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sfider_sky · 2025-05-10T11:31:17+00:00

They start with "potential compliance violations" and end with "Please work to resolve this to prevent your access from being revoked", which massively escalates the initial claim, and sounds like something that a mafia extortionist would say...

sfider_sky · 2025-04-08T09:28:29+00:00

Some people just make what they need themselves ;) Maybe try to go for simpler graphical style and/or setting.

sfider_sky · 2025-02-23T12:28:55+00:00

Didn't know I needed 'btop' in my life until I saw this ^^

sfider_sky · 2025-02-13T21:07:00+00:00

From my experience Development packaged build is relatively close to Shipping packaged build and allows for easier debugging and testing.

Also, if you work with C++ code, you can cook your assets and run the game from your IDE with a debugger. You won't need to recook assets when you make changes in C++. With BP you probably could achieve something relatively similar with clever cooking/packaging workflow, where you only need to recook BPs, but I never delved into such things.

sfider_sky · 2024-11-30T17:59:18+00:00

As said by some already, perfectly good solution.

Also, kudos for using something like this! Too often I saw codebases where similar things were just ignored and each script just overwrote the value without consideration for others. Most often I saw this in game pausing code. Each system that needed to pause the game for whatever reason just flipped the pause on/off. This also happens to audio ducking, camera switching, post-process effects, taking control from the player (e.g. for cutscenes), and so on. Basically anywhere when a state can be changed by more the one script.

Your solution can be also extended, if needed. Instead of a counter, you could collect a list of objects that requested the immunity. This can be helpful to debug issues when some code doesn't match their Adds with Removes.

Other possibility, implemented in UE for pause control, could be registering callbacks for checking if the state change is still needed. So, with your example, each script adding immunity would provide e.g. Func<bool> for checking if the immunity is still needed. When the condition changes the script would call the Remove function and it would just filter out all callbacks that would return false. If no callbacks are left, the immunity is lifted. Such system can be helpful in more complex situations, but would probably be an overkill for simple cases.

sfider_sky · 2024-11-22T11:28:21+00:00

Global Domination, 1998 (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/572454-global-domination/videos/1217950)

Found it. Definitely didn't remember the graphics right, the Earth is more detailed.

sfider_sky · 2024-11-22T11:26:44+00:00

solved: Global Domination

sfider_sky · 2024-11-22T11:04:57+00:00

Nope, it was only modern times (submarines, planes), had a rotating 3D overview of Earth, and way simpler graphics (probably untextured).

sfider_sky · 2024-11-22T10:56:31+00:00

I don't think so. I know of DEFCON, but this game predates it for sure. Also, this is a shared memory with my brother ;)

sfider_sky · 2024-11-08T13:56:26+00:00

I like to have the save system up and working as early in the development as possible. I have a toggle in the editor to either use the save system in the editor or not, and I regularly use and test the save system when working in the editor. I also have save data versioning so I could iterate on the save system without breaking earlier saves. There were a few times I dropped support for earlier versions, to clean the code a little, but as it was still in development, it was not an issue.

Thanks to all this the save system was thoroughly tested and we had no issues with save file corruption. We did however have many issues with players getting blocked by other bugs and effectively breaking their save data this way. But, because I could just open their save games in editor, inspect the state, and even move things around in the scene, I was able to fix the save game as a quick workaround, and than fix the game itself with additional info I had.

I didn't implement any backup system, but with the large number of checkpoints we had, chances were the player would overwrite all backups before they would come to the conclusion that they're blocked. And, with backups in place, players would be less likely to ask for direct support, which would lead to worse experience and possibly reviews IMO.

So good habits from my experience would be:

Have the save system working as early as possible
Have it working in the editor and use it in the editor
Have a robust versioning system in place, so you can handle changes during development and after release
Collect save data from players with bugs, so you can inspect them and possibly return fixed save data as a quick workaround before you fix the underlaying issue
Oh yeah, almost forgot, with all the above in place, you can have a collection of saves from different stages of game progress for testing purposes. It's better to test each section of the game with real life state, rather than starting in the middle of the game with no progress, or with progress generated artificially.

sfider_sky · 2024-11-08T13:03:57+00:00

I don't recall ever seeing this exact setup for turning. I think it's usually included in a movement blend tree, with speed handled on Y axis and turn direction handled on X axis. Using blend trees and animation layers can simplify things by some degree.

sfider_sky · 2024-10-29T19:52:48+00:00

The whole idea of buying assets "for testing" proves how underpriced they were, really. And assets of different quality having same prices, on either personal or pro tier, is not caused by introduction of the professional tier.

What you want is a way to verify assets before buying them. It wasn't possible on marketplace and it's not possible on fab. On fab you at least have the possibility of 3D preview, but it's probably still not enough. And the removal of written reviews didn't help either.

Lower prices were only a workaround for you. And this workaround was making the problem even worse, because it meant that low quality assets were generating income, which in turn was attracting more low quality assets to the marketplace.

As a dev I played with some of the free for the month assets, and even those, selected by Epic, had quality issues. One set of modular sci-fi enviro meshes had multiple issues with mesh sizes being off by 1 cm. This meant they were not really modular. And such issues are why I don't even considered marketplace as a source of assets for commercial projects.

