Development Update and small Rant: 10/4/2016 - Spensive Lights and FPS

Progress Update 10/4/2016:
- Fucking Lights! Cast Shadows SPENSIVE! So I had about like 10+ lights on the ship and wow I didn't realize how expensive shadow casting in Unreal is. Then again, they aren't differed lights and are probably full Dynamic. So what ever :D
-- I changed these lights all over to non-shadow casting, and went from ~26 FPS back to 114 FPS. LOL omg. My game runs too smooth
-- A side effect currently with the FPS being super fucking amazing shit hot or terrible (114 FPS or <30 FPS) is that Ticks are frame dependent. Herp-derp I guess that's obvious. However, what kinda isn't is that all the tick functions I do are also frame dependent. Meaning that all the functions that run off tick will run super fast with high frame rate or super slow with low frame rate.
- Found this Cvar "t.MaxFPS 60" to lock the FPS
-- I like the idea to push for a 60 FPS gameplay
TODO: Setup a fixed timestep for Tick Functions to 60fps assumption.

- Got Space Particles working. These are the ambient space dirt particles to give the impression that the player is traveling in different directions.
TODO: Video or GIF showing

- Tweaked up intensity of Milkyway (looks better)
- Changed cubemap of skylight to grey again for better low light visibility.
TODO: Tweak again and get a better cube map?

NOTE: Random screenshot before closing out for the night. It's a good sign that on a random frame of gameplay is screenshot worthy.

Development Update: 9/30 - 10/3/2016 - I'mma Firin Ma Lazors

Progress Update 9/30/2016:
- Ran into a bug with Aim Offset when trying to setup the lasers
-- This might be the cause of missing shots at extreme angles :(
TODO: Fix Aim Offset


Progress Update 10/2/2016:
- Fixed with Aim Offset being done now in world space as was being done in the Debuging of the raycast. I have since moved it to the weapons since the Aim Offset Relative was added with the Ship's rotation relative to camera which caused further offset than what I wanted
BUG: beams render a frame behind and don't use local space :(


Progress Update 10/3/2016:
- Workaround for Beam rendering a frame behind. Instead of using Unreal Particle Beams, I'm doing the MWLL trick of spawning geometry and then stretching it along one axis to achieve the effect.


-- Down side is I don't get the nice gradient of the laser beam material since I'm using a cylinder. I might consider switching back to a plane and then rotate it to camera like Beams do (isn't this just recreating beams though?)
--- I made a kind of work around for this too where I have tripled up the "inner white cores" within the outter cylinder and then had an opacity drop on the White Core material. This overlap on the differently scaled cores gives an illusion of a gradient being there for the laser, but might be expensive for the long run with alot of overlapping transparency...
TODO: Profile Lasers Transparency
TODO: Might eventually go back to Beams and look at how I can set these up with Simulated actors since the PFX on beams is much easier to make cooler beams than to do it with the geo.

Development Update: 9/30/2016 - Lights on Ship

Progress Update 9/30/2016:
Been really falling behind on these. I'll get back to this on the weekend. In the mean time.
- Birthday vacation
- Been playing around with FL Studios for songs (Placeholder ones??)
- Setting up lighting on the Player's Ship


TODO: Rename the ship

Development Update: 9/19/2016 - First Pass Lasers and Grub Texture Placeholder

Progress Update 9/19/2016:
- Been working on getting my Laser Beam working from my Unreal Marketplace project. WIP weapon setup


- Got a terrible placeholder material on the Grub so he can look similar to his younger brother the Spore.
TODO: Bake real normal map on him and get a better texture. Maybe look at getting Substance Designer/Painter?

Development Update: 9/18/2016 - Alien Grub

Progress Update 9/18/2016:
- Been working on some new Alien concept models and came up with the "Grub" here.
-- This guy will be barfing out a Fusion Beam Laser after I get the weapons working the way I want.

Also made a Claw Variant here

Development Update: 9/5/2016 - PDI Contracts and Hangar

Progress Update 9/5/2016:
- PDI Contracts and Hangar WIP

Contracts Menu is where different countries offer Unlocks, Money, Favor, or Technology in exchange for the Player to do a Mission or build something. Below is a proof of concept layout of how I want it to look.


The Hangar is the menu to show the Player's current ship in their current docking port around earth. They will be able to manage their ship's loadout and will be able to swap equipment here.

Development Update: 9/2/2016 - PDI Defense Grid

Progress Update 9/2/2016:
- WIP PDI with Defense Grid.
TODO: Omg... need to setup 240 individual grid points :(
TODO: Oct 10 - Will need to revisit this since I've changed the lighting in the level now and this really isn't visible much anymore.
NOTES: This texture method overlapping works!




So I dunno, I don't quite dig this kind of setup. I'm trying to show a "Defense Grid" from this kind of view to should which areas have been covered by either Ground Telescopes or by Satellites. I'm not really sure if this is readable yet. I might have to come up with something else.