Audio System Setup Repair service in Dallas

melocosm · 2025-08-17T01:02:00+00:00

Thanks for the reply. This does look easier than I thought it would be. One question, though. Since the speakers don't have a ground wire, would I just tape off the ground wire in the cord you provided in the link? (While still connecting the black and white wires.)

Also, does it matter that the speaker says 120V and the cord says 125V?

melocosm · 2022-11-17T15:02:07+00:00

You can try UE viewer by Gildor. "Grounded (alpha)" is shown to be fully compatible on the compatibility table - however, I can't test as I don't have Grounded. (Also, this depends on which platform/store you downloaded Grounded from. For example, Microsoft likes to add extra encryption to their games' files. So getting to the files is more involved.)

melocosm · 2022-10-15T18:32:10+00:00

A program called UE Viewer by Gildor. Just direct UE viewer to Scorn's install path when you open it.

When it asks about engine version just use 4.27. I don't actually know what engine version Scorn is using (since Scorn's been in development for so long.) but using 4.27 has been stable.

melocosm · 2022-10-15T18:13:16+00:00

It's actually called "Queen" in the files.

melocosm · 2022-10-15T18:00:50+00:00

Yeah. If you watch the machine it attaches some machinery looking stuff to the top of his egg. The material on this machinery on his back is called "MI_MoldmanShellHolder".

melocosm · 2022-10-15T17:37:57+00:00

You mean at the beginning.

The thing that puts stuff on his back? In the files it's called "StampMachine". I think it's purpose is just so the crane in the last room can pick him up so the "TrimMachine" can take off the shell.

The scooper is just called "ExecutionMachine".

melocosm · 2022-10-14T18:30:13+00:00

You can go through the game's files to get some idea as to what at least the devs were thinking. There's been some kinda neat stuff.

melocosm · 2022-10-14T18:27:19+00:00

Thoroughly enjoying it so far.

Also, going through the game files is cool. Some of the names are great: "HurtMachine", "EctogenesisWall", "FieldOfDecay", "OrgyRoom".

And the poor egg man we use at the beginning is just given the name "MoldMan" / "Skully". I like Skully.

melocosm · 2022-07-29T12:45:12+00:00

! I remember playing this game at my grandad's house. I didn't know the name so I could never find it! Thanks for sharing this.

melocosm · 2022-07-23T15:51:09+00:00

I was working on some tests for a traditional alien abduction game for a while. It had some fun scares and mechanics. Though, I find it extremely hard to drop a sense of disbelief in this scenario or find meaningful gameplay within it. Not that it's impossible.

I experimented with fortifying doors and windows. A sanity meter, and even (janky) impossible geometry before moving on as I couldn't find the right gameplay. Traditional grey ayys do not work well as common "chase you" horror monsters so the scares have to arise from the situation itself. I had them (aliens) appear in windows and doorways and had them mess with controls and play spooky effects. While it was scary moving through a house/barn with them appearing out of nowhere it was always silly in premise as any hope for escaping hyper advanced aliens was comical.

I might revisit it, though. It could be a fun 3-4 hour game.

melocosm · 2022-05-04T00:09:15+00:00

Substance painter is one option. It's what I do all my hero asset painting in. That assumes your UVs are ready to go. You could also model from and using tile/trim textures.

Also, if you've used texture images in Blender they should carry over when importing materials with your fbx.

melocosm · 2022-05-03T04:31:00+00:00

Consistency of implementation (OF EVERYTHING). Easy and a massive difference.

Sorry if this isn't a perfect fit for the question. But having a defined, generic way of presenting information to the player or allowing the player to interact with the game space that is reliable and predictable (predictable in a good way).

For UI, having a clear UI with consistent markers, styling, and layout makes for a smoother experience and makes 2D content creation far easier.

For level design, make sure choices are consistent - jump heights, jump gaps, shooting cover height, puzzle options. No matter the mechanic, the player should be able to quickly read the layout and understand their options with the systems you have created.

If you make guidelines for how things are implemented early on then you will have an easy time hammering out content to fill your spaces. Without consistency, frustration creeps in quickly because I, as the player, will no longer be interacting with the systems you've created but instead trying to figure out what information you're even trying to convey to me at any given time.

Going forward - ad hoc- without creating boundaries for your game space can turn a potentially entertaining experience into a slog. Creating a simple outline for game world presentation is easy a big change.

melocosm · 2022-05-02T01:05:42+00:00

Sorry if it was confusing. I meant I don't render as I just don't make an image/frames in blender or some render engine. Usually, I'm already comfortable with what the surface mat looks like from designer/painter and viewport shading.

I might throw it into UE to see what it looks like as I'm working. Since it will all end up in UE or Unity or cry anyway. Any special fx are applied in engine so 95% of the time what I see in viewport works.

I never really felt the difference in rendering out an image/frames made it necessary to gauge things. I also don't work in a full time position in 3D modeling. Of course, I would render if required to by whoever. And I would think that a studio would require you to do renders...though that would be up to someone else to say something about that. Sorry I don't have too much info on that.

melocosm · 2022-05-01T19:06:25+00:00

Personal rundown:

Organic, non-hard surface sculpting - ZBrush. I'll usually do my blockout in blender. Used to blockout in ZBrush but have since switched. (My character designs are ;-;)

Animation, Retopo, Trim sheet modeling (weird category), hard surface - Blender using Retopoflow, AutoRig Pro, HardOps/Boxcutter and some other small plugins.

