Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[deama]

My current project is almost done, still on schedule for release around the end of the year. I recorded a preview today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdZHRL2ru5A

I can do AI voice acting if anyone is interested, I've got samples collected from various sources, and can get from even more.

I can also do AI translation via chatgpt4, but I think this place is moreso for new works right?

 

[ds]

Show some respect, printf has probably helped fix more bugs than any other tool.

It's the one thing that is always available. Even in frickin shaders. And if it isn't then someone will add it soon enough because it's that useful. Doesn't need any fancy low level access to the machine running what you want to debug, just a simple serial link. Works more or less the same way on any platform, no learning needed. Simple. Intuitive. As any good tool should be.

 

[Bester]

I can do AI voice acting if anyone is interested

What did you use to do Irenicus voice? Don't these websites ask for consent from the voice giver, i.e. require him to read a certain consent text?

 

[deama]

I can do AI voice acting if anyone is interested

What did you use to do Irenicus voice? Don't these websites ask for consent from the voice giver, i.e. require him to read a certain consent text?

Eleven labs doesn't, well, they have 2 options, one for regular voice cloning which they ask you for "permission", but it's just a tick box, no big deal.
The other one is "deep" voice cloning, no idea on the quality of it, but that requires the "actor" to read out a permission sentence, and I think it's analysed on their side by a human to make sure?

 

[deama]

I can do AI voice acting if anyone is interested, I've got samples collected from various sources, and can get from even more.

I can also do AI translation via chatgpt4, but I think this place is moreso for new works right?

Here's some more samples, these ones specifically are an exerpt from the first dune book:

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Great video. There's a few things that I found interesting. I didn't know about Triangle strips because its a method that has gone out of favor with game artists, it was very popular in the Dreamcast era. Its an interesting idea though I feel like its probably only useful for procedural meshes which is what is being shown here.

The position to UV space idea is a great one, I've used it myself before, you can even take it a step further by then providing a texture with an alpha - the alpha contains the heightmap. This is good because you can 1. keep everything better organized 1 mesh 1 texture for every asset and 2. it allows the artist to avoid having to mess with the mesh directly, so they can just go ahead and paint not having to worry about geo.

Batching is just good practice, everyone should be doing it. Maximize that reuse, use a lot of smaller meshes combined to create new unique assets for the same draw.

Looking at the developers other videos, seems like they're intending most of their knowledge to be used with Proc-Gen. Which is fine, but these methods aren't going to be universal, there will be situations where you can't for example use triangle strips, same with positional values to UVs, its fine if your mesh is flat and 1:1 with the texutre, but majority of the time your mesh ain't going to be like that (for example, Buildings, they will naturally take on a different co-ordinate system which won't work with positional values).

 

[what am i doing]

Great video. There's a few things that I found interesting. I didn't know about Triangle strips because its a method that has gone out of favor with game artists, it was very popular in the Dreamcast era. Its an interesting idea though I feel like its probably only useful for procedural meshes which is what is being shown here.

The position to UV space idea is a great one, I've used it myself before, you can even take it a step further by then providing a texture with an alpha - the alpha contains the heightmap. This is good because you can 1. keep everything better organized 1 mesh 1 texture for every asset and 2. it allows the artist to avoid having to mess with the mesh directly, so they can just go ahead and paint not having to worry about geo.

Batching is just good practice, everyone should be doing it. Maximize that reuse, use a lot of smaller meshes combined to create new unique assets for the same draw.

Looking at the developers other videos, seems like they're intending most of their knowledge to be used with Proc-Gen. Which is fine, but these methods aren't going to be universal, there will be situations where you can't for example use triangle strips, same with positional values to UVs, its fine if your mesh is flat and 1:1 with the texutre, but majority of the time your mesh ain't going to be like that (for example, Buildings, they will naturally take on a different co-ordinate system which won't work with positional values).

Perhaps an unspoken (yet demonstrated) lesson in that video is that tailoring your rendering code to the type of scene you're rendering (and its typical contents) is always going to be capable of higher performance than a one-size-fits-all generic solution.

 

[Agesilaus]

My current project is almost done, still on schedule for release around the end of the year. I recorded a preview today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdZHRL2ru5A

I can do AI voice acting if anyone is interested, I've got samples collected from various sources, and can get from even more.

I can also do AI translation via chatgpt4, but I think this place is moreso for new works right?

