Development Update: 7/31/2016 - WIP PDI Intro 2

Progress Update 7/31/2016:
- WIP PDI Intro 2
-- Fixed up some rotational issues with the initial planet intro to PDI interface
-- Found out about the Possession before Camera Blend bug
-- Added Continent outlines
-- Added Wireframe Scanning
-- Setup basic PDI pawn to rotate around Earth
-- Created Citymarker UI actors to be placed on the planet

Development Update: 7/29-30/2016 - WIP PDI Intro Sequencer

Progress Update 7/29-30/2016:
- WIP PDI Intro
-- Been working with the Vertex Animation Tools for the Wireframe Earth PDI
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/Tools/VertexAnimationTool/VAT_TL_Meshes/
-- Set this up onto the Planet to have an intro for the PDI
-- Made a Video showing the transition

Development Update: 7/25/2016 - MagDrive for SPPPPEEEEDDD

Progress Update 7/25/2016:
- WIP MagDrive
-- Finished up the basic Stages for MagDrive Logic
-- Have the MagDrive slow you down when you reach the Waypoint
-- Have some Placeholder particle Effects for SPPPPEEEEEEEDDDDD

TODO: ReplaceMe Particles for MagDrive travel
TODO: Allow for Cancel of MagDrive (any early out - User Triggered, Collision (detection?), etc)
TODO: Remove Debug Info and place into Ship HUD for Messages
TODO: Better logic on displaying waypoints.
Should Waypoints be seen if behind Earth?? Created logic to hide them

Development Update: 7/24/2016 - MagDrive Waypoints

Progress Update 7/24/2016:
- Added Waypoint Targeting with "T"
-- Also have a Collision Check so you don't crash into planets and the like


- Added MagDrive WIP on "Z"


NOTE: Doesn't look like much, but I have a staged acceleration that propels you to 100000 max speed.
TODO: Effects for MagDrive (Screen space effects with dust particulate fling by really fast, White Engine Colour for Mag Drive, Maybe a "shield" like effect at the front of the ship)


TODO: Also need to finish up the MagDrive feature to have MagDrive kick you out when you reach your destination and also allow for user canceling with pressing "Z" again.

Development Update: 7/23/2016 - Earth Shadow

Progress Update 7/23/2016:
- Fixed up Earth to cast a shadow at a very low resolution since it wasn't casting a Shadow already and the lighting was casting onto objects behind the Earth.


- Did some minor tweaks to bring back Eye Adaption a bit - makes the darkside of the Earth look better with a better glow on the cities.
-- Some Eye adaption might be too strong in the darker areas since the stars get blown out pretty bad.
TODO: More Eye Adaption tuning
Sept 2016: I've tossed most of the Eye Adaption since it really blew out alot of lighting (like engines when boosting) which looked terrible IMO

Development Update: 7/20/2016

Progress Update 7/20/2016:
- WIP with Crater decal spawning after hitting earth and expanding out

TODO: New Particle Effect and try to lessen the lag spike upon impact on CPU

Progress Update 7/21/2016:
- Been having loads of problems with Bad RAM which has stalled alot of work. Had to go through and check each stick on by one with Memtest86. Found the stick and tossed it. Didn't feel like dealing with Fry's so I bought new sticks from Amazon. Fortunately it was only one stick that was bad so will be back to 32 gigs today.
- Because of the RAM fuckery, my 4.11 build was also fucked. Fortunately it was a good time to update with 4.12 so I updated the build to that and committing now.
- So after the 4.12 update, I knew something would be fucked with the shaders somewhere. Fortunately it was "relatively" easy to find. It was the Cloud Translucency vs the shadows that I was drawing. The Shadows were always displaying on top of the clouds for some reason, and wasn't sorting it properly within the depth buffer. To fix this, I made a Cloud Shadow stand alone actor that on the Construction script I had it set the Translucent Sort Priority to -1
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/BlueprintAPI/Rendering/SetTranslucentSortPriority/index.html
NOTE: I also noticed too that when updating to 4.12 that alot of the post processing was back and I kinda liked it (except for the crazy eye adaption). So I might go back and tune those settings a bit so it really bring out the most of the environments

Development Update: 7/12/2016

Progress Update 7/12/2016:
- Was looking at trying to setup the Decals with the Meteor Impact today, but got sidetracked with a very noticeable problem on the Crater Decals... the Projected decals leave a terrible sampling tare when viewed at a distance....


