Messing around with UE4 - Who would like info?

ArchieChoke

ArchieChoke

New member
Hi Guys
Some people know that I am currently learning how Unreal Engine 4 works.
At the moment I am focusing alot on functionality.

My project at the moment is to produce a Funcational non-scientific calculator, it will be further extended was I got the base working.

Just wanted to know if any1 would like to see the development process, or actually what it takes to get end results.
Perhaps can alter people's perceiption when it comes to game development and how much of mission it is to produce games?
 
I'm very keen. I am involved with software devs on a daily basis. But moreso on the banter between the DEV's and IT/Operations.

So would be cool to see. Thanks ArchieChoke.
 
Archie, that would be very interesting to see what you've been able to do with UE4. I think you should most certainly share what you have done so far.
 
BeoTeK said:
I'm very keen. I am involved with software devs on a daily basis. But moreso on the banter between the DEV's and IT/Operations.

So would be cool to see. Thanks ArchieChoke.
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Sweet dude, It really is interesting how game development is similiar to software dev. Ill do some vids and take it from there.


DieGrootHammer said:
Archie, that would be very interesting to see what you've been able to do with UE4. I think you should most certainly share what you have done so far.
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Cool thanks man, some of my friends(Non-Gaming) don't understand the difficulties of implementing things in gaming, so glad I found a bunch that can appreciate it.
 
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I'm in enterprise / ERP / business automation development (have been for a decade now), so would love to see what you do in UE4! Would be a nice diversion from integration scripts, APIs and workflows for a change.
 
FarligOpptreden said:
I'm in enterprise / ERP / business automation development (have been for a decade now), so would love to see what you do in UE4! Would be a nice diversion from integration scripts, APIs and workflows for a change.
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Lol...It just might bring back horrible memories like I will show you below.
 
Right so the first task I set out was to make a box, that the player can move through (I.e. the Mesh itself can be overlapped by a player.)
This box then would *fire (Or call an event to occur) that will update basic text that has been placed on the wall.

Though I am having serious issue's with trying to get this right, its still interesting. I am busy speaking to unreal about this as I think its perhaps a bug in the application.

http://i.imgur.com/yA4GNd2.png

In relation to above image, the Left side screen, displays the Blueprint for the Box (Which I named ChangeText_Btn (Like you would in VB :P )).

The Center is the viewport of the game engine in realtime (Persistent)

The right screen is the Text Blueprint, that will accept a command of change the text.

The concept around this is, the player walks through the box, which then runs the change text. Like I said waiting for unreal to get back to me, once I get this working I will expand it further as to have a calculator.

A Box for each number 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, then have a box for your Maths (+,-,/,*), then finally a Box for the equals which will take the result of StorageNum1 (maths symbol) StorageNum2 = AnswerStorage then update text on the wall. Each of these would have to do a check to see if the user is still entering the first number or has giving a calculation symbol or is on the second number or has requested the equals.


This probily looks like child play for a pro, however as someone who comes from SQL and VB, this is just wow. It has taken me a week to understand the interactions between the Persistent world and the Joys of OOP.
 
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ArchieChoke said:
Right so the first task I set out was to make a box, that the player can move through (I.e. the Mesh itself can be overlapped by a player.)
This box then would *fire (Or call an event to occur) that will update basic text that has been placed on the wall.

Though I am having serious issue's with trying to get this right, its still interesting. I am busy speaking to unreal about this as I think its perhaps a bug in the application.

http://i.imgur.com/yA4GNd2.png
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Like you say, interesting to say the least. Not at all what I was expecting, from seeing (software) developers working all day.
 
BeoTeK said:
Like you say, interesting to say the least. Not at all what I was expecting, from seeing (software) developers working all day.
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I could as go low as what you would see(Lines of code) with Software dev's, where you see

Int main
{
float StorageNum1
float StorageNum2
flaot AnswerNum
};

But thats much later, thats when you have your concept down and need to optimise the code by making use of CPP (C++) and header files .
 
ArchieChoke said:
This probily looks like child play for a pro, however as someone who comes from SQL and VB, this is just wow. It has taken me a week to understand the interactions between the Persistent world and the Joys of OOP.
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I get what you're talking about. The majority of my career has been on C# and T-SQL, but delving into (proper) JavaScript has brought be closer to software patterns and game mechanics than C# initially did. Granted, my use of C# is now more focussed on transactionally heavy SOA "engines" for consumption by just about any language / framework, which in turn makes high performance a priority.

I've dabbled quite a bit in C++ from a hobbyist perspective and enjoy the "purist" approach to pointers and memory management. I've always felt the need to do things my way, as I have control over what's going on, i.e. I feel Entity Framework is cumbersome to work with, so I rolled my own dynamic ORM tool which our devs actually prefer and enjoy using.

Back on topic though: I'd like to see more progress as you go along. Why didn't you go for Unity though?
 
FarligOpptreden said:
I get what you're talking about. The majority of my career has been on C# and T-SQL, but delving into (proper) JavaScript has brought be closer to software patterns and game mechanics than C# initially did. Granted, my use of C# is now more focussed on transactionally heavy SOA "engines" for consumption by just about any language / framework, which in turn makes high performance a priority.

