DrewMelton's Forum Posts

  • I used Modo for my game, which is pre-rendered 3d.

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    > I even passed the 10,000 image limit, so I can't even preview or use the debugger.

    >

    A few months ago I also encountered this problem ... Ashley said:

    [quote:1k7cxor9]Sorry, there is nothing we can do about this. The Windows OS itself has a limit of 10,000 graphics objects per process, and the editor needs at least one icon per object not including everything else a typical Windows app needs, which is probably pushing you over the limit. Addressing this would require fundamentally rearchitecting the editor. This work is being done for C3, but it is too late for C2. I am shocked that anyone would ever run in to this limit anyway, since that is a truly extraordinary number of images to be using. All you can do is try to reduce the number of images used, or one other workaround is to export your project every time you want to test it, which applies spritesheeting and reduces the number of images.

    I thought for a while, until there is a development - get rid of extra animation frames, leaving only what is necessary to test the number of frames

    Yeah, I kept it to just the two characters for as long as I could for this. However, working (and trying to show off) a game with missing animation frames isn't enjoyable, and maintaining two copies was a bit annoying, so I eventually just lived with it. There were also times when I needed to test animations for triggers or whatnot, so not having all of them made some tests impossible.

    Anyway, it's a bit of a moot point since I am postponing the project for the moment while I work on my other game in UE4. When I restart this project (or a variation of it), I will mostly likely do it in an engine that supports 3d. It makes it so much easier. Being limited to 2d just isn't my thing. That and I would want more console export options.

  • DrewMelton

    Hi,

    Do you use UE4 with Blueprint or with C++ template?

    Good luck with UE4 ^^

    I'll be using Blueprint with UE4. I'm more of an artist than programmer. So far, I like it better than Unity+Playmaker.

  • I'm sorry to hear that the limitations became too much

    I feel like the project could have been completed, I just felt like I was always working against the grain, pushing the engine and trying to find workarounds.

    What bothered me was that the games that inspired me to create an isometric game like Age of Empires or Baldur's Gate did this stuff 15 years ago with many more objects on screen, no overlapping units, large levels, many effects, large isometric buildings, advanced fog of war, and so on, and there were so many things that I could not recreate. Believe me, I tried.

    Honestly though, I think this is a good a time as any to learn a new engine. It will simply give me more options. I'm not really abandoning the project as much as I am "postponing" it until I feel like I could do the game justice. It was a great learning project and helped me get started with game design. The game I am working on now is a little more straight forward as I mentioned in my last post, and Unreal Engine 4 is designed for this type of game. I think that makes a big difference. Work in the engine that it is designed for the kinds of games you want to make.

    Hopefully, in a new months, I'll be able to show off my new game, though since it not be a C2 game, I'll have to post it in the open topic section or something.

  • Wow this is awesome man! Nice work, any plans on making it published or multiplayer? Would be nice to play it

    At the moment, I am learning Unreal Engine 4. Since I'm working in 3d anyway, this opens up the kinds of games I can make. The game I'm working on now is a deviation from this. It'll be more of a third person stealth game. I may make an isometric game in the future, but it is a bit of a hassle. If I do one, it'll probably be pure 3d. Pre-rendering 3d to 2d sprites like I did for this game was a bit of a pain. There were also some issues I had with making this game in C2 such as units overlapping, difficulty with multiple enemies, being limited to a small isometric grid, and whatnot. I even passed the 10,000 image limit, so I can't even preview or use the debugger.

    Anyway, for updates on my projects, just follow my youtube channel. I update it with new videos whenever I make worthwhile progress. I will most likely not be updating this thread anymore, but I will respond to questions.

    https://www.youtube.com/user/ThreeBladedSword/videos

  • megatronx not sure I understand.. but if I make a 800x800 nebula image, remove alpha channel and scale it down to 100x100 in PhotoShop, then in C2 resize it in the Layout View to 800x800 will that make any difference in memory usage/draw calls? or is that just making a giant fuzzy image at the same processing expense?

    If you make an image smaller in Photoshop, you are basically removing information from the image. When you bring that small image back into C2 and scale it up, it will become blurry because those pixels are no longer there. It has to fill in data and average everything out, resulting in a blurry image.

    If you want to rescale, it would be best to find some sort of happy medium. Those ship renders we made were slightly larger than needed to give a bit of head room for adjustment in C2. The render size can be adjusted before you render, and you can always shrink it down afterwards in Photoshop as well.

    The main thing is that you don't end up with anything blurry on at least the majority of devices. Perhaps you can make a backup of the project and do some tests or experiments and see what is possible without ruining your main game.

    Now, when it comes to draw calls or processing expense, I'm afraid this is not my area of expertise. Smaller images will use less memory, but I don't know what else. I didn't get to test my game on anything else and was just hoping it would run on other systems. I didn't get that far.

