Blogs

So I've been toying with some game dev too but rather than just using unity like a sensible person I decided to write my own engine in C++ using opengl3

So lots of stuff coming out of E3 at the moment like Hitman 2 Anthem cyberpunk 2077 and so on. One of them is Fallout 76 the first multiplayer game in the fallout universe.

Bethesda have been teasing the game for the past month but did their first announcement with proper details and gameplay this sunday.

Here's a summary of the details given in that presentation

This update felt like I have done a whole load of stuff but really, I've learnt a load of stuff. I put a new menu, which I won't dwell on. It's just a nice new picture. None of it has been brain-taxing like sodding building placement was. Here's the video:

State of decay was flawed but interesting XBLA title from 2013 with a later pc port with some additional improvements and two DLC add ons that had some different play modes and additional story.

Throughout my career, I have found myself repeating the following mantra:

Don't build an engine in an engine. Use the engine.

If you need a way to have a flexible schema in SQL, implement SQL CREATE/INSERT COLUMN etc. If you need a series of page that follow one after another then use ASP.NET with HTML hyperlinks, don't build another engine inside it.

Oculus just released their latest headset the Oculus Go. This is basically a revamped GearVr but a standalone unit with the screen integrated into it. It maintains compatibility with a lot of existing gear vr software.

I can understand why people do simple 2D menu systems. They're much easier and effective. If I was starting again then I probably would not have gone down the 3D menu route. I could bin it but I am still learning loads from it, so I am going to persevere.

Here is a montage of "not quite right" videos that chart where I was at the end of last week:

I got to the point where I was writing a lot of code in my experimental builder project. I wondered at what point I should move all of this stuff into the main project again, so I asked reddit for best practice and got some reasonable replies. I decided to move the code immediately into the main project and create a new scene.

The more I played, the more I realised that the physics felt off. Everything looked like toys bobbing around in the bath. I played with gravity and mass settings and got some hilarious results but I wanted the Cloudships to feel like they had heft. One of the things that really struck me were the cannon balls. They moved too fast, which made the scale look odd.

Unity uses state machines for controlling NPCs. I have two states on the enemy at the moment: if the player is a long way away then keep on your course, if the player is close the steer RIGHT AT IT!

That's not a very interesting bit of AI but it helps to test a whole range of things, including collision. Unity uses low poly collision meshes that are generated from your models automatically, which saved me a ton of work.