Pencilgun

01/10/2024

Completed all the coding for the time fracture cracks on deck 3. Some were tricky because they had to shift and move around as the structure changes with each time period restore. Then when you restore one section the cracks for 3 other sections had to move again 3 different ways ... that kinda thing. Its all done now and moving on to deck 2. After deck 1 is completed, I will do all the saving and loading game versions for all the time fracture cracks. I changed some of the sound effects, so they continue playing when the game is paused. So, you don't hear a sudden cutoff. I also did some optimization with less casting during runtime.

01/09/2024

https://80.lv/articles/tim-sweeney-about-unreal-engine-6-ue5-verse/

Epic Games CEO has offered a small glimpse of the company's vision for UE6.

01/04/2024

01/03/2024

WindQuest update:
Good news I finished another phase of the development, the placement of all time fracture cracks on the parts of the station built so far, 3 days ahead of what I thought the deadline should be.
Moving on to the next step which is all the coding that is needed for the game mechanics to work with these cracks. I budgeted about a week for that and now I have 3 - 4 days extra to spend on that. Some things go faster than you think and some things go much slower. Just the nature of the beast I guess.

01/02/2024

https://youtu.be/arckNLqTqw0

Building a time fracture crack with effects in Blueprint in Unreal 4. www.Pencilgun.comGame developer: Etienne Andlau

12/27/2023

I am working on the last 3 set meshes today, modeling them and adding collisions to them. This is the last of the "additions" or working backwards to add all 3 of the time periods you can restore the WindQuest station to. When I am done in a day or so, each section of the station I built so far have 3 alternative designs from 3 different time periods the player can choose to restore to and customize. After this its a next phaze where I will add time fracture cracks on the spots where the player can do the restoration. Before I just had a key you could press when you are close to it now there is a visual marker the player can look for and find which makes the gameplay a little easier. I expect that to take about a week. Then after that I have to do all the coding for the functionalities of above-mentioned additions. That will include the saving and loading of different versions. That should also take about a week and a bit maybe. Then after that step its working forward with the development of WindQuest and building the rest of the station along with puzzles until its completed.

12/20/2023

12/16/2023

Wrote the first poem for one of the side quests for WindQuest. You will find this in a note somewhere on the station:
"It was the five hands who caught me at the edge when I wanted
to end it all. It was the five hands who blocked the winds from my
deck. It was the five hands who combed my hair with my new
golden hairbrush and made all my sorrows go away."

12/12/2023

Good work !!

Victory Royale.

12/09/2023

Just to recap another week's work on the final push to get WindQuest done.
1. Went back to the first sections I built and adding "Lights" material slots to them so they match the design of the sections that are the youngest. Also added the polygons to the "lights group" material slots so that all meshes now have both material and lights as materials.
2. Reconfigured some collisions to improve movements along their surfaces.
3. Improved UV mapping for better shadows and textures.
4. Added a "doonce" node and reset for the doonce node right
after all R to restore and C to customize screen widgets so that there is no chance for any widget to be added twice or more times over itself on the screen.
5. Added a player pawn can be sensed by variable the Skav drone's AI after attempting to adjust the cone for sensing's width and height angle which didn't work to well. Now the player can move around one deck above and one deck below the Skav drone without triggering its AI behavior tree.
6. Fixed the naming convention (bug) for one of the trigger boxes for restoring a section of deck two. It was named wrong a simple typo.
7. Fixed another bug where a section on deck 2 was placing the wrong material and color of light choices into the wrong slots because I forgot to rename a bunch of nodes during a copy and paste session.
Next week will be all 3 D modeling I am doing the last step in the working backwards to catch up old work with new. It's just creating more mesh choices with the three different time periods in the game. I only thought of this later on during the development phase so the first part of the station I built you could only restore to one single time period. Now you have 3 choices right from the start.

12/08/2023

For those of you using laptops.
If you want to see the history and status of your laptop battery, you can go bottom left, enter CMD in Search Bar.
A console will open up.
Type in: powercfg /batteryreport
Your laptop will print out a battery report in HTML and tell you where it saved it.

12/08/2023

https://www.twitch.tv/thegameawards

Day of the Devs + Wholesome Snack: The Game Awards Edition

12/04/2023

Update on WindQuest development. Currently working on a step that looks like it's going to take around 2 - 3 weeks.
1. Going back to the first sections I built and adding "Lights" material slots to them so they match the design of the sections that are the youngest.
2. Reconfiguring some collisions to improve movements along their surfaces.
3. Improving UV mapping for better shadows and textures.
4. Adding duplicate meshes with differences in design for all three time periods in the game to which you can restore to.

This is all 3D modeling in Blender and takes time because it's extremely tedious. Once all caught up with this, I will return to the next steps which will involve creating the code for these restore to different time periods.

