New lobber enemy (I affectionately refer to them as my lobby boys) making poison clouds and hiding behind things, annoyingly
@sinbad3d
Greybeard. Made engines (Ogre3D), devtools (Sourcetree, Git LFS), now games, Unreal Engine tools & plugins. Baker, coffee nerd, Cat Dad. He/him Code: https://github.com/sinbad Blog: https://www.stevestreeting.com
New lobber enemy (I affectionately refer to them as my lobby boys) making poison clouds and hiding behind things, annoyingly
Explosions now apply force to things!
Explosions can now destroy diggable areas. Now we're mining!π₯βοΈ
Minermancers spell work this week: physics objects and AOEs! Hereβs a bouncing explosive barrel spell thatβs fun to play with
Getting client prediction and smooth replication working on physics objects was fiddly but it works now.
The particle systems clip against geometry as well
Hereβs the debug display of the spray on the server; expanding damage probes which automatically fill the space given cone angle / velocity settings. Much better than a fixed cone overlap test which wouldnβt track spray motion properly. It also clips against geometry so it doesnβt go through walls
Minermancers progress this week: spray-style spells. Multiplayer predicted, and the underlying damage shapes are properly simulated to match the particle effects
A promotional image for SUDS Pro
SUDS Pro is on sale! It's my #unrealengine dialogue plugin that lets you use text files to write dialogue, direct camera cuts, character animation and more. If you prefer writing dialogue like a script, I think this is a nice way to do it.
Reposts appreciated!
www.fab.com/listings/3e3...
This GUID fixer for UE saved me today. I suddenly started getting startup crashes in Game/Packaged builds in the texture streaming system, turns out that a couple of textures had ended up with the same GUID somehow. https://github.com/Nehipasta/UnrealGuidFixer
This mirrors advice I sometimes give to DMs for TTRPG systems. You never want to nail down every lore detail because your players will come up with things to fill the gaps, and those things will be better - either just plain better, or simply more meaningful to them personally
Another indie game that Iβve been really enjoying this weekend: Minishoot Adventures. Basically βwhat if 2D Zelda was a twin-stick shmupβ. Lovely clean art, charming, rewards looking for secrets, top notch https://store.steampowered.com/app/1634860/Minishoot_Adventures/
Enjoyed playing through Thank Goodness Youβre Here last night. Bonkers and slightly surreal with enough βtheeβsβ and βthouβsβ to remind me of my late grandfather. Gotta wonder how well it translates though π https://store.steampowered.com/app/2366980/Thank_Goodness_Youre_Here/
WTF? What is wrong with these companies? Clearly theyβre tired of being successful, and of their customers having a positive opinion of them, and have decided to punch themselves in the family jewels to alleviate the boredom
Literally all Iβm asking from a software vendor as a paying customer is that you donβt punch yourself in the balls. I know everyone is doing it, but you could justβ¦not
com/blog/2025/09/30/detailed-data-sharing-for-better-ai/
Mission levels are still 100% dynamic of course because almost everything is mutable. But faking more complex lighting through exaggerated subsurface, numerous small fill lights etc is still my preferred route right now. Cheapo!
Switched our lobby level back to static lighting today. Old skool tweaking lightmap resolutions. I regret nothing, it's all we need and it runs like butter
I do have a console variable I can set now to enable damage numbers everywhere. That way we can try it out occasionally to see how we feel about it. But my gut says itβll just be distracting
There, even if I don't use this effect for damage numbers all the time, it's better than the UMG text for the potion machine summon countdown. I made the text size, lifetime, velocity and distortion effects more configurable as well
Video: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@sinbad/115298535920293769
Wesley Crusher and friend wearing fake headsets in ST:TNG βThe Gameβ while his Mum looks on in the background looking thrilled
Quietly allowing people to assume you use LLM chatbots as well so they stop fecking talking at you about it
I actually have other places I can use this effect anyway, such as countdowns on potion summoning spots. Iβm currently using 3D UMG widgets but these will look much better
I still think I'll save them for the practice rangeVideo: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@sinbad/115294369707878849
There we go, I can now enable damage numbers on any character if I want, I even integrated it via the gameplay cue system so it's all replicated nicely. Still don't think I want them on all the time, but they are quite nice (they're coloured according to damage type now too).
place/@sinbad/115293772899819701
Wasn't obvious from the last clip but wheras a lot of these kinds of effects just orient the numbers once on spawn, I had to make sure they always faced the camera because you can spin our camera around a lot. Slightly awkward to do but looks betterVideo: https://mastodon.gamedev.
I'm not planning to have damage numbers popping out of enemies, but it's very useful to be able to see damage values in testing. I had too much fun making these. Maybe I might use it in a practice range area in the real game at least
Video: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@sinbad/115293654944221548
3 windows is the magic number for testing since if a client can do something and another client can see it correctly (via the server player) then you're most of the way there.
3 UE windows in a test level with 3 different coloured wizards in a triangle
Spending all day in this view making very careful changes so I don't break any of the multiplayer replication & prediction systems, as I chop up the spell system and re-assemble it. All appears to be working again now but πI hate multiplayer code
You thought bureaucracy was bad? Enter "vibe working" in Office 365! Try getting any sense at all out of the corporate world now everyone's had their brains cooked by delegating 90% of cognitive functions to a statistically biased bingo machine
Two black and white cats on a blue blanket together
Combat training has been suspended for now at least #caturday