.
sly elk
are you using the VR template?
The attach to node on event pickup has a pin that gives the current hand. You can promote it to a variable there and use it for whatever you need to happen on that hand. For a gun pickup you would just use Event Pickup like the example cubes but add a socket for attachment location.
plain glade
alpine torrent
seems cool VR preview screen
the progress and if you have mixed reality device you kinda have similar preview in it as that 4.17 VR preview screen
wicked oak
this is what you can do with the new view modes
check the 3rd person view
too bad it absolutely destroys framerate
becouse it has to render that
sly elk
Thats awesome. I going to dig into some of this stuff soon. Is there a resolution limit on the cameras? I want to use them for recording a trailer
Also are you updating that camera at 90fps also or doing it at 30?
So something tricky I'm trying to find a cleaner solution to. I want to make one actor snap to multiple actors. The main use is for snapping to right and left half of the car where the receiving part is a different actor. This is what I came up with so far. Im making a left right switch bool and then doubleing up all my local functionality based on that switch: http://i.imgur.com/n93zOMO.png
somber schooner
@uneven moon OK, I'll try that, I was able to get it set up with a scene capture rendering to a render target that I then render to the string as a texture
Works pretty well actually
I might write a tutorial on how to set it up
odd garnet
@wicked oak it would be cool if you could walk in that mode too and there was like villians and pedestrians
Theres like a mission where you blow up a huge meteor
wicked oak
lets see where it ends once i do more stuff with it
for now it was only a 4.17 prototype i did in like an hour
wicked oak
yeah, thats the idea
odd garnet
earth defense force style
wicked oak
a thing i wanted to do is punching the alien spaceships, or grabbing one and throwing it
odd garnet
yeahhhh!
wicked oak
basically, take it to the absolute most extreme possible
odd garnet
One Punch Man level
I saw this guy who had punch movement in his game
he made it during a game jam
wicked oak
yeah
im thinking more making it like straight out of an anime, or maybe iron man
but the tech requirements are quite huge, You need to build a big-ish city or it will feel small while going at those speeds
ill see what can be done
the current city is just RNG cubes
tilting the hands to turn around is actually really intuitive
the flight system is fun to use
and its nowhere near balanced at the moment
i was thinking on adding a fog at the pedestrian level, maybe one that kills you
and have a limit to the vertical flying, so you need to fly around the buildings instead of just flying to the absolute top of the map
plus an energy system to be careful of how you fly and shoot
glossy agate
You could instance the skyscrpares to save space
wicked oak
they are already instanced
but its more about how the hell do you build a city
i guess by making the game VERY cartooney, people can just gloss over the considerable disaster of the art
glossy agate
yeah haha. SOme kind of complicated procedural system maybe
wicked oak
maybe i just grab houdini and do proper procedural buildings
what is very important, is to make the player fly near stuff
if you dony fly near stuff, you dont have a sense of speed
glossy agate
Supper aggress LOD. Maybe make the building layered by floor so you can LOD the parts far away from player.
uneven moon
My animations don't play sometimes, sometimes they do. Earlier they did, now they don't. Any idea what's causing this ?
Oculus
glossy agate
@uneven moon is your gun inside your character BP?
glossy agate
Seems like it should work everytime then. Is your firing logic working everytime? Cant see any from the screen cap
uneven moon
No, the trigger events are not firing at all when I press the buttons
It's not a hardware or software issue, either
I have it set to 'GameMode' in settings, is this okay for a VR game?
sly elk
i upgraded to 4.17 today and my player height is in the floor like 90% of the time. anyone else seen this?
uneven moon
Have not upgraded yet
On a side note, the VR template comes with a 'MotionControllerPawn' as well as the MotionControllerBP. I deleted the BP one and edited the Pawn to be my own but none of my inputs are firing. Thoughts?
Tracking, etc. works I just can't fire off input events (trigger, grip etc.)
uneven moon
my 'pawn' has the camera, motion controllers with skeletal mesh and the event graph handles rumble, inputs, animations, etc.
sly elk
if you make a simple print hello on press, that doesn't fire?
uneven moon
No. And during simulation, the inputs don't fire at all either
My Event BeginPlay fires and handles height, etc. / platform compatibility
So the BP itself is functioning
But using the motion controller input is non-responsive. I do have tracking, though.
glossy agate
@uneven moon go into your inputs and setup inputs to use ie right motion controller trigger = fire. Use that event to call it in your BP to see if that works
sturdy coral
@uneven moon is your pawn getting possess properly? you probably have to set auto possess if it is placed on the map
uneven moon
Turns out input events only fire when you have the HMD on your head. I was holding it up and looking at my monitor to test input functionality and that doesn't work (for some reason).
full junco
its kinda funny how the primary good thing I can say about my game is that it looks really great. even though I'm a programmer 🙃
spiral zephyr
if you were an artist, you would at the same place say the opposite: "it looks shit but wow masterful code" 😉
pearl tangle
@full junco have you released yet or got a trailer up to show? You have been working on it for quite a while right?
sly elk
I'm an artist- My game looks good but my blueprints are a mess 😃
I finally figured out a reliable system to deal with 1 object snapping to multiple locations. This is usually used for a bunch of the same fasteners going into an object. A few of the things that threw me off, I still need to know when all the fasteners installed so I know if the part is fully installed, I also need to prevent installing two fasteners on top of each other.
