#👨🏫︱SI Unreal Study Society

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

paper zodiac
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For a limited time, a high quality official Unreal course is available for free. A few members of our community were interested in exploring this together and 'bootcamping' it and sharing our progress.
Dates: December 3rd to January 15th
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/news/free-unreal-fellowship-games-course-hits-the-edc-for-a-limited-time

We have been organizing (#🎮︱unreal message & #🎮︱unreal message) to find schedule plans during the holidays.

This online gathering is welcome to other folks who are interested!

Unreal Engine

Elevate your game development skills with this online course. For the first time ever, you can watch as we reveal over 35 hours of expert-led content (for a limited time). Don't miss out!

fair cosmos
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Has anyone started yet?

fair cosmos
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I only watched the quickstart video really sped up. Still learned a few hotkeys I'd forgotten

waxen stirrup
# fair cosmos Has anyone started yet?

Yep! I’ve done the intro to blueprints and UMG, but like you, I did them sped up. Hehe. The UMG was interesting as I haven’t played with that system at all.

somber summit
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Oh my god, did not know about the 2x speed option 😭 thank you so much

abstract eagle
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It'd be super nice if they could make the videos available after the Jan 15th for the people who participated... 100% need to revisit at some point.pepe_sad

paper zodiac
fair cosmos
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Just in case anyone is interested, about 1/3 of the way through the Unreal Gameplay Framework video they mention subsystems and I wanted to confirm that you can indeed make them in blueprints. Though you do need to set up an appropriate C++ base class for them first and make sure that one does not instantiate and you also have to make sure the blueprint class is loaded before the engine tries to instantiate it. So it's a bit tricky and takes some knowhow but it's definitely possible

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though something to mention is that in blueprints you may run into issues using other subsystems. In C++ you can make sure any subsystems you need are instantiated first, in blueprints they assume it's just not safe and won't let you use them which can be a bit annoying

paper zodiac
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I'm in Coworking

fair cosmos
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wait was the time decided and I just missed it?

paper zodiac
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It appears I set the event for 7 AM instead of 7 PM

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Current: 16 videos. 3 are 1 hour, the rest seem to be 1:45 to 2:15 long

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@serene breach

serene breach
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Here!

somber summit
paper zodiac
paper zodiac
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Relevant joke

Game: "You build a military faction to destabilize a government."
Gamers: "Cool, sweet. Love it"
Game: "Preferred pronouns?"
Gamers: "Why do games have to be so political these days!"

serene breach
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2 things

  1. Which videos are we watching for Wednesday, or are we just starting on our own?

  2. Motion to call this the "Unreal Fellowship Club" or "UFC" for short

fair cosmos
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I think we're all starting our own? My next one is gonna be intro to materials

serene breach
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o7

fair cosmos
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...on that note, I am not a fan of the materials video 🤣 but I think the project for the class you can download will be a great reference in the future

somber summit
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yeah the materials video had me a little worried, but so far "Lighting Introduction" has been pretty educational (even if it ultimately boils down to "no yeah actually do use those Lumen Post Process Volume settings")

fair cosmos
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I didn't even finish the Lighting Introduction, got a bit too frustrated that it boils down to "use Lumen, anything else sucks" but then the Lumen is all noise and magical settings some of which may or may not work because reasons 🙃

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I may be a bit too dramatic about it though

somber summit
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yeah nothing wrong with disabling lumen/nanite/vsm out of the box. i would 100% do that for any project that isn't going for realism

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im a bit of a lumen hater myself, but i was happy to see the things i gripe about being addressed

fair cosmos
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I love Lumen! I just hate how it's sold as the only thing to use now

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And asking for lighting help ever since Lumen came out has gotten harder than ever because the answer always seems to be "just use Lumen"

somber summit
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definitely

plush fjord
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Man I wish there were subtitles

serene breach
paper zodiac
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Hotkeys
[End] key drops a mesh to the ground.
[G] Hide/unhide nonvisible elements.
[Ctrl+B] to find a thing in the content browser
[Ctrl+E] will open in the appropriate editor
[Shift+Backspace] in Blueprints deletes a node but maintains throughline EXEC. (thanks Sarah)

Other Learnings
Collections & Favorites help avoid doing a lot of annoying foldering navigation. Coloring folders is helpful too.

