More Unreal

It was another week of learning Unreal Engine. Some of the tutorials before this I was either watching or following along with in the engine. This week was working through creating a quest system step by step. It's taking quite a while. At times I've missed a mouse click and had to re-watch in order to see it. I've noticed a couple of differences in my version. There's an element that starts with one for the tutor. Mine starts with zero. Hmm, I'm going to have to go back and see I can figure it out. I also have a series of variables that aren't visible for me but are for the tutor. Hmm, I wonder why that is.

It's going to take me a while on this. Rather than posting updates that could be boring to most people, I may take a month or two off from the blog and work on it. So, if there's no blog next week, that's the reason. That would also give me time to buy and start using a book on Unreal Engine. Now that I've had a chance to watch some tutorials and work through some things in the engine, I've looked at books again but haven't chosen one. It's not easy to know which one would be the best fit, and they're too expensive to buy a pile of them.

I still don't have a way to generate landscapes. After the current tutorial, I'll probably go back to the inventory tutorial that I only watched before and follow along implementing it. That might give me enough practice to get procedurally generated landscapes working. With that I would have settings for book covers, although I don't technically need to do it that way. I could do settings by hand. It would just take a while. Doing it this way, I can also be making a game at the same time. Speaking of that, I've been writing down ideas and doing some brainstorming for quests and how the game world would work. I'm thinking that a selling point would be humorous quests. Maybe every tenth one would be funny? That would make it sort of like a movie or television show that has the occasional joke. We'll see.

Have a great weekend.

Nothing Too Significant

It was another week of banging my head on Unreal Engine. I did, however, find a good tutorial that not only was informative but would help me with doing a game. It was for making an inventory system and was that rare tutorial in which the guy explained why he was doing something and not just saying that he was doing it. The explanations were brief and clear. Despite the time it took to explain, the tutorial segments were short and to the point. I give it two thumbs up.

I was getting discouraged at my slow progress with the engine, especially after seeing a comment by someone who had been working with it for five months and still felt overwhelmed. I've used the BigWorld engine in the past and have taken programming classes. I was hoping for faster progress. Any progress is good progress, I suppose.

The main thing I've been looking at is using procedural generation to create a planet. That would give me a variety of biomes for book covers as well as being useful for a game. It appears that there are two main ways to do it. The first is to create a massive sphere. The second is to create a flat world in which a player reaching the edge of the map would transition to the other side of it in a seamless way. From the ground it would appear to be a planet. For a space game, which is what I'm leaning toward, I'd need to create planets and then create the landscapes, all using procedural generation. It's dreadfully complicated but would only need to be done one time. That's another thing I find encouraging. No matter how difficult a problem is, it only has to be solved once.

If it seems like a game is a distraction, I'm thinking of it like this. A $20 or $30 game that sold 1,000 copies would gross $20,000 or $30,000. If it sold a few thousand, that would be even better. If it was popular, I could start a company and start hiring employees.

Have a great weekend.

Tutorials 2

It was another week of going through Unreal Engine tutorials and reading documentation. Even after having used BigWorld, it's still daunting. Progress feels slower than it should be. Part of the problem is I can find a tutorial with a title that promises one thing while the tutorial delivers something different. A tutorial for creating a planet will be about creating a planet that can be seen from a distance or that can be used for staging limited screenshots rather than one that can be used as an environment. It's not always apparent that the video is a waste of time until I'm deep into it, although none of them are a complete waste of time. I still learn things.

As mentioned in a previous blog, I want to use Unreal to make book covers. I looked at free character models. The selection is limited. However, Unreal has something called Metahumans that might work. It's a way to make characters. I haven't looked at it too deeply yet because it's in early access, and I'm still struggling to get up to speed on the finer points of the engine itself. Although I've used BigWorld in the past, I wasn't an expert at it. I haven't been able to jump into Unreal and make it do the things I want it to.

I've also been struggling this week with an infection. I've been tired and not getting enough sleep. Unreal is taking too much time and effort without adequate results. I think maybe I need to focus on specific aspects of it and see how that goes, although I've kind of been doing that already. I need to figure out how to narrow my focus more, I suppose. And maybe I do need to get a book on it. I also looked at those again on Amazon.