11/30/2023

Really turning back the clock today. I am starting with the very first section I built for the WindQuest station way back in November of 2020. Revising it basically and upgrading it.
This is the next step in the game development is to go back and bring sections I built a long time ago up to the same standard and complexity as the sections I am currently adding.
1. Improving the UV and Lightmap layouts for better textures and lighting and shadows.
2. Adding another material slot for lights.
3. Adding alternative designs for the same section for each of the three time periods in the story to which you can restore too.
4. Improving the collisions.

11/30/2023

Completed all these tasks on WindQuest so far this week. Have 2 more days of this week left and would still like to knock out a few more before I end another productive week. 🙂
6. Delete old BP references. DONE
7. Hook back up M and S meshes where they were
already working DONE
8. Change all material slot names on meshes to
"material" and "lights". DONE
9. Get rid of "cancelat" event dispatcher code. DONE
10. Replace all lights Paintbucket indicators references
from 6part3. DONE
11. Change all saving and loading material slot
names to "material" and "lights". DONE

11/29/2023

So the good news is that with the 47 customization menus I had to re-animate, re-configure size of button, looks and adding of more buttons, options and fonts, I only broke one thing in the code. It was actually a good break because its a node (block of code) that I dont need anymore and could merge with another node or Event Dispatcher. It will take about 2 hours to fix but its going to be less code flying around between the blueprint classes. So its all good 🙂

11/27/2023

Setting my sights on and goals for WindQuest for this week:
Most of it is working backward with upgrades and changes to meet a more evolved game plan at this point:

1. Complete 3 customization menus with animations, new font
and effects.
2. Change all material slot names on meshes to "material"
and "lights".
3. Change all saving and loading material slot names to
"material" and "lights".
4. Change "parts" to "decks" so that letters and notes can point
to specific deck numbers.
5. Draw up a diagram for all quests and order building them.
6. Check LODIES for all meshes created so far to help with
optimization as station model is getting bigger and heavier.

11/25/2023

End of another week of the final push to complete WindQuest. To recap, the screen grab below shows all the customization menus for each segment on the station I built so far. The white arrow shows which ones in the last row I still have left to polish up and add animations and effects to to give it the final look. Not far to go. Then I added two more side quests and wrote the script out for them. Next two days I will be taking a break and work at Home Depot again to help keep the income coming in and then Monday I will be back on WindQuest for another week.

11/18/2023

So tonight is the end of the first week of the final big push to get my WindQuest game completed. Just to recap I completed 21 menu upgrades with enhanced animations and functions to give it that final professional look. Added 2 new side quests and outlined their details.
I am not moving at full speed yet but see this first week as "ramping into it". Next two days (Sat and Sun) I will be working my part time job at Home Depot again. I do this every weekend just to keep the income coming in. Then on Monday I kick off of my 2nd week of only WindQuest work up until next Friday night when everything repeats again. Fairly happy with the progress on the game and the new part time schedule of working at Home Depot only over weekend helps for sure. I plan on doing this until around the end of March 2024 when I am hoping I will have WindQuest completed and published.

11/13/2023

https://youtu.be/59ilCA-YnGg

Using roto and keyframing a color correct node to put shine and glare back over a still frame patch of picture for photo replacement composite in Nuke.Compos...

10/16/2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTEQOMh91TE

Testing multi layered planar tracking in Nuke for undisclosed film project.Compositor: Etienne AndlauCompany: www.Pencilgun.comCopyright. Pencilgun. 2023. Al...

10/15/2023

I added 3 side quests in the WindQuest game. They can be played anytime during the game even if main quest has been completed:
1. The dead garden.
2. Wings in flux.
3. Frozen dust.

10/07/2023

Interesting thing is happing with me right now. I have been working on this WindQuest game now for 3 years and 8 months and I find myself not only working forwards but also backwards, gutting code and making functions like the one below a lot more efficient. That is proof that my coding has improved over the 3 year period and I am looking back now at my code from a year ago and I go "what the heck was I thinking"
The code below in the red circle is everything I cut out of the function below it, making the ex*****on line almost half the size.
I guess that is a good sign 🙂

10/03/2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8nDLqPe4q4

Testing sound cues and visual effects for time fracture event in WindQuest game development.Etienne Andlauwww.Pencilgun.com

09/29/2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am2qH8Dy67E

A ripple effect material effect. in Unreal 4Etienne Andlauwww.Pencilgun.com

09/24/2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM-uOwrDolE

UMG in Unreal 4. Animated widget for game is loading screen display.Etienne Andlauwww.Pencilgun.com

09/22/2023

Development on WindQuest began on Dec 27, 2019 and has been
in development for 3 years 8 months, 3 weeks, and 5 days.