Asset Actions -> Migrate is like Exporting to a unitypacking. Can't use for things in Plugin folder which is annoying.
Niagra is the new particle/effects system (like fluidsim). Cascade is the old system. There's a plugin to convert them.
Quixel Bridge: Photogram/Decals. High fidelity and eats up space quickly, good for photoreal projects.

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Video 2's coverage of Object->Actor->Pawn->Character and Component is a good inheritance structure to know about.

Components are akin to Unity's components. They don't have a transform (unless its the specific one that does)
Components are useful for network replication scenarios.

fair cosmos
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Looks like y'all had a ton of fun without me, how dare 😄

serene breach
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You were the one playing games iirc 🤔

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Also thanks again @paper zodiac I haven't gotten to talk about unreal since I was laid off. This is very refreshing. Maybe after the fellowship I'll learn unity. (Or make Alice happy by trying Godot)

fair cosmos
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Godot is fascinating to me, but I don't imagine it would fill a need for me given how comfortable I am with Unreal and all it offers

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I was gonna say maybe we can organize an Explore Godot party but realized I probably wouldn't have time for it

serene breach
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I mean... Maybe this grows from the fellowship to a structured information sharing session

fair cosmos
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that is my secret hope yes, but for unreal things

paper zodiac
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Sorry I was fading out towards the end their, my brain was running out of brain goop

serene breach
serene breach
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Very very powerful

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Unreal 5 really tried to push the world partition system when it launched. But sub-levels and level streaming are always going to be much better to manage from a creation standpoint

fair cosmos
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Hmmm, I thought it depends on what sort of experience you're working on (and I could be entirely wrong on this, levels are one of my weak spots)

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But my impression was that world partition is more for open world things

serene breach
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Yes! I haven't made any massive maps recently. My gripe was world partition being the default -_-

I'd make little maps and the world partition would disappear the objects into the void.

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im bitter, I will open my mind for this experience

fair cosmos
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oh I get that!

fair cosmos
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spotted in the Customizing Pawns video. stuff like this brings me way too much joy

serene breach
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Real "final_project_final_v3_forreal" energy

waxen stirrup
fair cosmos
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fair 😄

waxen stirrup
waxen stirrup
waxen stirrup
waxen stirrup
serene breach
waxen stirrup
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Quick tip for those who haven’t watched Intro to Run Time Animations: it’s a great overview of basic player control, animation and state machine, but the people on the session end up asking him to repeat almost everything, so he shows most things twice. Not a bad thing, but don’t worry if you miss it the first time. 🙂

waxen stirrup
serene breach
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Unfortunately I am working my way over to Seattle 😅 so I can't physically be there. But I'll try being more active in the server. It'll be nice to know even more people when I finally make it

serene breach
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I have dungeons and dragons tonight so I won't be able to attend

fair cosmos
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have fun!

paper zodiac
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A nice detail on the "rewatch later" is that the project files include all the powerpoints as PDFs

waxen stirrup
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@paper zodiac Which channel will the meeting happen on? Co-Working or Coffee Break?

paper zodiac
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Coworking

paper zodiac
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William (Ghostbear) provided some great lifecycle diagrams for Unreal

fair cosmos
paper zodiac
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Aha, the source of the image!

fair cosmos
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This is only tangentially related but something the way @paper zodiac brought up the project leaving the safety of "works on my computer" made me think of this video. The key point there is that one shouldn't just make a project and then build at the end when ready. Building and testing on other machines should be a part of the process from very early on so you can catch all sorts of mysteries as they appear as opposed to all at once right before a deadline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9HRzE7_2Xc

In this 2020 GDC Virtual Talk, Butterscotch Shenanigans' Seth Coster walks through how his team learned to use DevOps to get more done while working less.