I made an intermediary static mesh that is just a single socket and attached that at each bolt hole location as an actor subobject. Then the fastener, in this case a wheel stud, casts to both the hub where it is bolted and the subobject actor where the socket lives. It uses the subobject actor for all the snapping function and the reference to the hub to report if it is installed and update bools there. http://i.imgur.com/0CT0y12.png
I have to make a separate BP for each wheel stud so that each one can update bools on the hub for stud1, stud2... so I know when they are all installed. But this allows each of the studs to go into any of the holes and prevents 2 studs from going into the same hole
real needle
just wanted to thank this group for all the help
got my game pushed out on steam, would not have been possible without the information in here and on the forums
the unreal community is incredible
raw portal
What's your game @real needle ? 😃
raw portal
That looks pretty cool, I'll pick it up when I get home.
How did you make the destruction if I may ask
Is it custom?
real needle
You should have fun - just be aware that is about 15-20 mins in length
no, it is destructible meshes in UE4
raw portal
No worries 😃
real needle
although I did have to mess with the engine a bit because there were some buggy aspects to the destructibles in the old version I used (4.11)
raw portal
Oh? Because usually with destructible meshes you see the mesh break split and break, and here it seems like there are many little elements that get broken apart.
Like different meshes being held together before receiving damage
real needle
it isn't straightforward meshes
it is many nested meshes
not many, but I mean things are made up of destructible mesh components
for example, roof, wall, floor, window, etc
and there is a dependency thing so that you have to smahs out windows first, etc
raw portal
I see, I'll have to look into that since my game could benefit from this sort of destruction
real needle
it is definitely fun once you get it working
but I pulled a lot of hair out trying to get it all working
raw portal
That's how it usually is 😄
real needle
it might be better now at 4.17
look for tim hobson posts on the unreal answers page, and ont he forums
his information was priceless
sly elk
ugh, I started my project up and it prompted me to restore a lost file. I closed unreal normally the last time so I surpised but I let it restore. Now my project crashes when I load my map. The crash report client folder has no information for me. Anywhere else I can look?
real needle
there is not much documentation on this stuff, so he gave some good insights which allowed to me look at the apex stuff with more understanding
glossy agate
@sly elk can you roll back a version to get it working? (If you use source control)
sly elk
No source control here.. I should really set that up
i have 2 backups of the umap file
those both crash as well
oh, i foudn what is causing it to break by adding a bunch of objects to the level that does work
and it was the last thing I was working on
So the problem is this front hub blueprint. If I bring in a backup version all the references are bad: http://i.imgur.com/4hwRlBg.png
glossy agate
Hey, luckily that's a pretty way fix. Yeah you gotta get source control. Didn't you say you are spending like 2 years on this project or something? Good to protect it.
sly elk
im about 4 months into the work in unreal
wintry escarp
anyone got a compiled hacked lightmass?
raw portal
Thanks @real needle
sly elk
forunately I only have to replace cast nodes and remamke references on like 5 objects
sly elk
If anyone has time, can they please make a new VR template projecting 4.17 and see if you ahve issues with player height? For me it usually takes going into vr preview a few times
glossy agate
Is the steam VR cage going under the ground some?
real needle
watch out for overlaps with the player capsule, as well
wintry escarp
hmm unreal compiled but lightmass didnt
tired tree
@sly elk think people were reporting height issues because the GetHMDType is returning OculusHMD or something of the sort instead of what it did before. So the standing/sitting calibration is wrong in 4.17 since the node unlinks.
sly elk
thank you. I have been googling and haven't found anything yet. Do you have a link to a discussion on that?
tired tree
no I read people complaining about it in the forums
it doesn't effect my projects so I haven't looked into it further
sly elk
chaning the pin fixed it- thank you for the info
wraith sky
full junco
@spiral zephyr maybe I would 😄
@pearl tangle I don't have it released yet and I also don't have a trailer up yet. I've been working in it for something like 1.2 years now, yeah
I am currently working on the trailer (recording and stuff)
real needle
@full junco what genre?
full junco
@real needle still secret 😄
real needle
heh, looking fwd to the reveal
it is neat to see the various ways ue4 gets massaged for VR use
glossy agate
@full junco I already guessed minecraft, and childbirth simulator. The only option left is Multiplayer team based garbage man simulator.
Throw trash in a truch with your team faster than the opposing team
Throw trash at the other team to slow them down.
quickly bang the lonely housewife for bonus points, and extra team slot
real needle
this is perhaps not a very useful question, but for those of you who have seen more than one project through to completion - roughly how much quicker did the second project go? like if you were a complete newb for your first one, did the second one take ~50% the time?
full junco
well what does "complete newb" mean?
full junco
sure you can create a game faster if you dont need to learn what a for loop is
real needle
assuming programming knowledge but at a 101 level
like bachelors in comp sci to start
full junco
well you can also create a game faster if you don't need to learn all the UE4 framework stuff, like whats an actor and whats the playercontroller doing etc
real needle
it feels to me like 50% should be accurate
full junco
just subtract the time you spent with learning, then you know how long a second game with similar size would take
glossy agate
Probably save no time the second project. Your scope just blows up because you are way more capable
real needle
that is a valid point
full junco
@glossy agate yeah thats what I think too
glossy agate
finanly find yourself able to do the stuff you thought was to hard before
full junco
my first UE4 game was all blueprint (and it isn't even finished) and my second game (the current one) is all C++ and I decided to change as much as possible in the UE4 source that annoys me, so obviously I spend way more time now with trying to figure out UE4 source stuff than in my first game where I just used blueprints
so in the first game I got gameplay stuff together way more quickly actually, but this game has way superior tech because thats where I spent the time on
spiral zephyr
Hope you're me in the future. Currently at about 500 various BP only projects, slowly learning enough c++ by BP proxy so i can at one point 'wield the true power of programming'. Then onto the next holy grail
full junco
I can't do small projects, I always try to do way too big stuff 😄
I hope with 500 projects you don't mean 500 different games lol
tired tree
engine is best about half and half anyway
twin pulsar
I just noticed that steam vr's forward is along -y, as opposed to UE's x forward... Has anyone noticed this or did I mess something up? The last project I worked on with the vive was several months ago and I can't remember if that was the case too.
