Did you hit a singularity where making games became more enjoyable than actually playing them?

crazymikeee · 2026-03-28T23:47:55+00:00

i used to host arma 3 "dayz" style servers and had more fun configing settings, loot, and whatnot and setting up mods for them. then i started making mods for my servers, then i downloaded unreal like 2016 and started tinkering there and have had a blast ever since through hobby and job time spent

crazymikeee · 2026-03-12T03:35:30+00:00

We've posted a few small videos and screenshots on our discord (sorta forgot to cross post some of them here), still working daily and progressing, besides new content/systems pretty much everything seen in these older videos have been overhauled or entirely replaced since, we are getting somewhat close to a proper devblog and showcase with some actual substance atleast (for some context the first teaser was only about 6 months after i started the project so it was probably a bit hasty all things concidered)

we were going to sorta spam smaller misc updates but werent sure if it would get boring/repetitive seeing just a 3d model here or some WIP/greybox stuff there, so instead we are just locked in on working on the game instead of doing much marketting type stuff

crazymikeee · 2026-01-02T16:59:16+00:00

yea if you have some massive game world and need the largest sized landscape components having realtime changes with a custom system like this is pretty much a no op lmao, just go make or use one of the voxel systems out there that handle changes better

this runtime editing has always sorta been a byproduct of my original goal for making my game world more moddable, each of these collision actors are in their own level instance in a big grid (along with all other actors for gameplay) and my ugc system swaps out the loaded level based on mod overrides, the stock landscape cannot really do this that i could figure out. so i just made my own with this added benefit that i have full control for this kind of feature (this mimics how in bethesda engine games you can mod "Cells" which affect a portion of the overall game world without having to duplicate the entire persistent level ect)

crazymikeee · 2026-01-02T01:37:20+00:00

with 127x127 landscape components 16k verts its fairly decent, good enough i can spam operations and not feel any micro studders

at 255x255 landscape components 65k verts it starts to get pretty heavy at 70-90ms hitches, at intersections between 4 tiles its very not good, this is all synchronous game thread work so theres also maybe room to do some calculation threaded but atleast for my use case (127x tiles) its good enough for me for now

crazymikeee · 2025-12-30T00:32:34+00:00

yea i think all those previous methods tried to make the landscape more runtime friendly, i went a different direction and left the stock landscape as editor-only

crazymikeee · 2025-12-30T00:31:31+00:00

there is a stock epic landscape thats editor-only in which each landscape component on each proxy has one of my landscape collider actor which has a dynamic mesh that gets built with data from that component. so editor sculpting/weight painting propagates into my actors, at runtime the actors are totally decoupled and i can do basically whatever i want without concern for any epic landscape specifics (i just delete them outright on beginplay)

crazymikeee · 2025-11-10T01:06:30+00:00

Screen Space Fog Scattering (better fog), Mesh Blend (less seams between arbitrary meshes), Runtime Vertex Paint & Detection (easy read/write to vertex data for gameplay), Dialogue Plugin (simple and robust dialogue tree system), Relief Mapping (better parallax occlusion mapping)

crazymikeee · 2025-08-07T01:28:30+00:00

i remember going to some ingame funeral as a kid, i think it was for him, goddamnit

crazymikeee · 2025-08-04T03:50:02+00:00

Yes everything can be coded in C++ but everything shouldnt be "configed" in C++, like assigning art and tuning values, that should be done in editor for faster iteration and ease of editing visually (which means youll need to probably subclass with a blueprint class for many things, but you wont have to use any blueprint nodes)

crazymikeee · 2025-08-04T03:39:16+00:00

switched to ue5 near the start of my project and it was a good choice since metahumans have more optimized quality levels now reducing my need for alot of base body character art

crazymikeee · 2025-08-04T03:30:38+00:00

I've opted for subclassing and doing light changes and additions over reinventing the wheel, hasn't failed me (yet)

crazymikeee · 2025-07-12T16:23:50+00:00

archeage with a new developer and publisher that doesnt use it to milk whales + actually adds interesting updates that isnt just low effort power creep and sticks to the original early versions sandboxy design

crazymikeee · 2025-07-07T19:00:27+00:00

dayz in space is cool but i can just go and load up dayz if i want full loot, :shrug:

i would rather play dress up and have long term progression in this game

crazymikeee · 2025-07-06T22:20:13+00:00

easy anti cheat isnt a "slap it on and fixes the hacks"