I've been thinking about making a video game. I've brainstormed some ideas. It gets complicated fast. There's a list of features I could have or would need. Some of them give me the thought, "If I put a month into this..." It could add up to a lot of months to implement the features. The good news is that once I got a feature(system) working I could use it for other games. Before doing anything, a game would have to be designed, which means everything would have to be planned out ahead of time. How would such and such a system work? Transportation. Crafting. Harvesting. Combat. Quests. Etc. We'll see.

Have a great weekend.

Tutorials

I was hoping to post some book cover sample environments with trees and foliage, but it's not that easy. I've been going through Unreal Engine tutorials this week to try to get up to speed. I've used the BigWorld engine in the past, but it was all set up before I used it. Setting things up in UE has turned out to be a process. It's taking forever to learn things.

I've been using tutorials on YouTube that are made by UE gurus. One of them can't correctly pronounce words like button. He mostly sounds like a native speaker except for that, but it is super annoying. One has a strong Indian accent. His tutorial is over 11 hours long. He has a habit of not saying what he's doing. For example, he'll click/right click something or use some kind of shortcut key without mentioning it. Suddenly, something onscreen will change, leaving me trying to figure out how it was done. If I knew all of those things, I wouldn't need a tutorial. One has an eastern European accent. I like him the best, but it can be difficult to figure out what he's saying for some technical terms. I've watched others for specific things. I wonder where the native English speakers are for these things. Having to stop and figure things out or follow the steps is extremely time consuming.

I'm debating buying a book on Unreal Engine. I looked at them a couple of week ago. They're college textbook prices and thus too expensive. After this week, I might get one anyway. The old books aren't expensive, but Unreal Engine 5.2, which is what I'm using, just came out and has some significant changes not covered in the old books. For instance, procedural generation. If you're heard of or played No Man's Sky, it's made with procedural generation. That's more or less creating a set of rules that lets the engine create an environment(or whatever) rather than creating it all by hand. No Man's Sky has 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets, which is 18 quintillion. No one could make that many planets by hand. It's impossible to explore all the worlds in that game. It has 256 universes in it. 😄 Using procedural generation is a powerful tool. It's possible I could make an entire planet using a set of rules and then zoom around to find decent locations for book covers without having to spend hours creating the locations by hand. But is it worth it to learn that? Not just for book covers.

I've been thinking a lot about making a video game as a side hustle and forgetting about Etsy and Adobe and all that. It would be complicated and take a long time, but there's good money in it.

Maybe next week I'll have some screenshots of something.

Have a great weekend.

The New Install 2

Last week, I'd installed Windows on a new drive but couldn't access the old one that had my settings and programs and such. I tried various things and finally got into it on Wednesday. It doesn't seem like it would take that long, but I was doing things like running a troubleshooter with a Windows 10 installation disk. It said it could take an hour. Two hours later it was still running and time for bed. That's kind of how it went except the other attempted fixes didn't take that long.

I was also installing Unreal Engine to make book covers. It's a 100GB download. I got it finished over the weekend. Version 5.2 came out  yesterday. I had to reinstall. I've been having to reinstall my old programs. Some of them are easy. Some require effort. It's been a hassle. I wanted to be able to boot two separate copies of Windows from two different drives, but the new Windows wrecked the old installation. Technically, Windows wrecked them both. I had to reinstall the new one after running the old one. I still don't have everything up and running, and I still don't have any book covers made. I'm still doing Unreal Engine tutorials. The only thing I have so far is a screenshot of the engine. :)

That's the default view more or less. I ran into an error message about video memory because my video card is old and needs replacing. Looking that up and fixing it is about all I've done with it so far. To make book covers I'll need to create an environment, which should be fairly easy. I've used BigWorld before. Making environments isn't rocket science. I'll also need to find some character models. That could be trickier, but there should be some free ones online...somewhere. I'm hoping for the best. Once the environment is made, it's a matter of placing the models and doing screenshots. Setting it all up would take hours for a professional. Thank goodness I'm not a professional.

Did I mention my book files are on the old drive? I'm glad I got access to it again.

Have a great weekend.