Update: A previous version of this video unfortunately had unsynced audio and video. That has been corrected with this version.

Join the GDC mailing list: http://www.gdconf.com/subscribe

F...

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waxen stirrup
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@paper zodiac Thanks again for hosting the discussion!

paper zodiac
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Glad to help!
Im sneakily benefitting. I get to note take (which helps me learn), and I have a few people acting as scouts highlighting useful learnings.

paper zodiac
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By the way, I wont be able to make tomorrow's meetup. Busy with my fiancée and her sister.

If someone else could note take that would be appreciated!

serene breach
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o7 I don't mind taking notes!

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Hope you have fun!!

abstract eagle
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Hi I'm just about to start watching all the videos tomorrow, I wonder how far have people gotten xD

paper zodiac
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Sarah, I started the event for you

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Thanks for note taking!

serene breach
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Thank you!

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Wednesday isn't happening right?

paper zodiac
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Not planned to currently

fair cosmos
serene breach
serene breach
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Good session, we went over a lot of details from the sessions that each of us weren't aware of. And Agne let me know that the "Customizing Pawns" video is a wellspring of information, thought the presenter is a little scattered at times.

serene breach
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@fair cosmos There's ANOTHER thing in the pawn video. You can use math expressions to set floats (and presumably integers)

fair cosmos
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I must've missed that

serene breach
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Literally blink and you'll miss it 😂

serene breach
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Omg the state machine is everything i've ever wanted ;;

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You mean I don't need an

  • AI Controller
  • Blackboard
  • Behavior Tree
  • Custom tasks
  • Services
  • and magic
fair cosmos
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Using state machines for AI can still require some magic but it makes a heck of a lot more sense to me

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there was a presentation at Unreal fest Seattle where I learned about them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zovPQnq7ndE

Watch this recorded session from Unreal Fest Seattle 2024 that explores the development of ‘Goner’, a survival game with dinosaurs.

You’ll get an insight into how developer Black Shamrock gained extensive experience with State Tree, the new system for supporting AI development in UE5 and how they developed a set of tools and best practices for ...

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serene breach
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I might make a game with them so I know how to work it better, TY!

fair cosmos
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I feel like I should do something with them too because they seem so dang useful for all sortsa things

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can't believe it took me so long to learn about them

serene breach
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It was the third party of the blackboard that always got me :/

serene breach
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I was doing something on another screen until I saw state trees, and I went back. So worth it!

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Also I'll be there tonight. DnD was #cancelled

somber summit
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maybe this is common knowledge, but I was surprised to learn that State Trees are a complete replacement for behavior trees / blackboards. According to the presenters, State Tree is better than Behavior Tree in every way (except for personal taste and only being available in like 5.3+). I mention it here because the presenters only bring it up after an hour of instruction about Behavior Tree 💀

fair cosmos
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yes that was news for me too

serene breach
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Same

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I always hated how heavy behavior trees were

fair cosmos
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I am not surprised though. Behavior trees always felt so stiff and clunky

serene breach
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Like apparently from a performance side AND asset tracking side

fair cosmos
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though one thing making me worried is that I'm seeing a shift towards more flexible systems at the cost of making them a lot harder to grok (and more programmery in general). Like input handling is fantastic now but it's so much harder to set up and so much harder to explain to a beginner

serene breach
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That's a fair point, I was excited because I disliked the current implementation. I have no idea how a new user would keep track of it

fair cosmos
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they were using functions from this lab a lot https://www.fab.com/listings/69680f34-e5d2-44e6-b023-f054bbf629eb

