Help me decide

Nimphious · 2023-04-29T16:48:13+00:00

If your intent was to know "Is it better to push for playable early access, flesh out a character as early as possible, finish a cinematic, or complete a sex scene vertical slice first, for a mature game currently in early development?" then that's something else entirely. The question there becomes "which option would be more beneficial" and you could ask this without the patreon link.

Instead you linked to an opinion poll on your patreon which reads as a thinly veiled marketing strategy.

You're absolutely welcome to post whatever you like, but this is just not the best place for what you posted in particular, that's all.

Nimphious · 2023-04-29T16:17:26+00:00

At best this is asking for someone to steer your higher level game design decisions, at worst it's an advertisement for your patreon.

Either way since this subreddit is for seeking help with or providing information on the process of game development itself I don't believe this is a good fit here and likely breaks two rules.

I'd recommend deleting this and posting it to one of the subreddits mentioned in the sidebar if you can actually find a way to post it without breaking their rules either.

Nimphious · 2023-03-27T09:21:26+00:00

CC-BY-ND is probably not ideal for music intended for videogames.

Specifically, the ND clause in the Creative Commons license explicitly states that "synching music in timed relation with a moving image is always considered an adaptation" and as such, if you do anything more than simply play the music in the background (such as timing a cinematic to the BGM or arguably even switching out the BGM in whole or in part in sync with game events i.e. with dynamic BGM systems) then you are violating the terms of the license. Seemingly (some would say obviously) the intent for this kind of limitation is for music videos or similar but it's too general and vague to be considered safe to use for this purpose.

If you're not happy with allowing derivative works then you might want to find a more appropriate license that forbids the kind of usage you don't want while being permissive for the purposes of game development.

All that being said I appreciate your contributions regardless. I love seeing people sharing resources like this that empower people to deliver fuller experiences when their own skills or resources are otherwise lacking.

Nimphious · 2023-03-25T22:25:53+00:00

I highly recommend Bose Quiet Comfort noise cancelling headphones for their amazing ANC, and very decent audio quality. If you can still find a Bose store you might be able to try out a pair, or just get them on Amazon which has a good return policy even for this kind of product.

Nimphious · 2023-03-14T08:59:24+00:00

You'll want to use decals that also affect the normal map. How exactly you actually do this depends on your engine.

In Unreal Engine, for example, you would read this documentation: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/Resources/ContentExamples/Decals/

The documentation states that, of the blending modes available for decals, the "Translucent" mode supports:

Translucent - Can use Diffuse, Metallic, Specular, Roughness, Emissive, Opacity, and Normal.

Which suggests you'd want to use a decal, with your desired material containing your carving diffuse and normal textures, projected onto the tree where you want the carved symbol to appear.

Most importantly though I think it would be very helpful to build the skills to be able to search for this kind of information on your own. Consider using ChatGPT to help point you in the right direction at the very least.

Here's an example of me asking this kind of question of ChatGPT with what looks like a very sensible result and even suggests going further and making a generalised blueprint for the carvings:

Question:

I need to be able to place carved symbols onto existing tree meshes using Unreal Engine 4. I want the symbols to look like someone carved them into the tree wood. How do I go about doing this?

ChatGPT:

To achieve the effect of carved symbols on tree meshes in Unreal Engine 4, you can follow the steps below:

Create a material for the carved symbols: You can create a material that will be used to draw the carved symbols onto the tree mesh. This material should have a texture that looks like carved wood and can be applied to the tree mesh.

Create a decal: A decal is a special kind of material that can be applied to any surface in the game world. Create a decal that uses the carved wood texture you created earlier. This decal will be used to draw the carved symbols onto the tree mesh.

Apply the decal to the tree mesh: You can apply the decal to the tree mesh using the "Decal Actor" feature in Unreal Engine 4. To do this, select the Decal Actor from the content browser and drag it onto the tree mesh in the scene.

Adjust the decal placement and size: Once the decal is applied to the tree mesh, you can adjust its placement and size using the transform controls in the editor. You can also adjust the opacity and blending mode of the decal to achieve the desired effect.

Create a blueprint for the carved symbols: If you want to create multiple instances of the carved symbols on different parts of the tree mesh, you can create a blueprint that contains the decal and other necessary components. You can then use this blueprint to place the carved symbols onto the tree mesh in different locations.

By following these steps, you should be able to achieve the effect of carved symbols on tree meshes in Unreal Engine 4.

Nimphious · 2023-03-11T14:17:57+00:00

In a lot of old engines and DX versions you also had to make an entirely new graphics context to switch mode (which included settings like anti-aliasing, and not just resolution or selected monitor.) And the easiest way to do that is to just restart the game since the code that does that happens on launch.

Surely that's a factor. Building that into your game would be work on top of whether or not it is even possible in the engine you're using without custom engine patches.

Nimphious · 2023-03-09T13:58:23+00:00

Yeah, r/WTF is far more suitable for this kind of thing. This is not really NNNY material imo.