tired tree
SteamVR has always been a different coordinate system
they have to convert between them with all operations
twin pulsar
ok so does it mean for a steam vr project I should roll with -y forward inside unreal?
as in, orient everything thinking about -y as being forward?
tired tree
no
its converted back and forth
use UE4's native X forward
only if you are directly interfacing with SteamVR do you need to worry about it
twin pulsar
actually I think my vive chaperone got rotated or something....
that migth be it
no idea how it happened
usually the "arrow" when you put the vive on without home or anything is pointing to the right of the monitor, now it is opposite.... So something got screwed must be that
thanks
spiral zephyr
@full junco i dont make games 😉 just vr stuff, mostly audio/music things. i would guess its almost 50 different projects, but yea many many iterations of each, so way more than 500 project folders when thinking about it
tired tree
iterations aren't exactly different projects unless you are starting from scratch 😋
spiral zephyr
yup, edited, is it clearer? im unsure of terms to use
so 50 from scracth or something, 328947392874 iterations all combined
i have 4 actual big projects going, but all these small ones are each doing one or three things so i can learn to do it in a big thing
im saying im a gamedev virgin with no big-scope projects done, spending my time jerking out loads of small sticky projects, that i leave to mold in boxes.
real needle
@Arthur Barthur#1715 mostly blueprints projects?
sly elk
4k wallpaper in preparation of my website and video going up next week: http://www.digitalmistakegames.com/wrench4kwallpaper.jpg
full junco
@sly elk looks very nice
sly elk
Thanks. I'm hoping the visuals and a video of me assembling it all in time lapse will make some impact. I am hoping to be done with my project in about nine months to a year and I want to start building an audience now
full junco
ok, so the opposite of what I'm doing pretty much 😄
real needle
@sly elk what's the game? assembling something? that would be so cool!!
especially if we don't know what we're assembling
umbral hatch
What's the best way to have a "worn" helmet in VR? I've seen other games acomplish it, such as ADR1FT.
I'm guessing just have a helmet mesh wrapped around the camera, but not sure.
full junco
havent played any games like that, but you can just attach a mesh to the camera or a camera to the mesh or whatever
alpine torrent
@sly elk what you have used for a website
sturdy coral
@umbral hatch depends if you want the helmet attached to the head or attached to the shoulder/suit like an astronaut
umbral hatch
Well I want it attached to the head, like you're wearing a helmet
full junco
a friend who has a rift and wanted to test my game tried to play it, and it's actually crashing on a rift. I hoped steamvr would make sure that stuff that works on vive works on rift too, but it seems thats not the case
@wicked oak have you seen issues like that?
wicked oak
no becouse i dev for oculus
full junco
@wicked oak well you surely didn't always dev for oculus. you do have a vive lol
wicked oak
yeah, but i had no issue
default unreal oculus plugin just works
of course the input mappings will be off, but its fine
specially becouse the steamvr plugin is much less featured than the oculus one
for example stereo layers work on the oculus one XD
full junco
it seems to be the steamvr splash screen that crashes on the rift
I guess I should get myself a rift and just release my game for both vive and rift
wicked oak
you can ask oculus for one
they still give oculus to devs that can show they are devs
i mean even i got 4 dev rifts
and that was before touch was released
full junco
yeah when I said "should get myself a rift" I kinda meant "should let them give me a rift"
wicked oak
if you have a cool demo or at least a cool video, you can get the standard 2 kits for sure
full junco
I'm just not super comfortable with giving them info about my game
wicked oak
if your project is as cool at it seems they might even sponsor you
but i dont know how does that go
full junco
I'd be happy with 2 rifts
wicked oak
2 rifts is 800 dollars of hardware at the current offer
full junco
do they give rifts though even when I only plan to release on steam?
wicked oak
releasing on oculus store wouldnt be a problem, and you get extra sales
full junco
I dont think early access stuff works well on oculus store
wicked oak
one third of my sales are on oculus store. NOT releasing on oculus store is just throwing money to the bin
@full junco they have 3 categories
Gallery, Early Access, and Games
Gallery is indie stuff that kind of works
Early Access is solid games that are early access
Games is curated solid games
full junco
I don't really want much sales currently to be honest, I more prefer a small but loyal community that helps me bring the game to a "more content" state before too many people play it
wicked oak
if your game is technically solid, you can go on the Early Access category
and as long as you dont release on gallery, you will get a lot of traffic
Games and Early Access have only a few items
full junco
and I think the oculus store isnt good for much community talk, steam is better for that
wicked oak
and its where people go look at first
yeah, that is true
no game forums
but you are basically offering people to get it on oculus store
some people prefer that
full junco
without forums there isnt really a point to selling stuff there
wicked oak
and the extra sales of course
i dunno, i got 3k dollars out of oculus store
7k on steam
but its still 3k dollars i wouldnt have got if i didnt release on oculus
3k dollars > 0k dollars
full junco
I don't really need those extra sales though
wicked oak
one allways needs the extra sales
you can allways delay a bit too
oculus wont worry if you dont release in oculus store simultaneously
full junco
everone who buys the game without communicating with me about what he likes or doesn't is essentially a "wasted" sale lol
wicked oak
money aint wasted. And you still have all the steam communication
full junco
solid community s way more important to me than solid amount of sales
wicked oak
but the sales are "extra"
full junco
I dont really want to tell people on the oculus store that they should go to the steam forums
I will sell my game on the oculus store, but not the exact same moment when I release it on steam. I think a few months later or so is better when the game is more solid
wicked oak
yeah, thats what i was talking about
release on steam
get feedback
improve the game
and when its on a great technical level, you go release in Oculus Store
getting into Games or Early access
wich would give you a good amount of sales
full junco
and how long does it take them to answer a request for rifts?
