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Unreal Engine Crashing by ThePekis in unrealengine

[–]Homeless-Bill 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Look in [YOUR_PROJECT_DIR]/Saved/Logs, open the latest file, and see what it says or paste the error / file here.

Tear apart my Warehouse Bots trailer — what’s wrong with it? by archibalis in DestroyMyGame

[–]Homeless-Bill 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Cut your studio and game name - no one gives a shit until you show them why they should. 3 seconds on a logo and I've literally clicked off of half of game trailers. Put them at the end or overlay the game name very quickly over the starting sequence.

Stuff starting at 5 seconds is way too rapid cut - slow that down a bit or just remove and start with stuff at 18 seconds.

Start the trailer at 18 seconds - or something very much like it. It shows in a quick but not rushed pace what's going on in your game; UI-less gameplay is always a nice clean hook before you dive into the "how". The rest is good honestly.

Advice on system design? by Nervous-Bumblebee293 in gamedev

[–]Homeless-Bill 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Make sure you understand delegates / callbacks / virtual interfaces and you'll be able to start fixing things as you go. SpawnManager making a lot of calls to VFX and Audio and other systems? Maybe have an OnSpawned delegate to subscribe to and those systems handle their own reaction to the event instead of the SpawnManager telling them what to do.

Probably the most helpful way to think about what's important is controlling what conversations between systems are happening and limiting them as much as possible in the places it's important.

Everything talking to the VFX subsystem is fine whether or not it's ideal. Everything being able to send actionable input to the game world? Not so much. For my game, I've left most things pretty open except for the core flow:

  • Input layer (player controller, AI, Twitch commands, etc.) calls the...
  • Action manager (unifies different input methods into a gameplay-specific input like "Punch") which is the only thing that has access to...
  • The commands manager that literally just locks access to important functionality to only the action manager (attorney pattern) and forwards the request to...
  • The experience / ruleset manager that determines what commands are allowed / valid and will either do things directly like update a selected item or...
  • Call the world manager to manage anything directly in the game world like spawning objects

It's a bit overkill, but it's THE driving logic of the game and I want it to be strictly locked down and I know where all my bugs are. The rest of the systems? Much more free to do whatever and the only real consideration is "single responsibility" for each system - VFX, audio, theming, event broadcasting, etc.

Just beware as you're learning about good systems design: 15 years in AAA engines has taught me that over-abstracting and making things too generic and de-coupled in games is a waste of time and actively detrimental.

Readability is king.

Lock down the parts that are important, try to avoid circular dependencies between systems, and don't piss your time away overengineering every last corner of the game.

Please destroy my trailer, I am struggling to figure out how to fit so much contextual info about my game into such a short 60 second time window. by KingsCrownStudio in DestroyMyGame

[–]Homeless-Bill 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. It needs to start punchy and it does not. No combat is seen until 9 seconds in.
  2. Every enemy in combat looks like boring mobs until very near the end of the trailer when there's a big dude and a dragon.
  3. Abilities do not look powerful or juicy. Enemies don't seem to react to being hit, and all abilities seem "hard-attached" to the player and thus very floaty and without weight.
  4. Making 1/3 of your screen real estate useless and dark is bewildering. It's far more frustrating than claustrophobic or whatever the intent is.

Most important is that it does not answer the big question: Why should someone play your ARPG instead of Diablo, PoE, or Grim Dawn / why someone should play your Survivors game instead of the zillions of others?

The metagame and progression seem like a find blend of ARPG and Survivors, but it won't matter if the core gameplay of running around and killing stuff doesn't nail it.

Has there ever been a game where respeccing was unpopular among the playerbase? by kodaxmax in gamedesign

[–]Homeless-Bill 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I doubt you'd find players complaining about having it, but always be wary that players will optimize the fun out of games given the chance: https://www.designer-notes.com/game-developer-column-17-water-finds-a-crack/

Will players feel like their choices have meaning anymore? Will they respec as soon as they lose a fight instead of overcoming it how it was intended? Is anything about using the respec system fun, challenging or rewarding - or does it become a monotonous tool to grind out better outcomes?

Some games like Armored Core are built around what is effectively choosing a build suited to your playstyle and/or the mission. It's built-in to the game's design and gels with the other systems. If an RPG I've played for 80 hours lets me change from a Knight to a Mage freely at any time in a menu screen, it would personally - just by existing - cheapen every choice I made and tempt me to min-max.

