DEV BLOG
Side projects I mess around with in my spare time
2023-04-09
Project Supernova: Landing on the Planet
I was inspired to keep pushing on the planetary stuff so I spend some time polishing up how we would go from foot, to ship, to orbit, to planet surface.
Might be a long hiatus with work picking up soon.
2023-04-08
Project Supernova: Overworld to Planet
Worked out the Overworld to Planet and how it should look. We got our ship moving with Newtonian physics.
Once we reach the planet, we can orbit. At any point, the player can leave the planet and go back to the overworld.
2023-03-20
Project Supernova: Newtonian Physics
I began to wonder about the feel of the overworld. Maybe the ship has Newtonian physics where it proceeds in the same direction until thrust is applied in another direction.
Camera and control are always concern when pressing forward on the pawn in Isometric view. Is forward actually top right or is it up in the center of the screen? Added debug lines for thrust, left stick input, control rotation.
2023-03-08
Project Supernova: Isometric??
Wrestling with camera. Started trying some isometric camera perspective.
Found a UE Marketplace ship with an interior, and I’ll mess with this interior soon.
Starting to figure out how to go from ship to planet without blowing the budget on needless stuff. Trying to see if maybe scaling the player would be feasible.
2022-07-16
Project Supernova: Planet Bigger
Let’s see how big of a planet I can have. I started messing around with scale of planet and swapping the gravity. Trying to get a sense of the planet size if I were to run around it.
All sorts of funny business at the north and south poles.
2022-07-14
Project Supernova: Planet Gravity
Eureka! I forgot how I specifically found a solution but it was a relatively simple one involving the up vector of the planet and building the control rotation using the right vector of the pawn to maintain the equator.
2023-07-13
Project Supernova: Planets and RNG Loot X, Y, Z
Math is hard. Wrapping my head around finding out the calculation to maintain the horizon so that up is always up.
Took a break to calculate the point on a sphere and to find scalable random point. I was able to get the gravity direction to switch on button press. Began adding debug arrows to wrap my mind around the issue better.
2022-07-12
Project Supernova: Planets
I began thinking it would be neat to have a game where you can navigate in an overworld with a ship and then land on a planet, however the planet would be fully traversable as a sphere. I utilized an Unreal Engine plugin that manages gravity direction. I also began making tweaks to the controls that would support swapping gravity direction based on planet location.
Handling equator and camera alignment with calculations in C++.
2023-07-08
Project Supernova: Shaders
Minor break. Work started creeping up.
I know I need to solve how to see through objects while inside. I started making some shader work to cut a hole via a mask transparency.
2022-05-05
Project Supernova: Ship Interior and Transitions
Now that I can get from on foot and onto the ship, I am thinking I want to see how to make that transition seamless.
Started expanding on the interaction interface to include animation support for sitting in the ship and going to an overworld view.
Here’s a prototype of sitting in the captain’s chair and launching the ship.
2022-04-28
Project Supernova: Interiors
More iteration on the interaction interface. More functionality. UMG support. Trying to make more systemic UI interfaces along with interaction interfaces. Also added some door unlock/lock mechanism.
2022-04-24
Project Supernova: Camera
Began making interaction interfaces to open up doors, enter the ship, land at a port and other camera volume setup.
2022-04-23
Project Supernova: GAS/UI/Interaction
Started wanting to develop some of the interior look and feel. Started having some ambitions to make this some kind of survival game. Began stubbing in some kind of stats you might expect. Added attributes, Gameplay Tags and the Gameplay Ability System.
Wanted the camera to feel like it follows the player appropriately.
Created a series of volumes and splines that calculate the player location inside and move the camera along the spline. Also, as the player enters new volumes, set the camera to the new camera.
2022-04-19
Creating A Hex-Grid Project Supernova
Took a hiatus for holidays and Q1. What is time? Starting to feel normal-ish again. Anyway, started thinking about procedural content generation.
I began making a hex grid. In retrospect, a normal square grid would have saved me the pain of high school geometry work. It was a good challenge, and I got it to work. Each hex represents a space sector. The grid renders X number of spaces away from the player and loads/unloads tiles accordingly.
2021-10-12
Project Supernova: Inventory
Thinking about potential features and had interest in just prototyping UI. I was playing RE2 Remake and had some thoughts about inventories. I wanted to build a backpack inventory similar to Diablo 2 for players to play Tetris with their pieces.
Created in UMG, players can flip objects sideways to maximize long pieces in their inventory.
2021-09-26
Project Supernova: Ship
Thinking about old school TMNT overworld. What if there was a top down vehicle game in space where you can land on stations and planets?
Prototyped what landing and going to overworld could look and feel like.
2021-09-23
Beginnings of Top Down Unreal Project: Supernova
Moved away from multiplayer. I started changing the camera perspective to top down and using twin stick controls where the body heading can face one direction and the lower body can animate in the appropriate direction.
The left and right stick inputs are being registered in C++ and calculated to track the player heading and desired movement direction. Those values are being passed to the animation blueprint to drive the blendspaces on the pawn.
2021-09-23
Unnamed Multiplayer Unreal Project
Experimenting with Multiplayer replication and synchronization, managing animation state machines on the character using camera heading, blendspaces and turn in place animations.
Whenever the player camera turn passes a threshold, it plays the turn animation on both clients. It also follows the head of the pawn using aim offsets.