wicked oak
maybe a couple weeks
just make sure to have a professional and cool message
they already get fucktons of people trying to get free rifts, and they have to filter
so make their job easier by showing you are business from the very start
same exact tactic to get access to knuckles
full junco
ok, so I should not send them a mail as the programmer but I'm the CEO you are saying. which is true
but a couple weeks is quite a lot time
just buying one is easier then
wicked oak
well, of course
but it aint free
right now at 400 dollas for the offer, its not as bad
i asked for them becouse touch wasnt availible at that point
full junco
are they at least sending them with 3 cameras?
wicked oak
no, just the usual pack
but if they send you 2 packs, wich is common
thne you have 4 cameras
full junco
yeah thats fine then
a couple weeks is a lot though, I hope to have my game already released in a couple weeks
wicked oak
oh, that soon?
and you arent doing marketing right now to hype people?
maaaaaaaaaaaaaan
full junco
for a month or so I'm working on the trailer now
wicked oak
ive already said several times that steam releases go straight into the trash bin
full junco
I will release the trailer the second the game is available on steam
wicked oak
unless you can do marketing and organize it so people buy it as soon as it releases
that wont work
you need to market the game a bit more before
remember steam will not give any traffic to you
unless
you have marketed it and you get a sales spike at release
full junco
well, so you're saying I should release the trailer one day before I release the game. would also be fine
wicked oak
if you get a sales spike at release, you get into the "top sellers" or "popular new games" and then you get a LOT of traffic
honestly i would try to marketing it months before release
full junco
months before release, people will just forget about it again
wicked oak
becouse 10 times reddit frontpage gets the game to be more known than 1 time
ah, but you can keep people on it
full junco
if I see some trailer now I will have forgot about that game in 2 days again
wicked oak
by doing a series of videos, or a dev blog, or something of the like
look at how other games market theirs. They keep releasing trailers and videos for a good time before full release
full junco
I'm not the kinda person for a dev blog or many videos though. I like to work 2 months on one 1.5 minute trailer thats really good, and thats it
wicked oak
so when they do release the final "BUY IT" trailer, people go "ah, that game finally released"
at least thats something ive done real wrong for my game...
but its what i want to do for the next
now ill be releasing videos and stuff to reddit and other psvr forums preparing to release
so people know when it releases
full junco
I haven't payed much attention to what other games are doing
only to some of those from people here in the chat, like you
and yes, your trailer wasn't too great
but you often talked about how you got a lot of views on your videos early
and then when you released it people weren't really that interested any more
wicked oak
the reason for that is different
full junco
so just because months before release people like stuff doesn't mean they will like it on release
wicked oak
that happened becouse the first videos were done while it was like the only wave shooter
by the time i released, like 9999999 unity wave shooter released
and they saturated the genre HARD
full junco
well yeah, that was an issue
but I don't think it would have been much of a difference if you would have released those videos early or not?
wicked oak
probably i would get less sales
if i didnt
what would get me like 10 times the sales, is if i released 1 month before
and that was possible
full junco
and when people see something first that they find awesome, they are very exited for it. 1 week later, they aren't. at least thats the case for me. so I just want that when people see the game for the first time in that trailer they find it super awesome and immediately buy it then, without any time in between
wicked oak
and, if i released one month before, i would have made the oculus touch launch library
@full junco its more about reach
glossy agate
If you get hype, and shown content people put that on the wishlist for alerts on release. Gotta hype a product hard before release.
wicked oak
yeah
you do that with the steam page
you set the steam page live a week or 2 before release
and start hyping the shit out of it everywhere
so people put it on wishlist or similar
and then get the alert when it fully releases
bonus points if you send it to youtubers
glossy agate
Yeah I had a big list on the last game. Turnover on VR youtubers is huge haha. Keep it updated
full junco
well I would have no idea though how I would "hype the shit out of it" everywhere
I can do a trailer, and that takes enough time. I'm a programmer, not a shit-out-hyper lol
glossy agate
If you have a solid pitch it's just the usual discord and Reddit groups. Banner ads also to pitch it big budget, but you need some or coverage to pull it off.
full junco
I am 99.9% confident that many people who see my trailer will find it awesome. I am not very confident that I can keep them interested for a week or so though
unless they watch the trailer every day
glossy agate
Check out what planeterism is doing. Just a content bank and community building. Hype is a longer term plan to get people committed to the outcome. If the game is awesome you win, and if it's no mans sky vr you still win.
full junco
but when you release trailer stuff without releasing the game theres also always the issue that someone else who might create a very similar game will quickly release that to be "first" @glossy agate @wicked oak
not saying that its likely, but its an avoidable risk when you just release the game before anyone knows you'll release it
is the steam algorithm the only reason to hype before release?
glossy agate
Nobody copycats a game till it's successful. Ideas don't mean anything unless someone can execute on it.
full junco
I'm talking about if someone independently worked on a similar idea
not that someone copies it
glossy agate
If the game hits you have a ton of lead time plus user base
wicked oak
@full junco nope not really possible
and if they do you can do crying marketing of "meany stole the idea" or whatever.
and you have a huge lead
they arent going to plagiarize your game in 1 month
glossy agate
We have a flappy bird ue4 example just because tappy bird or whatever was a shit game that got attention.
