Worklog Update 2/3

| Feb 4, 2015 min read

The biggest problem with Unreal Engine 4 is that when there’s a problem, be it a syntax issue in your blueprints, or a device problem, the application generally exhibits this problem as a total shutdown. UE4 Crashes on average of 30 times per day (yes I submit the crash reports, yes I include a “what were you doing” and yes I file bug reports for things that I can at least minimally explain.)

We’re having issues with navmesh on iOS, issues with blueprints getting corrupted after being perfectly fine, able to be saved, committed to perforce, checked out again, worked on, submitted revisions to. Rolling back to earlier versions and continuing to work on them results in a corrupt blueprint again. Frustrating.

  • Team meeting to discuss styling UI components and action items. Alex put together some pretty cool looking graphics and it makes me realize just how much functionality comes out of (what would otherwise have been) art discussions. He came up with a way to identify transmission points that I hadn’t considered and that’s making me want to go back to the graph paper on a few things so that we can tell if the point we’re looking at is going upstairs or downstairs (or even into another room.) Stay-tuned.
  • Completely rewrote the HUD code to use UMG instead of blueprints and DrawRect. There are still a few lingering things that get drawn in immediate mode but 90% of the hud is now entirely editable using the UMG tools. UMG is fantastic but you can tell they ran out of steam building the UI for it. It’s also not incredibly stable.
  • Updated POI to indicate their type with icons. The art team is going to hate them but I MADE THIS.
  • Movement points that forward to another point have dedicated icons separate from regular “cover.” Stairs that go up indicate as such and move points that forward on the same Z index show a hermes-foot. I IS CLEVER.
  • Fixed switches to inherit from Actionable (again) and also updated the components to use the full switch collider (instead of just the button.) Now you can target either the switch face or the stand and activate it with an un-tap.