  • Putting an "is on screen" check above the collisions and patrolling could help, if done right.

    I wouldn't bother with blank sprites though. Don't worry about that. Unless your image memory use is getting to the point of extremes, there's no point in trying things that may even make performance worse if not done correctly.

    As always, organize everything into "groups" and use the debugger to see if it's actually helping performance. That's what the "profile" tab is for. It shows how much CPU resources something is using.

  • Will people be able to tell that they can scroll to the left past the levels? If it is not apparent to them, they may not realize it is possible. Never assume people will automatically know. Of course, I'm sure they will figure it out eventually.

    If it were me, I'd add a side panel on the left or right that's always visible. Or maybe something at the top or bottom. Whichever looks best. They really don't need to see a ton of levels on screen at once anyway. Just have a handful of levels visible at once and leave yourself some room for some small, unobtrusive menu buttons.

  • Let us know the details how c2 compares with it, and is it difficult to switch?

    So far, Blueprint seems pretty easy to learn. Obviously it will take a little time to master a new program. I mean, I've been using C2 for nearly 2 years, and UE4 with Blueprints for less than a week. But, I'm picking it up pretty quickly.

    Since I'm used to working in 3d, I don't think UE4 is that hard to work with. There are a lot of things here, but nothing really seems that hard to understand.

    It seems more geared towards making a game. I mean, there are templates for a variety of game types already there to test. Setting up controls and programming them with Blueprints seemed easier than it was in Unity. The AI has more features built in such as a behavior tree. I easily found an animation timeline for triggering sounds or events at specific times during an animation. That feature seemed more hidden in Unity.

    I'm not going to jump the gun and say which is better yet. I spent the last week or two with Unity. So, now I want to give UE4 some time. I'll probably be studying it for several hours a day at least. Hopefully, I can get a little prototype going by the end of the week and see if it's right.

    I'll be recreating the same game I made here, but probably with manual third person controls instead of point and click. I'd like to make the player controllable this way so I can add in traps or physics puzzles and just make the game world a bit more interactive. Both of these things seemed easier in UE4. I even saw a feature of quickly creating destructible objects. At least to me, this stuff just seems more ready to go in UE4 than with Unity.

    Anyway, I'll report back after I've had some more time with it.

  • Cool, I'm going to be following more tutorials and doing more tests this week in UE4. So far, some things I wanted to do seem easier in UE4. It just seems like it was designed more for the kinds of games I want to make.

    By the end of this week, I should know if I will want to work with UE4 or not.

  • If your goal is to make a complete game by yourself, then Unity will probably get you there faster (not as fast as Construct 2). If your goal is to become a competent game developer with a specific focus, UE4 is probably the most promising tool to learn right now.

    Just curious, what makes UE4 take longer? I've watched some tutorials and played with both Unity+Playmaker and UE4, and it seems like UE4 has a lot of tools out of the box that help get things going. I'm still watching the tutorials of course, so I haven't looked at every aspect.

  • That's interesting. I've gotten pretty good with C2, so anything that operates on a similar kind of terminology shouldn't be too hard for me to pick up.

    I've been following some tutorials on Playmaker and have done some quick tests, but I'm not committed yet. I want to choose to the engine that will get me the best results. I've already got a working prototype made in C2, though I may deviate slightly in how it controls (like 3rd person controls instead of point and click). But I haven't decided on any of that yet. Right now, I'm just playing with the engines to see if I feel like I could do it.

    Since UE4 is free, I may give it a download and try it out.

  • UE4 blueprints are really easy to comprehend (after spending some years in C2 and CC). All you need to know is to learn a different workflow of the engine like GameMode, PlayerController, PlayerCharacter etc. It took me just about a week to learn how it works and to make a simple 3d adventure game system that have doors, rooms, transitions, player interactions, camera system... UE4 is stupid easy in comparison to Unity+Playmaker. To do exactly same thing in Unity with playmaker... i gave up after 2 weeks.

    Like megatronx said, there's a lot of neat stuff exposed in blueprint nodes: timelines, delays, custom events, literally hundreds of different types variables (I really don't like in C2 that I can't make an array variable or simple vector2 variable to store XY - instead you need to make 2 separate number variables sic!).

    And everything have build in help infos and tooltips, so there's no need to dig through the help online.

    One thing that can be overwhelming is UE4 editor itselfs, there are a lot of buttons, options, parameters, options in options, parameters in parameters

    Wow, so you think UE4 is easier to use than Unity+Playmaker? I should have a look at it then. I always figured it would be harder, so I never really looked at it.

  • I am playing with Unity and Playmaker right now as well. I'm already using 3d in c2, just pre-rendered. Having a full 3d engine would open up the types of games I could make.

  • I like the way this looks, especially the models.