full junco
I couldn't blame anyone on for "stealing" my "idea", because @wicked oak you know that this "idea" I had isn't that unique
wicked oak
you can still hype it i guess
full junco
I just don't really see how to hype stuff for a long period of time (2 weeks) if there really isn't that much content in the game or anything that I could hype. luckily my game looks very good, so it looks nice in trailers
also, I prefer to underpromise and overdeliver
I think if you hype too much and people have too many expectations, that just results in bad reviews
I much prefer if only 100 people buy my game but like it, keep playing it and allow me to slowly grow it
and won't I easily get those 100 people through a good trailer posted on r/vive? I think I don't really need that steam algorithm to put me in some top seller list. or is there some big flaw in what I think?
wicked oak
nope
not enough
definitely not enough due to the current spam
if it was both r/vive and r/oculus, then maaaaaaybe
to put it into perspective, i have google analytics of the store page
posts in reddit (both sites) would get 10-15 concurrent viewers
steam "popular new releases" was 80
full junco
but your game was a wave shooter, and your trailer wasn't too great
wicked oak
yup
full junco
my game is a game that absolutely doesn't exist currently in VR (I think) and I'll have a really good trailer (I think)
wicked oak
your minecraft in ue4 video did get a fuckton of views
if you can get even one tenth of that, then its guaranteed top sellers
maybe post it on r/games too?
full junco
that thing did, yeah. something like 600k views. for a stupid blueprint project
wicked oak
all the "X but in unreal engine 4" gets lots of views
even if badly done
just look at the "zelda in unreal 4" kid
literally just default assets with a zelda character on all default filters
tons of money in patreon
at least yours was really cool
wintry escarp
why? Nintendo would never allow that to get anywhere
wicked oak
the kid is living on the edge
he is not only using nintendo IP stuff
he is also earning money from it
full junco
I kinda expect VR games to not do well on /r/games, because compared to regular games only very few people there have VR, so only few will upvote it, and since votes have to be high compared to the rest VR stuff cant be successfull there
wicked oak
but if it is a really cool trailer, then it might
and r/games gets a massive amount of traffic
even if most dont use vr
full junco
also, if I post something on r/games, I can't really post it at r/vive at the same time I think
crossposts aren't well received on reddit
wicked oak
oh you can
i can post it for yourself
you post it on the VR pages, and i "steal" the video a couple minutes after it
full junco
ok, that works 😄
wicked oak
its something i told people when putting stuff on r/oculus
as i was spamming my videos and stuff, i think r/oculus flagged me as spammer
not r/vive, r/vive lets devs spam all they want
full junco
I think they dont, fantasifall said they prevented him from posting stuff if I remember correctly
was quite a while ago that he said that though
wicked oak
then he might have spammed too much
full junco
so maybe in the last few months they changed?
I think he said even posting about updates they dont like
wicked oak
full junco
yeah I read that
wintry escarp
anyone tried the kite demo in 4.17? it seems to run very poorly
I just upgraded from 780 to 1070 and performance has tanked compared to before
wintry escarp
cant be the gpu, superposition benchmark gives it 8883 which seems decent.
wintry escarp
they must have changed something kite used but now performs badly
real needle
@full junco I started making my monster smash game before any were released. It is a guarantee that somebody else is making your game as well
and you just gotta keep at it, because there are only so many genres
basically, if you're banking on being the only game of a type you might be putting too many eggs into one basket
also, the steam trashbin is correct. pretty much 1:1 correlation between marketing and sales
there are dozens of invisible VR games being posted weekly
and I mean truly invisible
use steamspy, and look at the follower numbers
those give you an accurate read on how many people actually are buying. the ranges they give for owners, always take the low side as optimistic
full junco
@wintry escarp yes, epic made the performance of kite a lot worse with some engine version after 4.7
wintry escarp
ok, thanks
full junco
@real needle are there really "good" invisible ones?
real needle
nobody knows!
full junco
well you could look through those games
real needle
you're missing the point...
full junco
I am sure some people look at every released vr game
@real needle I might be, what's the point?
real needle
i'm saying marketing is the thing
inherent "goodness" doesn't matter when supply is as high as it is
full junco
when there is no other similar game...
real needle
still needs marketing so that people know to look. those who wanted it have already searched and not found it, etc
full junco
what on reddit? just the obvious "posting awesome stuff about the game on r/vive"?
real needle
they love being teased
they've got thousands of dollars of gear sitting there
show them some pornography
full junco
steam doesn't allow that I think 😂
real needle
lol
spiral zephyr
as with all forums etc, its true for reddit too.. dont come from outside and drop an attention-bomb.. Get into the culture first
wintry escarp
my ue4 game view should be visible inside my rift shouldn't it
in edit mode just for a quick look
full junco
I am quite active following some subreddits. not vr ones though
spiral zephyr
im not saying adopt reddit culture, but just hang out for a while. And honestly I woudlnt straight post to main subs myself, i'd seed smaller subs with offbeat but relevant small teasers of the thing i was building, let others repost it
if you have some stupid "simulation" in your game, as in neat to watch physics happening, maybe share it with /r/simulated or something
full junco
I've seen subs like that, yeah
wicked oak
i have an absolute fuckton of karma from r/games
due to unreal tournament 4, wich kind of comes from the Open Tournament project wich i created
spiral zephyr
r/games was(before i unsubscribed years ago) very game design oriented. r/gaming was the hype machine. but things change
full junco
unfortunately, I don't really have simulation stuff in my game
wicked oak
the posts are "Look at my cosplay" "DAE remember this old gem" "look at this mario made out of cardboard" "tired meme from GTA or skyrim"
r/games is very, very tightly controlled
wintry escarp
theres a big gray ball next to me in vr, where is that coming from?
wicked oak
literally nazi mods, they are brutal
spiral zephyr
yea and you can show off a stupid bug and say "im tired of AAA bugfests, decided to do better myself:" there and it might go
wicked oak
the absolutely brutal mods dont want to become r/gaming 2.0, so they nuke 99% of the new posts
everything that isnt serious or news-ish gets nuked
full junco
almost as serious as r/spacex?