-- Fixed this with a clever setup of having a Planar Object be placed into the actor and then have the material do a distance check and if Greater than scale/distance given, then this Plane (with duplicated material of the crater) is then drawn.


Success! I R Better than U Decal Renderer....

Edit: I should note that this was pre 4.13 where they now have the new Mesh decals. I should take a look at these one day.

TODO: Still need to finish impact of Meteor into Earth
TODO: I want to look at a GPU particle that sprays up a shit ton of debris and scales out. Should I place the crater decal during or after the effect has played? Not sure yet, need to experiment.

NOTE: Side note, apparently Meteors can cause craters that are on average 10-15 times the size of the object that hits Earth.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140723054904AAotA9P
For Gameplay (and in the screenshots above) I did a rough 3-5 times bigger seems more than enough. But who knows, maybe wanna go big to wipe out countries. Will need to experiment

NOTE: On that above note, I'll need a way to define borders on the planet and check to see if they have Crater decal overlap... Perhaps use cities as the main hub??
EG.

Development Update: 7/8/2016

Progress Update 7/8/2016:
Big update - Damage!!!
- Setup Dissolve to blend with damage and do a cool blast out effect when hit
-- This effect also fades over time when not hit
- Setup some basic Camera Shake when hit
- Setup some placeholder death event/effects
- Setup basic Game Over screen
Video Below

TODO: There's a crash on Quit/Loading back to main menu. Needs fixing
I don't think this is occurring anymore since my update to 4.13

Development Update: 7/7/2016

Progress Update 7/7/2016:
- Setup a basic Healthbar in the bottom middle and anchored to bottom
- Setup visual component to Damage to ship with the blending material made previously.
TODO: I want to explore options with the 2nd material underneath the Hull of the ship, since seeing holes in the ship is cool, but there's no structure under it. I'll see if the best way is to make a quick lattice mesh with a "burnt" material looks good underneath. Maybe blend this one as well??
TODO: Setup Death state and explosion for the ship
TODO: Game Over Menu Screen
TODO: Save/Load
TODO: Asteroid Rounds


- Changed the explosion on Spore Cannon to use the Alien Reveal particle, but smaller, however large enough so the player can see it impacting the ship
TODO: I was trying to setup the Particles to "Attach" to the hit location when impact occurs, but I can't seem to get them to stick. Maybe I'll try to spawn an actor so I can attach the Actor rather than a Particle Component from DefaultProjectile.

Development Update: 7/6/2016

Progress Update 7/6/2016:
- Setup new Main Thruster effects on the ship
-- Normal Thrust based on Applied Speed Output
-- Afterburner changes colour and scale a bit of thrust
Video here

Development Update: 7/5/2016

Progress Update 7/5/2016:
Didn't write this before, but will now
- Got finished with new Ship model

- Got new Crosshair setup for ship
- Fixed the DPI issues like listed above
- Found out about performance drop about new PIE and mouse spamming in that mode. This pushed me to register the owner of the ships and Alien weapons on Construct.

Rant Post: 7/3/2016

RANT BEGIN
So WTF! This DPI unit scaling on Widget is really annoying
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/UMG/HowTo/ScalingUI/
I found that by default most 720p and 1080p res (and other rez) have DPI scaling that's different than 1!! WHY?? I guess this is to scale icons so they they aren't fucking ginormous on different resolution screens.
Basically I was running into the issue of the AimOffset and the Crosshair UI not lining up for awhile. I didn't really think much about this because I thought I was down rezzing from the original 1080p, but NOOOO, this actually has a DPI scale which meant that every rez that wasn't matched to DPI 1 scale that the CrossHair UI Offset was WRONG AND WEAPONS ALWAYS MISSED WHERE YOU WERE AIMING AT WHEN NOT AIMING AT 0,0!!! GAAAHHH!!!

Anyhow, with some debugging with the AimOffset Billboard and RayTracing from the weapons, I was able to figure this out and match them properly to the rez of the game again. Man, I hate these kinds of bugs that take forever but the solution is super simple.

Unfortunately, this means more time needed to fuck with the HUD sizes again.... Ah welll...
/END RANT