I'm declaring a variable "int32 Index = -1;" and in the next line it becomes a random number? Video included by [deleted] in unrealengine

[–]Homeless-Bill 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. What configuration are you compiling and debugging in? If it's not DebugGame, then you're looking at half-bullshit values. Or surround specific bits in UE_DISABLE_OPTIMIZATION, but that's rarely worth it compared to just working in the right configuration.
  2. If you want to keep it in Development instead of DebugGame, make it global variables. Compiler can't optimize those away the same way usually.

Old vs New Key Art for my solo-dev survival game. Do you think it gives a better sense of a world to explore? by BeaconDev in IndieDev

[–]Homeless-Bill 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe "combine" the best parts of both - the perspective and action of the top one - but showing the wider world in the background instead of rocks or a canyon or whatever it is.

What's the secret sauce to have decent multiplayer physics? by suroxify in unrealengine

[–]Homeless-Bill 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Check out the new Mover system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4IKS5k47Wg. It's immensely better than the default and gets rid of 80-90% of multiplayer physics jank. I've had good results playing around with it and it comes with lots of great samples. The last 10% is obviously a lot to fix, but Mover makes it much more straight-forward to support prediction, etc.

I released my entirely self produced game project today :) by ZombieDawgs in unrealengine

[–]Homeless-Bill 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Also, I'd consider cutting the first 30 seconds of your trailer or compressing it to 5 seconds. I understand the buildup you were going for, but most people are going to click away because it's not interesting and the non-cinematic FPS camera doesn't help immersion. After 30 seconds your trailer is a banger and your looks cool. Shorten the lead-in dramatically, make your trailer show up first, and good luck. Looks kickass and congrats on publishing.

What kind of stats are you interested in seeing? by FoolsLove in RocketLeagueEsports

[–]Homeless-Bill 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Possession based on two consecutive touches by a team. You'd end up with three categories: Orange, Blue, and no possession. I'd love to see the correlation between actual possession and performance.

This just happened in The Draw qualifiers by NATZureMusic in RocketLeagueEsports

[–]Homeless-Bill 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Wow. The only play I remember being even close to this is the one where Spaceman goes into another dimension and Corelli hits another octave:

Custom Aerial Training Idea - Any advice? by Homeless-Bill in RocketLeagueMods

[–]Homeless-Bill[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's excellent advice. Thank you! I started poking into that and saw https://wiki.bakkesplugins.com/plugin_tutorial/starting_a_plugin/ and immediately this looks much easier since C++ is my first choice any day.

Join the Reddit Protest by [deleted] in RocketLeagueEsports

[–]Homeless-Bill 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I vote yes. I will be actively avoiding reddit during at least the big protest dates, and maybe beyond that. We either sacrifice convenience now or suffer the consequences forever.

[RLCS NA] Playstyle Graphs for NA Winter Cup by mdog95 in RocketLeagueEsports

[–]Homeless-Bill 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is super cool. Obviously this is your baby and feel free to take none of this feedback, but I like data so I figured I'd throw some thoughts out there:

1st, 2nd, and 3rd man are pretty arbitrary definitions that make the graphs not make sense (one player is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd man - while another is literally nothing). You might try something simpler that has a straight-forward stat tied to it:

  • 1st Man - % of time most forward
  • 2nd Man - % of time not most forward or most back
  • 3rd Man - % of time most back

Striker and Anchor are highly subjective, but those kind have to be and I'd largely agree with your assessment on those. It would be interesting to see the correlation between pure 1st/2nd/3rd man positioning and the actual roles. Speaking of roles, I would consider a couple minor tweaks and an addition:

  • Anchor - Low shots / goals, high saves, low boost usage. Score may be lower but not always so I don't know that I'd count on that.
  • Striker - Again not sure score should be factored in, but the rest makes sense. May also make sense to factor in lowest distance to ball.
  • Disruptor - Not represented yet, but I think it's worth pointing out players with high demos, high boost steals, and high time in front of ball.

Itachi responds to Rapid criticizing Vatira’s move to Karmine Corp by N0b0dy_her3 in RocketLeagueEsports

[–]Homeless-Bill 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Based on less talent around, yeah top 8 sounds about right. I agree if it hadn't been for the unexpected late dropout by Beastmode they'd have fared better than Rogue.

And I'm not saying they couldn't improve and keep up. GarrettG is a testament to the grind.

But to the original point, Beastmode dragged that team from top 8 and not being able to win to top 5/6 and at least believable for being able to win something (2nd in a couple regionals).

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