wicked oak
i dunno
but i do know they have deleted frontpage threads with hundreds of comments
becouse some random rule that "it isnt serious" or whatever
spiral zephyr
im mostly an internet consumer. Plan is to publish through national education program, so not looking at internet from marketing perspective. I get stuff filtered from vr subs, news sites, but mostly here and other dev forums
wicked oak
a few games managed to meme their way into r/gaming frontpage
it is definitely possible, if its a funny GIF
it has to be a GIF
youtube video wont get seen
full junco
I guess it's an issue that I never myself looked for vr games, so I don't know that much about what people who look for vr games do
wicked oak
needs to be a gif, and needs to be memey
@full junco inmersion and movement
in vr, movement = fun in 99% of the cases
full junco
@wicked oak I didn't mean in game
spiral zephyr
a year ago or so i could update latest on steam, but stopped that before xmas
wicked oak
its something i did wrong on DWVR, there is not enough movement
@full junco they look for AAA VR games
but ones that arent oculus exclusive
and they really, REALLY want some story game that takes a while to finish
full junco
can't deliver that
wicked oak
too many arcade games
a vr RPG that is halfway decent would be HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE
too bad doing a halfway decent rpg is 100% outside of the real of indies
you would need some voice acting for example
you cant textbox everyone in vr
well, you could
but you would lose all inmersion there
full junco
I also didn't mean what kind of game they look for, I meant if most vr gamers actually go to reddit, which they don't I think, so where do they look. probably those websites
spiral zephyr
hehe, i forgot to tell, im not looking for vr 'games' at all. Im looking for vr 'apps' and experiences.
have real gamey game friends, and they game everywhere, mostly on phone(but also pc/vr), so if there is a phone-game with players you think would fit, could you place an ad there? Most direct channel I can think of
wicked oak
@full junco vr gamers looking at reddit want to see the news
and whats the new hot game
full junco
how well does ads on reddit work?
I think ads are shown at the top of a subreddit, so you can say show some ad in r/vive
wicked oak
damn well for what ive heard
but im not sure about posting the indie game there. You can get to the same thing with posting cool videos on the subreddits
in fact that probably would work better
full junco
well as long as you only pay per click
I'm just wondering what kind of person doesn't have an adblocker, and is that kind of person a good player for some game
full junco
they are always blocked for me
full junco
why would an adblocker not block an ad
wicked oak
damn spammer
full junco
if an adblocker doesn't block an ad its a bad adblocker
wintry escarp
ok, its some thing the player pawn makes, turned it off
full junco
I wouldn't have an issue paying 1k for some ads
if it helps building a community, sure
I think I never in my life deliberately clicked on an ad though, so that kinda makes me question the effectiveness
did anyone here ever found something useful through an online ad?
wintry escarp
hmmm this seems unlikely, post says I should use 2560x1200 res for rift
wicked oak
@wintry escarp thats for the "final" buffer
on the image that gets sent to the oculus
but thats an SDK thing
due to how the SDK does the distortion, its better to actually render at a higher resolution
1.4 times that
so aim for something like 3.2kx1.500
beyond 1.5 supersampling you start getting worse results. Basically you are just bruteforcing antialiasing at that point
its best to render at 1,3-1.4 resolution and use MSAA to get the highest image quality possible
sly elk
Has anyone done a/b testing on win10 dx12 vs win7 dx11 for performance differences in unreal VR projects? If so, anyone have specifics about what parts of cpu and gpu were faster/slower?
wicked oak
not sure about DX12 + vr
wintry escarp
I only just got a dx12 card but so far all apps report back I'm still dx11
mighty carbon
@wintry escarp did you get 1060 after all?
wintry escarp
yes
sly elk
Is there a way to distance cull a movable object? Ideally I don't want to pay drawcall or triangle cost on my small pieces at set distances. No need to render an m8 nut from 1000 UUs away
glossy agate
@full junco a lot of the benner ad is just front of mind exposure. When they end up seeing a post about it later in a FB group or something they are more likely to check it out because of the familiarity. Usually takes 10 points of contact before someone will "know" of your game. I do this in my day job a lot to get clients.
Sariento was pretty small budget but they did it right with the advertising.
astral dust
Hey everybody, new here. So I´m making a small ue4 cinematic scene and would to like if it´s possible to save VR movement to an animation curve?
glossy agate
@sly elk LOD them down to a cube or billboard maybe? So they will still be there.
sly elk
if they are a cube i still pay the drawcall cost
glossy agate
I'm curious about this too now. I'll poke a round and see if I find anything.
sly elk
im going to be running right up to the edge of drawcall limits for VR with my estimated number of parts. Allowing lower end hardware to turn off dynamic shadows will help but so will not rendering small stuff at a distance. I have a ton of fasteners since every washer, nut, bolt, cotterpin is an actor
they aren't that many triangles but they do cost a lot of drawcalls
about 40% of my draw calls are on tiny meshes
glossy agate
Will setting draw distance in the mesh settings work? Down below LOD settings
sly elk
i tried that, not working so far. At least ot in the editor
oh, it does
if I turn on game view
thanks 😃
glossy agate
Yeah, all that stuff has been wonky in VR for me too. Not sure if its a screen size issue or what
Awesome! Gotta do that in my project now because Im spawning a bunch of shells when firing. 8 people doing it at once may break the game haha
fair hearth
@glossy agate if you don't replicate your shells they won't appear on other players screens so you should be fine then, making it just a effect for each person's individual gun, rather than everyone's gun
glossy agate
True, Ill probably just have to turn off the replication on those. Thought it would look cool though
sturdy coral
astral dust
Oh, sequence rec, thanks
sturdy coral
I bought one of the $200-off Vives just to get the weight savings over the Vive Pre.. hopefully I can sell the Vive Pre for a decent portion of the cost
glossy agate
Made some progress on the inventory system. It does a strange thing though where the slot behind my head wont let me pull the bat unless its rendered sometimes. Really strange. Anyway onto the full body setup tomorrow. https://youtu.be/Ch5Zbd8hVBk
spiral zephyr
ohh that looks sweet!
you gonna have a body as well, or will the legs be too shitty?
glossy agate
Yeah working on the full body next. I already pulled a bunch of anims for it. Just have to override the head and hands.