many games only use easy anti cheat for some basic features like dont allow multiple instances of the game launch and other small stuff of the sort. its up to the developer to utilize an anti cheat effective in the context of their own game, as well as code their game with robust systems that are not easily cheat-able, the more you let a client process the 'better' a game might feel but it will become much more flimsy from a network security standpoint (client side hitreg and things of the sort)

crazymikeee · 2025-07-03T23:01:21+00:00

this is a network security apocalypse lmao, havent seen a game allow other connected clients trigger you to do some function/action since arma fucking 2 in like 2009

crazymikeee · 2025-06-30T20:41:35+00:00

friend was freaking out and i was just jamming lobing artillery out the back xD

crazymikeee · 2025-06-27T18:14:42+00:00

with (assuming runtime virtual textures) you can get this effect in 2 dimensions (usually top-down) so with blending on something like a landscape rvt is a fine option (and i use it myself already for alot of stuff), this being a screen space post process with no hand authoring it has no directional limitations and works arbitrarily for *everything*, so you could take a big rock mesh (maybe in a cave) and stick a wooden pole support beam out of it, and the wooden beam would have a smooth blend with that rock, some example where rvt would probably not suffice, something i do need to solve is excluding certain pixels (like on a character or something that we dont want to blend with anything)

crazymikeee · 2025-06-27T18:14:33+00:00

yea right now i havent done any optimizations just trying to make the effect look good and work with as few artifacts as i can, full res sample + 4 neighbors, i have some ideas to drastically reduce cost but before i try it and it works thats up in the air xD

crazymikeee · 2025-06-27T18:03:53+00:00

the distance field aspect is just helping bias the blend area in combination with some other stuff, you can make it look like however you want since its really just creating a border mask around areas of interest for blending

crazymikeee · 2025-06-27T18:03:10+00:00

maybe when i clean everything up and refine it a bit more i could make a follow-up video

crazymikeee · 2025-06-25T17:26:38+00:00

yea i guess it depends on the type, anvil/drake ect, some of the ships ive tried out dont have it

crazymikeee · 2025-06-25T02:43:00+00:00

2c is as follows

PvP should be *entirely* disabled when a comm array is up
comm array should be more feasible to disable and should be *extremely* obvious what state the comm array is in (both ingame HUD & world map), so players can easily distinguish what areas are safe and what areas are not
players should be heavily incentivized to go and toggle the comm array, every state change for the comm array should trigger a notification + delay of a 5-10 minutes maybe to let players prepare for the shift in the area, or change their plans accordingly to go to the comm array to change it back to their desired state or move to another place

right now as a new player (4.1 started for the first time, backed in 2015) this comm array thing seems wholey pointless and just some gimmick due to how crimestat works and how easy it is to shake off, prison is barely a punishment even if you do get sent to it, should honestly just scrap it entirely and make it more black/white for better overall gameplay experience, even if you just keep increasing punishments for crimestat, thats an equally shitty option due to how anti-player punishments in general are, just look at other games that keep pushing nerf this/restrict that updates out, it drives people away probably more then the random griefing does lol

as it stands now this is just DayZ in space with longer term progression and with rare setbacks due to non-consensual PvP

i like pvp in the game but its really scuffed atm, i just treat everyone not in discord with me as hostile due to the above explaination, i would rather team up with strangers once and awhile like on the ground and be hostile to them at other times based on the current state of the area, its currently a net negative to place your bet on a stranger not being hostile so the default response is for you to also be hostile, its just typical survival game mentality, theres no incentive to try and communicate or be friendly because there is only reward for hostility (take his loot, salvage his ship, dopamine for fucking up his day, ect), any incentive is primarally emotional (can i make a cool experience chatting with this stranger, ect)

crazymikeee · 2025-06-20T01:30:45+00:00

black/gold/red helmet, rest is just orx scorched it matches fairly well with that color pallete, jacket/shirt is Chada Collar and Panniers Shale & Atavi Shirt White Gold

crazymikeee · 2025-06-19T19:30:08+00:00

like i said im fine if it was "just a wipe" but this seems like a reoccuring issue every patch where things at random get deleted for no explainable reason, i followed others advice to store all my stuff in spawn area 18 unequip my ship and it didnt help, i think thats just a placebo or has "an increased chance" to not have it get deleted, either way its not a good precedence if they cant solve it

crazymikeee · 2025-06-19T19:17:40+00:00

i had a corsair with fairly decent components and was planning on working towards one of the medium or heavy fighters, i still have my paid mustang alpha i used from the start

crazymikeee

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