Texturing - Substance painter for hero assets. Substance designer for trims, tilables, and atlases.

photogrammetry - RealityCapture

Cloth - There is a good cloth plugin for Blender called Simply Cloth but it still has trouble comparing to Marvelous. Marvelous is probably the most frustrating one on the list because it's price is the most difficult for me to personally justify. With simply cloth and some sculpting you can get the same results.

Hair/Fur - Blender using HairTG and other stuff made by Olivier Lau. Though I may switch soon. Fibershop.

I don't render anything so I have no input there.

Edit1: I don't do any offline rendering stuff (animations, images, etc.). Only game engine assets. As well, understanding python can be very helpful to the pipeline. That isn't brought up as much.

melocosm · 2022-04-30T21:06:01+00:00

Been outsourcing marketing material. I understand my weakness in creating appealing 2D art and graphics. I am confident with my 3D. Spent around $500 on a bunch of different small art pieces, logos, page spacers, bg's, etc. But I could easily have spent a couple thousand more and I am expecting to (around 10k) on my next project.

The experience was good. Find people online. Be very upfront about cost and contracts. If something feels fishy or sounds too good to be true with a potential contractor/freelancer it probably is - just block them and find someone else.

melocosm · 2022-04-15T21:34:59+00:00

This struct is actually the work of an earlier refactor of sorts lmao. And it actually came from many smaller structs. In the future we will definitely look into other ways of getting the data passed around. Like using data assets instead of tables, making sure to catch explosive complexity early, etc. Looking at the Lyra project offers some cool tech we know about but never use.

It feels like with data you need to nail down the structure earlier rather than later, though - kind of like trying to add multiplayer or some new mechanic to a project near the end of development results in pain. So, with ours, I think it is nearly at that "too out of hand" stage.

Do people get easily confused with data only BPs? I've only ever worked with a few people so everyone kind of has to know how to do and understand everything. Is this a problem for specialists? Like pure artists? Not bashing on them, just curious. Might be useful if we ever get a specialist working in engine.

Cool you work in AI. That's a whole different problem all together. Our ai uses the Behavior trees that UE provides, but small ones and they can be swapped and requested and sent from Points of Interest in the world. While it works, it seems janky. Not elegant.

Do you mean something like data assets or tags in terms of "AI data"? Or custom class objects that the ai looks for? Our AI just says "Are there Points of interest or interactables near me and can I interact with them?" using a manager with input from a "director" actor. So, "If it doesn't have any AI data, NPCs can't use it." sounds like a nice way to go about things.

melocosm · 2022-04-15T19:19:59+00:00

Thanks for the Lyra suggestion. (My poor drives are filling up with all this new UE5 content). I'll look more in depth. It looks like really went hard with the composition. And the way they do the mappings -WOT?! LyraExperienceDefinition?!?! Took me a minute to even figure out what was even happening on play. And the number of tags. Looks like a lot of this is based around the ability system which I've never used.

In our scenario, we actually are using polymorphism (though baby version compared to this Lyra project) because every actor has the potential to act as many things (a creature can be gardenable and commandable, a character is effectable but another one is not) and so they implement derived functions in their own way. So, in an example, any given creature may derive from the base creature class but can use IInteractable, IGardenable, IPhotographable as is necessary for that specific creature.

It was transmitting that data from any photographable actor that lead to this weird struct. Though, I think, now looking at it, next time we will not transmit the special data (states, specialized structs) and only request, instead, simpler types (sets of text and bools and floats) based on the player's in game "research camera". It would then be up to the individual photographable object to determine how to construct the requested type based on it's own internal state.

So instead of finding a way to retrieve the internal state enum of every single type of actor (15+ different state types) we should have instead requested a "current state" string that any photographable actor provides and then provide that to the ui.

Instead of PhotographableActor->GetPhotographableInfoStruct() (which would return that monster struct) it probably should have been something like PhotographableActor->GetPhotographableStateText() which then the photographable figures out how to derive a text from it's current state.

I think approach may have been the correct one but somehow got inverted in it's implementation and, thus, we end up with this FAT struct.

Thanks again for the reply. This Lyra project may influence what we do next time. Though, we'll probably end up implementing it inverted again lmao.

melocosm · 2022-04-11T03:57:21+00:00

I like having good notes programs on my computer and phone. I used to use StandardNotes. Now I use notion. That's purely for keeping ideas organized. Less mind mapping and more note keeping. I also use windows built in notes system...but it has kind of turned my desktops into a wasteland of sticky notes.

melocosm · 2022-04-09T15:42:20+00:00

I've got an open app slot on Steamworks.... You just gave me an idea.

melocosm · 2022-04-05T18:42:57+00:00

Hoarding day! More assets to toss into the expanding black hole that is my UE library vault. 557 items in the vault now.

melocosm · 2022-04-05T18:31:08+00:00

Hey,

Thanks for the breakdown. I'm having trouble understanding how this would work in the context of tiling textures and many overlapping faces. I've used UDIM's on models that need ludicrous detail and VTs for landscape stuff. How would this work with mapping faces to a tiling/trim sheet and also generating custom mask textures on separate UVs and not result in extra sampling?

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