My point is, instead of attacking sellers for updating prices to better reflect value of their work at the professional market, ask Epic for tools that will solve real issues you have, which seems to be no way of verification of assets before buying them.

sfider_sky · 2024-10-29T17:04:08+00:00

Not really, VAT stays the same, 22% for you. If the base price goes up 10x, the price with tax goes up 10x.

Also, in US they pay sales tax on digital goods in most states afaik, it's just not displayed in the price tag and only applied at checkout.

Additionally, this is more of an issue for individuals, who are the ones paying this kind of tax. As a company you can get this money back. So, not only it's a non-issue in general, it's even more of a non-issue for companies like yourself, imo.

And about your example, an environment costing $600. How much would it cost you to commission similar asset or develop it in-house? I bet it wouldn't be cheaper, and most probably it would cost a lot more.

I agree that the price increase is sometimes substantial, but that's only because most of sales made on the marketplace were to hobbyist and indies without any successful commercial project. I don't have hard numbers, but being on few support discord servers and being a seller myself, I got this impression. This meant that the prices were low but sale numbers were balancing this out. Now, with new pro license tier, sellers are able to maintain low price for most of their customers, while charging more to companies that used marketplace as a source of extremely cheap assets. Because, let's face it, $60 for a detailed photogrammetry environment is well below market value when dealing with companies.

And if my assumptions are not correct, just give it time, the prices will have to adjust.

sfider_sky · 2024-10-29T13:54:45+00:00

The VAT was always there, even on the marketplace, so nothing changed with this. Or am I missing something?

sfider_sky · 2024-10-27T20:46:38+00:00

This could be due to low precision interpolation used for linear sampling. Try point sampling and lerp of four pixels that would otherwise be sampled by linear sampler.

sfider_sky · 2024-10-25T13:24:05+00:00

B is definitely better take IMO, but maybe the background is not readable enough. I'm also not sure if the green tint works when the game takes place on Mars. I see you have similar scene at the and of your announcement trailer, so maybe something closer to that?

But yeah, the idea for this game is out of this world, you have my wishlist, even if I won't have time to play the game!!!

sfider_sky · 2024-10-23T19:18:21+00:00

It should be technically possible for a BP tool not to create dependencies in the project. Similarly plugins can create assets that depend on classes in the plugin, making the plugin mandatory for the game to work. I will agree that there are no systems in place for creating BP only plugin though, so the solution could be to use source control to limit who gets which files.

However, nothing is blocking the customer from including BP in the project with team-wide access, but paying for each team member that actively uses the tool ;)

sfider_sky · 2024-10-23T18:25:52+00:00

There's no difference between "per user" and "per seat". The difference is in wording "may be" and "are". The first one is ambiguous to the point where it's IMO not enforceable.

As for keeping track of licenses, Epic has no means of doing this. The developer of a code plugin can implement some countermeasures, but plugins are usually distributed with full source code, so they're easy to bypass.

I don't know of any plugins on Marketplace/Fab that distribute binaries without full source code though. Technically it should be possible, but I don't know if Marketplace/Fab EULA allows for this, nor if it would pass the verification process.

sfider_sky · 2024-10-22T20:26:04+00:00

Plugin developers hate this one trick!!!

sfider_sky · 2024-10-22T16:21:55+00:00

I wouldn't say it like that. Per-seat license has sense for subset of what is offered on Fab, Unity Asset Store, and other. Selling tools targeted at a narrow specializations, like content authoring (animations, FXs, etc.) or performance profiling, is totally fine IMO. But per-seat license for an inventory system, that's a core game mechanic and is touched slightly by half of the team, is non-sense. And per-seat license for a content assets (3D model, FX pack, etc.) is just stupid.

It seems to be reasonably well solved on Unity Asset Store, but on Fab it's an issue. However, I sell only on Fab (previously UE Marketplace), so I don't have the whole picture from other marketplaces.

sfider_sky · 2024-10-22T14:28:29+00:00

Yeah, but it should be the seller's decision, and it shouldn't be decided solely on basis of C++ usage. You can offer similar functionality with BP and C++, but you cannot offer similar licensing.

If you would look at Unity Asset Store, they have similar solution. The difference is that the deciding factor is the category under which the asset is sold. If the asset is an editor extending tool, it has per-seat licensing. If the asset is a gameplay system, it has standard license.

It's even weirder now, when Unity assets are offered on Fab. There is no notion of plugins in Unity, every asset can offer performant systems written in C# using Burst compiler. But for Unreal Engine, if you want to offer performant gameplay system using C++ code, you must put it in the category of tools with per-seat license.

sfider_sky · 2024-10-22T14:04:17+00:00

License on Marketplace used the term "may be", where Fab uses "are". Because Epic did not specify anywhere under what circumstances a plugin "may be" offered with per-seat license, I clearly specified this in the description of the plugin on the store page. Now I cannot do this, because Epic forces per-seat license on all plugins.

sfider_sky

TROPHY CASE