I've dabbled quite a bit in C++ from a hobbyist perspective and enjoy the "purist" approach to pointers and memory management. I've always felt the need to do things my way, as I have control over what's going on, i.e. I feel Entity Framework is cumbersome to work with, so I rolled my own dynamic ORM tool which our devs actually prefer and enjoy using.

Back on topic though: I'd like to see more progress as you go along. Why didn't you go for Unity though?
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Thats some pretty impressive stuff I have to say, next year ill be doing a course on Java, so what you have told me has sparked interest.

C++ syntax is always catching me out thats the only thing, its such a dirty language (Could be intellisense isn't very good in most IDE's.), otherwise I love C.

Ill post some of the things I agreed with, what developers had to say.

Community - The Unity3D community always has made me feel like crud. No matter what I did. No matter how hard I tried the community made me feel dumb, stupid or just overall bad. - UE4 does'nt make me feel stupid no matter how small my solution is.

The pro is far too expensive to buy even just for a month 100+ is too much.

With Unity I often had to pay for core features like the material editor (Shaderforge), then struggle with plugin compatibilty just to end up with inferior quality. While in UE4 I click on a button, or a checkbox and I have exactly what I need.

I didn't like the fact Unity3DPro was primarily a scripting platform and programming Cryengine was really hard to get any help with.

Unity you end up spending a lot of time hunting for assets to do what you need and fill in gaps left by the engine. Then you spend more time trying to integrate those assets. - This is a huge thing with Cryengine aswell, but UE4 manages assets so well I spend very little time managing them.

Basically it came down to time and money. I am currently doing my I.T diploma and with work from 8 - 5, then classes from 6 - 8, I only get to sit down infront of the pc at 9, that leaves me 2 hours to do anything for myslef, then the next 1 hour for studying/rewising. Then my weekends are with my fiance.
 
I guess having all those years experience and such a huge team behind Unreal Engine does pay off.

I used to spend hours behind Unreal Editor back in high school building and scripting custom maps. I absolutely loved it. A buddy and me built our own set of DM and CTF maps which we'd rotate at LANs and we came to prefer some above the official maps.

Good luck in your project though!
 
I would never have thought of a calculator in a game engine.

So are the button presses going to be by shooting at the buttons? Thats my guess from the screen shot.
 
FarligOpptreden said:
I guess having all those years experience and such a huge team behind Unreal Engine does pay off.

I used to spend hours behind Unreal Editor back in high school building and scripting custom maps. I absolutely loved it. A buddy and me built our own set of DM and CTF maps which we'd rotate at LANs and we came to prefer some above the official maps.

Good luck in your project though!
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Yeah the investment they put must have been huge to get such a good IDE.

Yeah I was reading back in the days with UDK. For every level you had to have scripts. They did away with that in Blueprints, so assest/levels generally can be based off the same class. So for example if you had a lift, you can easily create a blueprint and assign it straight to any Object.


Thanks man. It really keeps me interested.

czc said:
I would never have thought of a calculator in a game engine.

So are the button presses going to be by shooting at the buttons? Thats my guess from the screen shot.
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Lol.not many people do cause its a alt + tab away. It became a project that start from my VB calculator and thought no one has a calulcator ingame as a weapon or item.

Atm to get the proof in concept they are when the player walks over a specific object. Later I can do if you shoot with the walls having boxes with numbers. But the idea is to call the calulator (Once my brother is done modelling the calulator), have it as a weapon, So like in game you hit "C" then the animation will pull out the calulator. then ill use the numpad as input and the players finger will move to where you have pressed.


So essentially ill be learning the following:-
Custom events
Blueprint communications
Objects as variables.
Annimation key frames
Player object mapping (Fingers pressing buttons)
 
Hey guys just wanted to do an update, Just finished implementing a 1st person, 3rd person and top down camera system for my player, so pressing "V" changes between the 3 camera types. Once I have fixed the camera not being dynamic (i.e. the camera isnt focus on the player but rather just hangs in the air) then I should be moving onto understanding the Network system and Slate (Creating menu's),so I can deploy a network version of this mess about game.

Also wanted to display some of my brothers modelling/animation work:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fd0BW84jLc
Can't wait to get some meshes to actually start adding and messing around with. (Tired of working with boxes and cubes for demonstration purposes.)
 
Update:-
SO been working real hard the following things have been setup:-

- MiniMap Camera mapped to top left hand corner

- Can now switch between First person, Third Person Camera, TOP down (Still work in process)

- Imported a custom Model and animation from this character (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnkflvaUyLw) - Player goes into pose when stopped, when walking a walk animation kicks in.

- 2 objects added to do Levelution (Objects that are destructable)

- Created a proceadural wall (When user increases the max length it creates a wall for each meter)

- Started working on Start menu operations

- When the player is hit by a bullet or object (A fire explosion initiates)

- Door open/Close Fixed (There was a funny ass problem when you approached the door it will lie down instead of open and close like a normal door would)

- Crosshair implemented (2 choices Using a Texture Map or using a Pixel to display a colour reference)

WIP:-
Menu system
Attack systems
Inventory systems
 
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