My Modern Battlezone Pet-Project...

[TheJamsh]

Sweet, at Stafford right? I forget they have sponsored UE stuff there... Here's the bug on the forums in more detail, to save a copy-paste!
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthr ... -4-7-Pre-4

There's a sample project there to see the issue too, I'm using 4.6.1 at the moment, though I'm tempted to move to the 4.7 preview builds. BTW, if anybody wants to check my YouTube channel, I've done a few Live-Streams there of development for this

[bigbadbogie]

Just out of curiosity, how difficult is it to adapt your game for a new engine version?

[Nielk1]

I've been toying with UE4 for a bit (not as much as TJ here by a long shot). If you don't edit the source (you can still do a C++ project mind you binding to the engine libraries) you can swap engine versions very easily. Not sure on full source.

[bigbadbogie]

I badly wish I could get my head around this engine like you guys have.

My brain is stuck in the BZ2 editor.

[General BlackDragon]

Best editor on the planet

[Ded10c]

@BB: It varies between projects, BB. Mostly changing versions is fine, but the game I'm developing can't move to 4.7 yet because we have a level which relies heavily on emissive lighting (to the point that there actually aren't any lights in the scene - it's lit entirely by the materials). 4.7 changes the way emissive lighting works by dimming the rest of the level when there are more emissive lights on-screen, so this makes the level unusable. Once we've found a way around that doesn't ruin the aesthetic we'll be able to update.

@TJ: I'll ask around. I have a UE4 lecture this afternoon, the lecturer might have something. Obviously they're learning UE4 too though, so I can't say for sure. It's an interesting place to be, being taught by people who are still learning the source material.

[TheJamsh]

Moving engine versions has been okay so far, though they have made quite a few changes to the C++ side of things since it came out. They tend to Deprecate things which will warn you one release, then simply won't work the next so you have a while to fix them up, usually the changes are for the better though!

Moving to 4.7 will result in a few changes, most of it is usually a Find & Replace job though.

Also @AHadley - Try disabling Auto Exposure, it might be back on by default possibly? Can do it in project settings or with an Unbound Post Process Volume. I'm not sure why they have it on by default because nearly every situation makes you want to turn it off :p

[coxxon]

@The Jamsh - have you considered putting this into the Unity engine (free download for learning it), and making it a stand alone product? You'd have to dump the direct BZ Sabre tank, but from what little I've seen of Unity it's a broader system for game making than Unreal appears to be, and could support fully the BZ style FP/RTS gameplay. Plus the engine is cheaper to buy if you want to sell what you make in it. As I understand it, a lot of indie 3d game dev has gone that way recently.

[Ded10c]

UE4 projects are free-to-publish as the licensing is all covered by the subscription - and it's much, much more versatile than UE3. Unity is good, though I've only used it briefly, but it has nowhere near the power and visuals UE4 does.

[TheJamsh]

I wouldn't switch to Unity, I use Unreal every day in my regular job and I get to use it for free for at least another year or so (was a beta-tester for a few months). There's a big long list of reasons why, but Unity is more expensive, ugly as sin and I don't find it as intuitive to use as Unreal. A lot of Unity devs have actually moved to Unreal now, since it's so much cheaper and their tools are second to none. Alongside that I've also got a fairly decent standing in the UE community now, switching would do much more harm than good.

UE4 is leaps and bounds above what the UDK was, which admittedly was horrible if you wanted to make anything other than a FPS. I encourage people to give it a go though, I used UDK since 2009 so using UE4 is relatively straight forward to me, though it can seem intimidating at first they have so much content to get you started it's a no brainer.

[Nielk1]

UE4 projects are free-to-publish as the licensing is all covered by the subscription - and it's much, much more versatile than UE3. Unity is good, though I've only used it briefly, but it has nowhere near the power and visuals UE4 does.

There is a profit share AH, but only after X amount of threshold income. Thus free creations will never incur a commission.

[Ded10c]

I know - I was ignoring that, this being a free project and all

[TheJamsh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NciZavxdF4

Started building the Weapon Convergence system. I'm trying to keep it flexible like the BZ system is, using the 'Eyepoint' (well, cockpit) to figure out where to calculate the convergence point from, take weapon range/targeted object into account, then add the additional pitch rotation. Notice the big yellow arrow which is the world-space convergence location (I don't have cool red lasers yet :p), and it doesn't factor Roll into account yet... TFW you need a physics programmer.

This is a frigging hard part. Not only that, but adding the additional Pitch/Roll stuff that BZ2 does when you move or aim has started messing with the Physics, so I get weird Yaw rotation on non-flat surfaces now. Oddly enough, they work fine separately, but the self-righting code adds Z rotation when it doesn't even touch it. Weird stuff.

Full multi-player control/replication is in now too you'll notice, so technically speaking, it's an almost playable game. Though, it's going to need a fair bit of optimization. You'll notice that ammo updates etc aren't as instantaneous as they used to be, so I'm probably flooding the network with RPC calls somewhere... need to diagnose that.

[Dataanti]

Nice

although on the first video, it seemed like the suspension was a little to ridged for the small and sharp bumps but perfect for the bigger ones. Like i can just imagine in cockpit view the camera all of a sudden jolting up and down as you go over sharper smaller bumps.

[Red Devil]

the gravitron is probably adjusted for neptune and he's on pluto.