Fab.com

Check out the related tutorials on the Epic Developer Community site:- Intuitive material building with the UI Material Lab - Part 1 (Introduction)- Intuitive material building with the UI Material Lab - Part 2 (Documentation)- Intuitive material building with the UI Material Lab - Part 3 (Material Functions combinations)Content:- 40 Material Fu...

fair cosmos
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in your target.cs file for the project you can control shipping logs with Target.bUseLoggingInShipping = true;

fair cosmos
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lol I always chuck so many things in here

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but, I should have noted that at least a few of IOCCC's winners were technically games

fair cosmos
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@paper zodiac you mentioned negative lights yesterday -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ome82A6jY6E it's 2y old so not sure if it still works but may have ideas for you

Link to IES profiles: https://ieslibrary.com/

If you have better information or other approaches for this, let me know, or show it off either here or on twitter. The more you share, the more other developers benefit from this :)

Disclaimer: keep in mind that it is quite janky, results may vary, and I cannot guarantee that it will work when coo...

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serene breach
fair cosmos
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Maybe? Idk some indie devs are just wildly good at stuff

serene breach
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That's so true

paper zodiac
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This is almost what I want.
I want dark lights but without shadows that appear illuminated

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Does that make sense?

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I wonder if you can turn off the shadow behaviors of the lights to achieve that

fair cosmos
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yeah, I think if you just make the light not cast shadows you won't get "illuminated shadows"

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it'll be cheaper too

serene breach
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Totally forgot to mention but Overlay materials are enabled by default in unreal. I checked in my project

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I'll have to experiment in C++ but these are the available functions. You can only seem to call them in blueprints for a specific mesh, and not update the blueprint render settings. At least as far as I know

fair cosmos
round vapor
serene breach
serene breach
paper zodiac
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I will be busy tonight and unable to note take

serene breach
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Can't make it tonight, or will be very late

paper zodiac
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Roger.

paper zodiac
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Ill be on in a few

fair cosmos
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same

fair cosmos
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Fab.com

The Cassini Sample takes you to space to demonstrate the latest features of the Procedural Content Generation (PCG) Framework through the creation of a space station and Saturn’s rings. In this sample, you will find examples of features such as: Shape Grammar (spline & primitive workflows), Geometry Processing, GPU Compute, GPU Scene Instancing,...

paper zodiac
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@serene breach It has mostly seemed like we are slowing down/not getting as much useful knowledge out of the Fellowship.
I suggested looking further afield and finding other videos/tutorials and then reviewing them and coming back to share notes. That benefits from the small group learning approach of coming back together to point towards worthwhile or away from less useful resources.

serene breach
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Running late

fair cosmos
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same!

paper zodiac
fair cosmos
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I don't think I can make it tonight 😦

paper zodiac
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Ryan are you making it?
@somber summit

round vapor
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I found some more videos that that hopefully someone will find useful:
Maximizing Your Game's Performance in Unreal Engine | Unreal Fest 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuIav71867E
A bit older, but still relevant. Some good practical tips on debugging performance issues.

Everyone on your team should be able to gauge the performance impact of their work. In this session, Unreal Engine Evangelist Ari Arnbjörnsson uses the new built-in tools of Unreal Engine 5 to find nasty performance traps and bugs he deliberately planted in his demo project before the presentation.

We’re excited to bring you sessions from Unrea...

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Making Better Blueprints | Unreal Fest 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW0IlgjF-iw
Another somewhat older video that is still relevant. Useful basic tips and tricks with blueprints.

Join us to see practical uses of sharing, communication, creation and cleanliness with Blueprints.

We’re excited to bring you sessions from Unreal Fest 2022, available to watch on demand: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/events/unreal-fest-2022

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Epic released a sample project called Cropout a while ago. There are two separate videos for breakdowns of the project:

Cropout Casual RTS Sample Project Guided Tour | Unreal Engine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjPp5A43HQI

Exploring the Cropout Sample | Inside Unreal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7kFfuyOb8I

Cropout is a top-down Casual RTS game sample project for Unreal Engine 5 that demonstrates best practices for building a title designed for cross-platform release. Find out more and download at unrealengine.com/cropout.