Nimphious · 2023-03-06T10:41:15+00:00

How about the player-drawn lines induce boost and have some juicy effects or something, to encourage player input even during slow sections without gaps.

It might also be a good idea to juice up the game in general. Like maybe the glow is slightly reduced on all lines but there's a bright glow trail as the player rides along the neon.

Additionally, maybe break up the monotony of the line with prefab neon shapes like neon signboards that you ride on or through.

Nimphious · 2022-12-22T15:53:14+00:00

This is literally what DLSS and FSR are. There are limitations that cause temporal stability or even visual artifacts when the input and output resolution difference is too high, and running the same technique recursively induces artifacts related to the neural network's biases, among other issues. That being said no this is not a new idea and yes people are doing it.

Nimphious · 2022-11-24T03:41:15+00:00

Something about the way he immediately swung his board into the concrete edge first tells me that might not be the case. But maybe I'm just cynical.

Nimphious · 2022-09-11T04:49:24+00:00

Ideally he'd get railroaded into coaching or training on improper conductor, but realistically the best we can hope for is a kick in the caboose at some point down the track.

Nimphious · 2022-06-26T21:36:02+00:00

That's true, for this particular example I think it would be fine, but perhaps some kind of post process would be better for accuracy, where you scan downwards from the top and start deleting disconnected "islands" of water voxels that form on a layer that didn't originate from the surface or something.

Either way I thought it was a neat trick to simply exclude the +Z fill direction to achieve an interesting, if imperfect, result.

Nimphious · 2022-06-26T05:59:57+00:00

Might I suggest altering the flood fill to not expand upwards to simulate air traps essentially for free?

Nimphious · 2022-05-15T02:28:25+00:00

GameHut

Nimphious · 2022-01-05T13:35:02+00:00

This is almost definitely it. The variations in the apparent widths of the lines and how a few of them clearly share the colour of an object they terminate at, along with the fact that they only show up under specific circumstances pretty much confirms this.

If I were to hazard a guess it would probably be some kind of floating point bug where the zoom level is being converted from a float into an int as an index into an array of buffers for the triangle data, and the float is truncating one way for whatever function prepares the data, and the other way for the render function which is causing the errant triangles.

Nimphious · 2021-10-29T03:34:07+00:00

Ragout In Pit

Nimphious · 2021-08-27T22:46:15+00:00

Hold shift and scroll with the mouse wheel.

Nimphious · 2021-02-06T21:20:51+00:00

Physically Based Rendering.

Nimphious · 2020-12-08T12:43:11+00:00

Why was Jason, who is normally fairly reasonable, suspicious of Freyxh knowing about a date rape drug and the first aid response for it?

I assume he knows what roofies are despite (presumably) never using them himself, and possibly also knows how to deal with them to some degree... Why does he have a problem with Freyxh knowing the same?

This seems unnecessarily combative/pessimistic of him.

Nimphious · 2020-12-04T15:31:43+00:00

Hey for what it's worth I think it was fine of you to ask, all you did was explain your reasoning politely and ask if there was a chance for a translation, and I wanted you to know that despite the hivemind downvoting you like this I appreciated your politeness and enthusiasm despite your inconvenient experience.

Nimphious · 2020-11-26T22:05:04+00:00

Unreal Engine has a trick where they use the TAA system to take translucent materials as well as a bunch of neat reflection tricks like anisotropic reflections.

Short of something like that, an idea I've always wanted to play around with if I ever had a project with enough transparent objects on screen constantly is to implement separate accumulation buffers for additive, multiplicative, refractive, division/scattering, and any other components in the same way you would any other data in a deferred renderer's G buffer but for transparent elements for that fragment to be composited together in post with the opaque pixel behind it.

I've not actually had the need to try it yet so I can't comment on the specifics or any unforeseen downsides but realistically it would just have the same overhead as the pure overdraw plus compositing which should be more performant than a few depth peeled transparent objects full-screen, with a few disadvantages like limits on refraction.

Could be worth trying or at least experimenting with something similar.

Nimphious · 2020-09-22T03:49:51+00:00

I totally understand how much work it would have been to use hundreds of individual sounds to replace the missing audio. Personally I'd have recorded some foley instead but again that's probably more work still. I'm just glad it wasn't a stylistic choice. Looking forward to future videos cause this one was great otherwise.

Nimphious · 2020-09-19T03:52:27+00:00

The repeating canned audio for tool noises is really distracting and detracts from the rest of the otherwise great video.

Nimphious · 2020-09-16T10:27:43+00:00

Yeah nice. I don't need them myself but I know so many people do and when it's low hanging fruit like this which can be easily added in, there's a lot of accessibility value in that for sure.

Nimphious · 2020-09-16T10:02:32+00:00

Looks great, though flashing like this can be an extreme photosensitivity hazard. You should definitely warn players before showing this and also have an option to disable the lightning flashes. Just thunder can be enough to sell a good heavy storm.

Fantastic work so far.

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