This is hilarious but also very good. Didn't expect Jon Irenicus to be a fan of my work. How do I get him to read the rest?

 

[deama]

My current project is almost done, still on schedule for release around the end of the year. I recorded a preview today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdZHRL2ru5A

I can do AI voice acting if anyone is interested, I've got samples collected from various sources, and can get from even more.

I can also do AI translation via chatgpt4, but I think this place is moreso for new works right?

This is hilarious but also very good. Didn't expect Jon Irenicus to be a fan of my work. How do I get him to read the rest?

You can go on elevenlabs, make an account, and then extract him from baldur's gate 2 and feed it to elevenlabs to get a clone of him.
The min for that is $5 to try it out and the voice cloning.
If you mean to actually read the whole thing, then you're gonna have to fork out probably $20+ depending on how long your thing is in characters.

I originally got it off youtube's transcript, that one doesn't have any commas or full stops or none of that, it might work even better if I had access to that.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Demon Lord Reincarnation is out on PlayStation 4 (and 5).

https://store.playstation.com/concept/10009490

 

[Agesilaus]

My current project is almost done, still on schedule for release around the end of the year. I recorded a preview today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdZHRL2ru5A

I can do AI voice acting if anyone is interested, I've got samples collected from various sources, and can get from even more.

I can also do AI translation via chatgpt4, but I think this place is moreso for new works right?

This is hilarious but also very good. Didn't expect Jon Irenicus to be a fan of my work. How do I get him to read the rest?

You can go on elevenlabs, make an account, and then extract him from baldur's gate 2 and feed it to elevenlabs to get a clone of him.
The min for that is $5 to try it out and the voice cloning.
If you mean to actually read the whole thing, then you're gonna have to fork out probably $20+ depending on how long your thing is in characters.

I originally got it off youtube's transcript, that one doesn't have any commas or full stops or none of that, it might work even better if I had access to that.

Very nice, I might do that after I publish. As you can tell from the hour long read-through I made, the text doesn't actually need to be read from start to finish. Each "playthrough" is only around 1 to 3 hours, depending which options one takes. Of course, when reading this sort of book I think we stick our finger in the pages and read multiple options at a time, do some save scumming, etc. Audiobook recording really isn't an ideal way to present the text as a whole.

 

[Bester]

Every year.

 

[std::namespace]

bestersdream69.tk

 

[Bester]

In UE5 I need to make buffs. Say there's 300 creatures, 6 buffs each on average, and I need them to expire after their duration runs out.
What do you think?
Idea 1: use ue's timers
Idea 2: make some kind of manager on a separate thread that would tick timers and send events to the main thread when the timers ran out? A bit difficult to manage, because buffs can be renewed, etc.
Idea 3: same, but on main thread? less hassle, but seems expensive.
Idea 4: I have no clue

Also, anyone got any idea how GUIDs work in ue?

Also, any way to make a C++ wrapper for a BP struct? It's not a necessity born out of bad design. I just sell assets mostly written in BP. But I need to do something in C++ and accept a BP struct as a parameter.

 

[Bester]

While on the subject of UE, I am completely disillusioned with their non-basic systems. I spent two weeks implementing their Ability System into my project. It corrupted itself somehow, resetting itself to null at game start (it was a component attached to PlayerController, it can't be null).

Two days ago, I attempted to use their new fancy ViewModel system. It corrupted my widgets and made them uncompileable. Reverted with version control. Unusable.

Last engine version I sent them about 5 bugs. They never added them to the bugtracker and never even answered. It was rendering related at very long distance with a very tiny FOV. They probably just don't give a shit, it's a rare use-case.
Before that they used to answer with gaslighting stuff, saying my report is not a bug. It was animation retargeting system related, a system that they themselves didn't seem to understand.
Another time they added my bug to the bugtracker, and it even got over 100 votes, but 3 years later it's still sitting there, and every engine version they increment the "target fix" version.
I finally decided I give up. I'm not sending any more reports. Years of reporting and not a single fix.

 

[Tavernking]

Another time they added my bug to the bugtracker, and it even got over 100 votes, but 3 years later it's still sitting there, and every engine version they increment the "target fix" version.
I finally decided I give up. I'm not sending any more reports.

