Saturday, 16 July 2016

No further posts

It has been a considerable length of time since I have done any work on this game. It is unlikely that I will pick this up again.

The other hobbies that I have are taking over, so I am posting this note.

To find out what else I do, please see my main blog:

https://blog.discoverthat.co.uk/


I have learnt a lot and I enjoyed creating the game engine I used with XNA on the Xbox and all the features of the game. Using Unity changed my focus and allowed me to concentrate on the design, but this interest has drifted to an end.

I will leave this blog here in the hope that the progress is of interest to some people.


==


Wednesday, 3 June 2015

Blender Quick Reference

I have used Blender a lot for 3D models for games but my use has long periods away doing coding or other projects.

That means whenever I return to 3D modelling I have to remember how to use Blender again. Typically Blender has progressed a version or two as it is very actively being developed. It always takes me a while to get back up to speed.

I hunted round for quick start guides and keyboard shortcuts but none quite had what I needed.

What I wanted was the common features used to make most models to get me up to speed as quickly as possible. I don't need every feature because I can look up the rarely used ones as needed. Therefore, in my usual way, I have created a desktop quick reference guide that has the features I need to remember each time.




This will continue to be a work in progress. I will add more reminders as and when I know what I need to use.

Downloads

I've made a couple of versions available for download:

PDF to print or view
Source PowerPoint to edit to make your own changes

3D Printing

If you are interested in 3D printing see my other blog.

==

Last Updated - 3 March 2016

Cross post on my other blog

Blender Set Origin Script

I have not done much work on my game recently but to do so I need to get round to creating the levels and I'm back to using Blender again.

When I started to tidy up one of my models I came across an odd feature in Blender. You can only set the origin on the active object.

My main reason for setting an origin is to get all of the origins of all of the objects in a scene at the zero point. I find it easier to import in to other programmes and line them up if they all have the same centre.


Using the built in button, it is frustrating having to select one object at a time to set all the origins. I decided to create a script to do this for me.

Not as easy as I expected because even in code the set origin only works on the active object.


I just typed the lines in to the console to run it. After the last line press return one extra time to run it.



for item in bpy.context.scene.objects: 
 if item.type == 'MESH': 
  item.select = True 
  bpy.context.scene.objects.active = item 
  bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR') 
  item.select = False



The above worked in version 2.74 of Blender. It goes through ALL objects in the scene which is what I wanted.



for item in bpy.context.selected_objects:
 if item.type == 'MESH': 
  bpy.context.scene.objects.active = item 
  bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR') 



In theory the above should work for the currently selected objects but I have not tested that script.



I came across another oversight when trying to copy that code to save it. To get the Windows Ctrl-C (copy) and Ctrl-V (paste) to work in the console window you first have to click on the console menu item at least once. After that Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V work as expected.

Friday, 12 December 2014

Ultimate FPS and Photon Unity Networking

I received an e-mail today that got me interesting in my game again.

Too much of my time was spent tinkering with animations and controls to try to get things just right. I've looked at some pre-built assets before but none quite hit the mark.


Ultimate FPS (UFPS) have added a third person view and are now adding multi-player.  Both those features are exactly what I have been waiting for.  They have teamed up with Photon Unity Networking (PUN) which is my multi-player platform of choice so I am already familiar with that.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ufps-ultimate-fps-50-off-sale.126886/
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/2943
https://www.exitgames.com/en/PUN

It's a closed Beta at the moment but this looks to be exactly what I need to speed up my development:
http://www.visionpunk.com/content/assets/ufpsmp/landing.html

1000's of hours have gone in to UFPS which I would never have time to replicate and so I am very hopeful that all I need to do is add in my gamepad support and some AI and the rest will be level design and assets to complete the game.  Sounds easy but I know there is still a lot of work left to do.


Coming up to the Christmas break I might even have some time to work on it.

Fingers crossed that they let me in on the Beta.

Friday, 14 November 2014

Pause

Following on from my last post about source control, lots of additional things have conspired to halt development.

The aforementioned source control issuesLand Rovers, laptop problems, excessive work at my day job and then playing Destiny on my Xbox One have all been parties to what I expect to be a long pause.


Destiny is so close to the game I would have liked to have developed that I am spending my spare time playing that.


I expect to return to my own game development at some point but for the time being any updates will be few and far between.

==

Update:

Although Destiny kept me more interested than any other game this year, I have still lost interest in it. No matter how good quality the graphics are and how stable the game play is, playing the same thing over and over is only fun for a while.

It has made me re-think my game design.  In particular I now want each play through of any level to be different every time.  The characters both players and enemies should start at different locations and cover different areas of the same map.

Wednesday, 27 August 2014

Clone a Repository in SourceTree

I have not done much development for the last month.  This is because, in addition to being busy with other things, the repository for Diabolical on my main laptop became corrupt!  I have not had enough time to think about fixing it.  It's holiday time and despite the weather I have had some outside jobs to do including some work on my Land Rover.

I looked at the problem with SourceTree a couple of weeks ago and decided that the only way to fix the busted repository was to take a copy of my most recent changes that have not yet been pushed up, delete the old local copy of the repository and start again with a fresh download of the source.

The trouble is it's now over a Gig download so it's not a quick fix.  I also can't remember all the repository settings.  I use a quick work round for security issues and there are some very basic Getting Started answers on the support site but I decided to do some reminder screenshots to add to this article.

As long as the repository already exists on the server the process in SourceTree is easy.

Clone/New from the toolbar




Enter or select the source path




Select from the list on the server or select another server





Enter the local path to the folder to store the repository



You can select an existing empty local folder or manually add a new folder name which will be created


Press the clone button to download all the files from the repository

It may take a few minutes depending on the size of the repository and your download speed but then you will be ready to start working on your project.


Tuesday, 26 August 2014

Security Workround for SourceTree

SourceTree is easy to download and easy to install but getting the security working can be a bit tricky to start with.  This is made worse, if like me, you are pressed for time and sometimes behind an SSL aware man-in-the-middle firewall.



I kept getting an SSL certificate error when trying to clone a repository.  I am fairly sure this is due to not adding the SSH public key to the repository on the web site but at the time I was in too much of a hurry.

As I was having trouble I did a quick bit of searching and found an option to 'Disable SSL certificate validation...'



That got rid of my errors and allowed me to get on and download my repository.


For my open source and experimental projects the security is not critical but for more important projects I would suggest taking the time to configure SSH correctly.