I say "just" but if it's like anything else it will take me another 2 weeks to get it working.
spiral zephyr
lol tell me about it
glossy agate
Found a plugin BIK that should make it easier but I'll try it myself first cause I know it's possible.
spiral zephyr
would love to have something like that in my stuff. Please pluginize;)
Looks very physically elaborate which is the best in VR.. I would use it with instruments and notes, not guns, though..
Right now the items snap to a scale/rot when placed. Any further plans/dreams? I'd imagine a pistol holster on a physics hinge(just visual part)
wicked oak
@glossy agate BIK gets the job done, but its closed source, even the plugin itself
it means you would be dependant on their updates
becouse if you want to change engine version
you cant
not sure if you can even use custom github version with it
spiral zephyr
phyics movement on pawn might be tricky, i dunno
glossy agate
Yeah I saw that. For me that's not much of an issue because I don't know how to modify source on anything anyway, but if I get a real programmer to help me in the future it could be a problem. Or if it conflicts with mordentrals plugin.
I'm not doing physics on the pawn. It just guesses positions based on contraints. The leg anims just run off the anim BP like a normal project. The extra anims I got were for the climbing crouching prone and climb up states.
spiral zephyr
i meant physics only on a visual representation of dangling inventory. Gonna try it myself, will probably find out that its best to fake it some simple way..
Too many overlapping actors on slot behind your back? (if it is driven by coll overlap)
head and stuff
nvm i have too little inf :p
glossy agate
Ah yeah, not sure how I'm doing that yet. Could replicate just fixed attach locations like Pavlov, or do only owner see when attached to hide it.
It's only 1 slot behind the head that only takes melee class weapons.
Also has 1 primary gun 1 secondary gun. The other 6 slots take any item besides weapons, and only weapons will attach to their weapon slots.
full junco
@glossy agate that kinda makes sense (the exposure stuff). how did sariento their advertising?
glossy agate
They had banners around Reddit and on the sites like VR focus ect. I had never heard of the game besides ads but when people mentioned it I know what they were talking about, they got a fair number of youtubers on, but not nearly as much as gorn. The way they promoted made it look like a big budget product. All they had to do was get people to know about it, then the game spoke for itself once people played it and got even more word or mouth.
Ended up with a small budget game that is a real contender with a bigger budget raw data for the wave shooting genre
full junco
@glossy agate interesting
wicked oak
important to note that sairento is made enterely out of store assets
and its same budget as DWVR
while i focused on the strenght of the core gameplay, they added rng elements and a bit more progression
their marketing was way stronger, not even close. They also were more marketeable becouse cyberninja waifus
meanwhile i had skeleteons XD
full junco
@wicked oak sure that budget was the same when you factor in what they paid for advertisements?
wicked oak
good point
probably not then
the game itself is very similar in size and scope to mine
environment being all done with bought assets, animations being from mixamo or others, and only really the characters being custom meshes
the main difference is that i focused on tech and making the game run very very smooth and play well. while they added more progression systems to keep people playing
when i bought sairento to see if i could find some cool shit to steal for my game, i got really dissapointed from the core gameplay
its just inferior to mine by quite a lot
full junco
well I guess I kinda did the same like you, I spent many months on the tech in the background, fixing many many things in the UE4 source to improve performance and stuff, and I probably spent like 2 weeks on actual gameplay stuff, so I spent way way more time on the stuff that people will never "see"
wicked oak
just look at sairento to see the difference marketing can do
steam spy says 15k players for sairento +- 3k
i have around 1200 or so players for DWVR
10 times more sales
from good marketing
and also the RNG progression was a massive success
their game as a much longer average playtime
full junco
only 15k sales? thats still not much
wicked oak
i only added progression systems recently...
for an indie game like this at 25 euros it is
full junco
well but when there are 1 million people with rift or vive now (I guess, after the recent rift price cut) 15k isn't much
wicked oak
its a 1.5%. not half bad
remember its an indie low budget game, not something sponsored by Oculus that is AAA
full junco
yeah for a low budget games its still great
wicked oak
its way on the most successful games if you remove the oculus sponsored stuff
you really need to send the game to press, but also buy banners on their websites
if the press see a game in the banners and then the same game to review, they will take it and not ignore you like they ignore 99% of the games they get sent
the biggest issue is not getting ignored. Thats why i was talking about not waiting until the last moment to show stuff
unless you have a plan to do a kickass marketing campaign for release
if sairento released like DWVR, it would have sold like it
not 10 times more
full junco
hm, I actually never thought about banners on websites
don't website just use google to put whatever stuff in there?