That's why I use Godot because I can edit the source code of the engine myself instead of waiting for people to do it for me (which they never do because the problem is so niche)

 

[Bester]

Another time they added my bug to the bugtracker, and it even got over 100 votes, but 3 years later it's still sitting there, and every engine version they increment the "target fix" version.
I finally decided I give up. I'm not sending any more reports.

That's why I use Godot because I can edit the source code of the engine myself instead of waiting for people to do it for me (which they never do because the problem is so niche)

Unreal's sources are also available. It's just that I can't fix them myself, I'm not at that level.

 

[Tavernking]

Another time they added my bug to the bugtracker, and it even got over 100 votes, but 3 years later it's still sitting there, and every engine version they increment the "target fix" version.
I finally decided I give up. I'm not sending any more reports.

That's why I use Godot because I can edit the source code of the engine myself instead of waiting for people to do it for me (which they never do because the problem is so niche)

Unreal's sources are also available. It's just that I can't fix them myself, I'm not at that level.

Ok good point and thanks for teaching me.
Unreal is not open source but it lets you look at the source code and build upon it / extend it.
Godot is open source because you can change the source code to your liking.
Not sure what Unity does.

 

[Bester]

Unreal is not open source but it lets you look at the source code and build upon it / extend it.

It's open source. You modify the sources any way you like and rebuild the engine on your machine, it's not just to "build upon" or "extend".
The sources are just behind a "register" button on their website. Then they automatically invite you to their repo on github.

Not sure what Unity does.

They give sources to companies for some expensive licenses, i.e. over $100k per year or something like that.
Not a good engine for indies who want to modify the engine.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I never liked the sprite for the boars. I reworked them. I think these guys look better. Also, I made the tusks a separate layer and as the boars level-up they get bigger tusks.

I realize that I don't really know what a boar's shoulder muscles look like and I kind of based these off human deltoids. It looks OK from the side but from head-on, it kind of looks like one of those perverts who's into dressing up as animals.

 

[Hag]

I've been toying with OpenGL again, using SDL to provide window and basic utilities.
Found that SDL has a macro to redefine main() its own way.
It also redefine M_PI.
I'm kind of scared of what I'll find next. A new printf() ? Its own libm ?

I'm going to check the sources see if it is that bad.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

While on the subject of UE, I am completely disillusioned with their non-basic systems. I spent two weeks implementing their Ability System into my project. It corrupted itself somehow, resetting itself to null at game start (it was a component attached to PlayerController, it can't be null).

Two days ago, I attempted to use their new fancy ViewModel system. It corrupted my widgets and made them uncompileable. Reverted with version control. Unusable.

Last engine version I sent them about 5 bugs. They never added them to the bugtracker and never even answered. It was rendering related at very long distance with a very tiny FOV. They probably just don't give a shit, it's a rare use-case.
Before that they used to answer with gaslighting stuff, saying my report is not a bug. It was animation retargeting system related, a system that they themselves didn't seem to understand.
Another time they added my bug to the bugtracker, and it even got over 100 votes, but 3 years later it's still sitting there, and every engine version they increment the "target fix" version.
I finally decided I give up. I'm not sending any more reports. Years of reporting and not a single fix.

So what lesson have you learned from this?

 

[what am i doing]

I've been toying with OpenGL again, using SDL to provide window and basic utilities.
Found that SDL has a macro to redefine main() its own way.
It also redefine M_PI.
I'm kind of scared of what I'll find next. A new printf() ? Its own libm ?

I'm going to check the sources see if it is that bad.

SDL has its own main for easier cross-platform support (which is main its reason for existing).

 

[Hag]

SDL has its own main for easier cross-platform support (which is main its reason for existing).

That does not seem a very convincing excuse. What if I want to use another cross platform library that does the same trick ? I guess it all boils down to main/winmain but I don't see how it is more relevant to the library than the implementation.
Well, luckily there is SDL_MAIN_HANDLED, but I don't like this design choice (that happen to be broken on my non-GCC/VS ANSI compliant compiler).

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I never liked the sprite for the boars. I reworked them. I think these guys look better. Also, I made the tusks a separate layer and as the boars level-up they get bigger tusks.

I realize that I don't really know what a boar's shoulder muscles look like and I kind of based these off human deltoids. It looks OK from the side but from head-on, it kind of looks like one of those perverts who's into dressing up as animals.

I dig it, looks akin to something Boris Vallejo would draw, perhaps a bit more muscle in the stomach.