Game Engine Rebuild Progress

[Valerielychee]

So, does all this means there's no point in filling in the present bugtracker anymore?

[Wolfschadowe]

So, does all this means there's no point in filling in the present bugtracker anymore?

The game code will mostly still be the same, so some of the reported bugs will still be valid. It is still relevant to enter bugs into the bugtracker. I will likely address them as I prepare each individual scene.

[xsandman78]

The points are based on scene and current path. To avoid confusion I'll likely need to pair the feature with a path indicator. The Wednesday Office scene has the following possibilities for showing points for Emily:

• Brad Path - Deadbeat - 0 Max
• Brad Path - Gentleman - 5 Max
• Emily Path - Emily Main - 10 Max (Canon path)
• Emily Path - Emily Only - 6 Max
• Faith Path - FN Main - 3 Max

Hadn’t been aware about the presence of a canon path.

[infiniteignorance]

Hadn’t been aware about the presence of a canon path.

Emily does have nice cannons.

[Tao Dude]

I take a break from the forum for a few days and suddenly everything kicks off .

Actually it was sort of enforced, as I have been bringing the DAZ installation on my new machine into line what used to be my Main machine, but seems to be having tantrums, with windows explorer crashing so I can't access folders.

Sadly, I haven't been able to render any animations because the update took forever, but the good news is that the BSODs in my new machine seem to be related to the auto sleep function. I have disabled sleep whilst connected to mains and the BSODs have stopped for now (he says, tempting fate). Also, nVidia have released about three updates recently, so it could be that.

Anyway, Back to the important stuff.

Wolfschadowe, have you got any animations covered yet? I was thinking of cutting my teeth on simple stuff like blinking and breathing, but if you have that sorted, I'll have a go at something else.

[Wolfschadowe]

Wolfschadowe, have you got any animations covered yet?

Not much yet. Mainly I've been working on the UI and functionality. What little I have done has been testing poses for the Wednesday office scene. Basically I put one pose on each frame of the animation, which I can then export to Unreal and freeze the animation programmatically to match the "page" that the player is on. The cool thing is that there is no problem to have that pose "living" with blinking and breathing, or even "living movement' like a slight sway or what have you.

So feel free to go gangbusters.

[Tao Dude]

So feel free to go gangbusters.

I'll see what I can come up with. When I have something, I'll upload it to Mega and send you the link.

[Tao Dude]

Test file uploaded to Mega: i have PM'd you the link.

[Wolfschadowe]

It's time for a new update. So far, I'm happy with how the engine rebuild is progressing. My focus right now is trying to get an IK Control Rig set up for the DAZ characters. This is really the last piece of the puzzle and is more of a "nice to have." What makes it so nice is that it would bring down the "page time" for each shot significantly. In the old engine, each page was an hour's worth of work. This includes the time in DAZ to pose the characters, get the lighting adjusted, do the render, write the game code for each page, write the content for each page, set the hotspot targets, and assign everything to the page. Count the number of pages in the game and that is roughly how many hours went into it, plus an additional 20 hours per scene to set up the overall environments.

I won't get any savings with the new engine in setting up scene environments. That will remain the same. As for creating each page, for the moment, if I exclude posing the characters, which is what the IK Control Rig would help with, in the new engine, I expect I can create all the content for the page, lighting, rendering, game code, etc., in about five minutes. Without the rig I must do some Daz->Unreal conversions as I'd do the posing in DAZ, then transfer the pose as a static animation to Unreal and apply it. That takes about 10 minutes per character, after posing, so let's say 20 minutes. So, I estimate 20-40 minutes total, per page, depending on the number of characters in view. That's still a great savings of time from the hour per page with the old image.

If I can get the IK control rig working on the characters, I can eliminate DAZ from the page creation completely. I would just use it along with Hexagon for asset creation as part of the scene building portion, and then I would pose and animate directly in Unreal. This would cut my time down to about 5 minutes per character. Now I'm looking at anywhere from 10-20 minutes per page. That's going from one or two pages an hour up to six or ten pages an hour with the new engine! Imagine a new episode every month!

Ok, being realistic, that will not happen, I doubt I can commit the time to that. But hopefully you get the idea about why I'm excited about the engine rebuild. The downside is that as a result, BEW will have to be "rebooted" and a new cast brought in. The old original Genesis figures just won't transfer properly and I have to use Genesis 3 and 8 figures, which translate to Victoria 7 and Victoria 8 generations of figures to use the "industry standard" nomenclature. Genesis 8 is actually fourth generation of Genesis, but DAZ skipped four, five and six to align with the Victoria series.

I've also included a "legacy mode" that will use the old game images instead of new real-time rendered images. The primary reason for that is so that I can build and test the functionality of the game logic and UI with existing assets. I might leave it in the final version as an Easter egg, or extra content.

[infiniteignorance]

So, you're attempting to use inverse kinematics in unreal engine to create realism. Do I have this right?

I'm all for playing the game over from the beginning. I fail to see why anyone should have a problem with it.

[Wolfschadowe]

So, you're attempting to use inverse kinematics in unreal engine to create realism. Do I have this right?

That's a side effect, but the main purpose is just to make the pipeline more efficient from start to finish.

I'm all for playing the game over from the beginning. I fail to see why anyone should have a problem with it.

What will happen is that We'll reset to Episode 1, but all existing episodes will still be playable in "legacy mode". Each episode will release with the updated content and actors. We may not necessarily follow the same release order though. We may see some new content before all the old content is converted, especially for Thursday evening.

[xsandman78]

Will the new cast be revealed in advance or left a surprise for rebooted release?

[Wolfschadowe]

Will the new cast be revealed in advance or left a surprise for rebooted release?

That is a great question, and one I haven't really thought about. Probably a mixture. I'm not all that great about keeping my mouth shut.

[boulimanus]

Exciting.
I'll be hoping Natalie remains and not too different. I loved her personality and model a lot.
Good to hear progress. Keep up the good work!

[palinathas]

That is a great question, and one I haven't really thought about. Probably a mixture. I'm not all that great about keeping my mouth shut.

We do not consider that particular trait a problem!! Always glad to see anything you are willing to share.