I think the guys who operate websites probably only surf their own sites with adblockers, so they wouldn't notice what stuff is in ad banners there
wicked oak
reddit is the obvious, i remember sairento did get reddit adverts
full junco
well yeah reddit surely
wicked oak
your first priority is to "look" AAA
even if you arent
becouse people is sick to death of unpolished unity indie games
full junco
yeah thats definitely my priority with my trailer
wicked oak
if you look AAA, people would be very interested on it
sadly ive failed on it becouse i cant trailer
while i do have kickass screenshots, my trailers are very meh
full junco
I hate working on stuff like trailer. I just wanna sit in front of code
wicked oak
and thats AFTER hiring professionals
full junco
well its easy to render very nice shots with sequencer
your trailer was boring because you just only showed stuff from the vr preview
some nice tracking shots through the levels would already have made it way better
wicked oak
yeah. Its becouse the focus on my game isnt scenics or similar but the gameplay
full junco
but your levels look good, so you can show them
wicked oak
i found that doesnt work. from the Deathwave trailer
in the Deathwave trailer, wich i did myself, i did have tracking shots of the maps
full junco
almost any UE4 game can look really nice with the right post process settings and good camera angles lol
wicked oak
on the first DWVR trailer, i had a "looking around" as the start of the trailer
didnt work for me XD
need to catch the attention of people instantly
full junco
I will focus on showing "it looks freaking awesome" in my trailer and only show few gameplay
its just way too hard to show why a VR game is great in a 2d trailer
so just focus on graphics when possible in a trailer 😄
wicked oak
something i thought of doing is a 100% faked gameplay cinematic
something that simulates gameplay, but its animated with sequencer to be perfectly smooth and calculated
wicked oak
im just not good at it so i know it wont be good
full junco
but its means you have to spend a few weeks just on the trailer
full junco
well I already worked for more than 1 month on my trailer now
probably even 2 months lol
but just because I found many bugs
and then fixed those, so a lot of programming again
didnt yet start with cutting stuff for the trailer
also didnt yet record any gameplay stuff
only nice tracking shots with sequencer
full junco
I will very clearly say in the trailer that its an awesome roomscale VR game thats fully designed for awesome roomscale VR
I will create some small website with some nice screenshots and embed the trailer or something like that
I have the domains and stuff, and there are enough templates available to quickly create something that looks good
full junco
yeah thats a nice one
maybe a looping video in the background there instead of the still image
like here: https://www.epicgames.com/paragon/en/home
wicked oak
the idea was to add the video right below the huge banner
ah, that kind of video
thats not really a trailer, but like an "animated background"
full junco
a logo of your company is missing on your website
you should keep that bar at the top on the DWVR site
wicked oak
ah, thanks
real needle
What is the process to get a game released on Oculus Home?
Do you pick which category it ends up in? I understand there are three "tiers"?
wintry escarp
can you make a single game exe that will switch to vr mode if it detects a rift, and play in 2d if it doesn't?
real needle
Regarding the submission - is there anything more required if you already have a steam-ready package?
wicked oak
the barrier is lowered for Gallery, but its really damn high for Games and Early Access
not really. Just adding a DRM check somewhere in the code
there is a node for it
real needle
ah
wicked oak
its called "check entitlements"
it checks if its not a pirated copy
and thats about it
but you need to setup oculus online subsystem, and fully disable everything steam related
you need to remove the steamvr plugins
real needle
I'm expecting gallery
wicked oak
no lagging, proper support, good loading screens, not buggy, etc
real needle
just want to do the minimum to get on there, assuming that is lowest tier
wicked oak
Games would get more than 10 times the sales
real needle
I believe it - but my game is pretty basic
wicked oak
the issue with gallery is that oculus store searching features are broken
they are absolute dogshit
when there is sub 100 games, like in Games, its not as bad
as they are divided by categories and similar
but Gallery has a ton of games
real needle
i'm sure over time that will get better
oh man, I'm reading oculus needs things like auto-pause when remove headset etc?
or will that all be waived for gallery
wicked oak
thats the kind of thingthey waive for gallery
wicked oak
yes
that one is automatic
i just have it on the begin play of my character
if it fails, it closes the game
2 nodes total
sly elk
@wicked oak on a 4k display the formatting breaks: http://i.imgur.com/uJFAenU.jpg
wicked oak
lmao
sly elk
as I scale the page in an out, that div width gets narrower as the page gets wider
and the logo scales down
which seems like the opposite of the responsive behavior
Oh, it directly correlates to the height of the main image
mighty carbon
@wicked oak you don't have any hands in DWVR ?
wicked oak
i dont when you are using weapons becouse i had desync issues
i decided to just make the hands invisible instead of worrying about having them properly aligned
players will not care anyway
you have hands when you have no weapon equipped
mighty carbon
got it
btw, has anyone seen new sales figures for Rift since the craze with sale started ? (updated number of units sold)
wintry escarp
not me but it would be intresting to see
mighty carbon
uneven moon
Why is my enemy AI not following me in VR with this set-up?
It worked in my non-VR test project but the target actor here is different.
fair hearth
Looks like they're moving to 0 0 0
uneven moon
It has a target actor, it should technically move towards that regardless of the destination (confirmed working in another non-VR project, followed me in the FPS template)
fair hearth
Can you do a print string out of the "on fail" output, to see if your input is causing the function to fail?
uneven moon
Which input? The custom event is activated on Event BeginPlay
I'll do a quick test
It prints on both success and on fail?
Wtf
Haha
fair hearth
Can you send a zoomed out version of your graph?
uneven moon
fair hearth
So, what might be happening, is that the event begin play is only triggering the ai move to node once, so the ai is only tracking you for when the game starts and not afterwards,
See if using event tick solves it, though I don't recommend using event tick if you can avoid it.
uneven moon
Yeah I'd avoid it - the AI MoveTo doesn't rely on an event tick, it pushes the AI to its target consistently at a predetermined speed (its movement speed) and works so long as it remains active
The only difference between this and the FPS template (where this worked) is the player is now a VR pawn
I may be referencing the target actor incorrectly, is there another node that specifically targets the VR character?
fair hearth
Is this in your vrpawn graph?