In this video, Cropout's creator Arran Langmead, Senior Content Developer at Epic Games, walks you through every aspect of how...

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Come join us this week as sit and chat with some of the developers behind the newly available Cropout Sample Project! Cropout is a sample top-down Casual RTS game with a family-friendly farming style that demonstrates all the best practices for building a project designed for cross-platform release. This project also demonstrates new engine feat...

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Simple Stylization Techniques in Unreal Engine | GDC 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exMzwH7EJUY
A useful talk that is a bit more tech art focused for stylized visuals.

Visuals feeling a little too close to default? Join Chris as he steps through a bunch of easy stylization techniques to help your project stand out!

Find graphs from the presentation and more information on making the final effect at https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/talks-and-demos/XayP/fortnite-simple-stylization-techniques-in-unre...

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somber summit
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oh man I'm so sorry, I was doing a thing with friends and completely spaced. did we decide anything regarding future tutorial content?

fair cosmos
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There in a min! Lost track of time

paper zodiac
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👨🏫︱SI Unreal Study Society

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I am rebranding us as the SI Unreal Study Society (SIUSS, pronounced Seuss)

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#🎮︱unreal message

plush fjord
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TIL an unpleasant fact about TMap's FindRef function
FindRef Despite its name, returns a copy of the value associated with your key, or a default-constructed value if your key is not found in the map. FindRef does not create a new element, and thus is available for use with both const and non-const maps.

paper zodiac
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I also learned the "IsServer" node is not if it is a server or not, but "IsServerOrNotConnectedToServer" which is very stupid

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How do folks feel about Feb 24th to Feb 28th?
Which evening works for a SIUSS meeting?

fair cosmos
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sounsd good to me!

plush fjord
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@fair cosmos How familiar are you with OpenSSL in Unreal?

fair cosmos
plush fjord
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I'm doing some signature generation code with some values that have worked for months, but now it's suddenly giving me access violation issues. I'm both very perplexed and blocked.

I think I'm going to have to jump to some earlier commits to see if it is a regression I somehow introduced (despite not changing these values)

fair cosmos
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strangeness. I know very little about such things but none of these values are the sort of things that could expire?

plush fjord
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It's failing before the generated signature leaves the machine.

fair cosmos
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oh right, you're saying access violation

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yeah likely a regression on your end then

plush fjord
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Basically I pass the values into OpenSSL, then it fails within there before I try to use the values which could be derived on bad values

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A previous time I hit problems with this it was because unreal's string format needed \n instead of newlines

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I'm gonna try hard coding and tweaking different newline replacements.

fair cosmos
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good luck! wish I had better advice

plush fjord
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Problem solved.
Visual Studio's value view automatically adds an extra backslash to escape characters (possibly to preserve data values
So
----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----\nMDSFKSADFLSD(234@34239
became
----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----\\nMDSFKSADFLSD(234@34239

Unreal's OpenSSL implementation is very picky, if you pass it any of the following, it explodes

MDSFKSADFLSD(234@34239
----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----MDSFKSADFLSD(234@34239
----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----\\nMDSFKSADFLSD(234@34239
----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY---- (an actual newline)
MDSFKSADFLSD(234@34239

This combined with me using VS value viewer and then pasting that into the config (that is not tracked in source control because these are secrets) is why it didn't look like I changed anything.

fair cosmos
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ah! sneaky. You should make a post on unreal forums or something so other folks can find this

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can see burning hours or days on it

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though I don't see the difference between the first two values you posted so looks like copy paste failed on you

plush fjord
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Fixed

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Discord markup ALSO cleans up double backslashes

fair cosmos
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oh speaking of SIUSS - did we ever plan any meetings?

plush fjord
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I had thought I scheduled one but it appears not

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Which evening works better for folks?

Monday 24th of Feb
Wednesday 26th of Feb
Friday 28th of Feb

fair cosmos
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I assume the Tu react is a We react?

plush fjord
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fixed

plush fjord
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Remind me, wasnt there a shortcut to just immediately snip a wire in blueprints?

fair cosmos
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ah it's muscle memory, probably Alt+click?

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yes that's it

plush fjord
plush fjord
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Hmm

Key Storage:
----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----\nMDSFKSADFLSD(234@34239

What is received on the client:
----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----\\\\nMDSFKSADFLSD(234@34239
Why does it need this many escape charactersssssss
(Part of this is because it's a " separated list of items, but it's just BIG dumb.

Like I can write ways to parse that, but it's just dumb

fair cosmos
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would you like some escapes with your escapes? I think it's gaining sentience and wants out

raw patio
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Digging through ancient tutorials I have hoarded forever ago that can still be useful to folks starting out:

High Poly modeling foliage to construct a texture sheet and setting it up in UDK https://youtu.be/f716yv_6_n0

Tutorial that covers how to create moving foliage in UDK. This tutorial covers how to create a texture sheet from a high poly model, and create motion in the UDK engine from vertex painting.

Below I have attached 2 hi-res shots of the material and the upk with the material set up.

Project Files: http://www.osiris-studios.com/tutorial/daisy

P...

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you can find the other parts linked to this first one

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Now to skip ahead to old UE4 tutorials!

raw patio
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huh, guess that's all the old unreal tuts I have.

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now just UE5 stuff

paper zodiac
fair cosmos
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ah looks like it got a bit buried, hope folks can make it!

paper zodiac
fair cosmos
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should we post this in #🥳︱events for more visibility?

raw patio
raw patio
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round vapor
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am5XZblZ7Qg
Input Icons using Common UI

This tutorial shows you how to make on-screen controls that automatically switch when the input type changes. This way the correct keys will be displayed if the player uses keyboard or controller.

Xbox icons created by Arks on itch.io

0:00 Intro
0:10 Install common UI plugin
0:20 Input action data table
2:04 Controller data blueprint
04:55 Pro...

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fair cosmos
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Ari's Notes on Notion

Hi 👋

Unreal Engine

In Unreal Engine, TArray is a dynamically sized array of typed elements. TArrays are very convenient to the programmer, and they are used a lot in our codebase. However there can be some subtle performance issues that can arise, and for optimal performance, you need to make sure you understand what goes on behind the scenes.

round vapor
paper zodiac
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SIUSS Meeting Schedule: Last Monday of the Month
7 PM instead of 6 PM

plush fjord
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Note: Possibly going to make SIUSS 4th monday of the month instead of last monday.
Discord doesn't have a nice 'recurring scheduling' option for last monday

serene breach
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Oof, but reasonable!

plush fjord
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Looks like my event did not create according to the rule

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Are folks good with next Monday?

raw patio
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Sure

plush fjord
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Make sure y'all have gone through a tutorial!

paper zodiac
plush fjord
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I am on the hunt for good blueprint organization style guides

fair cosmos
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oh stars idk if I'll have time to do a tutorial. But I'll try to show up

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oh wait why does it say 12pm?

paper zodiac
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Hmm

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Good question

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Fixed

fair cosmos
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super busy, won't make it tonight 😦 have fun without me

somber summit
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nooooo i was away from my phone and missed my reminder T_T I've been playing around with the new Mover 2.0 and network prediction plugin, in case anyone wants to compare notes

raw patio
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The event tonight has been postponed

paper zodiac
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Ah darn, was a bit tired today

paper zodiac
paper zodiac
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Reminder we are meeting tonight at 7 PM.

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I will ping folks who marked as interested

paper zodiac
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@fair silo

paper zodiac
fair cosmos
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I'd step in but I'm away until June 8

paper zodiac
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Reminder we are scheduled for today

paper zodiac
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Hey, think have been rather busy recently and there hasnt been much interest.