Weekly Dev Log for March 2nd, 2020
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for March 2nd, 2020, detailing all the changes that have happened since February 24th, 2020. Note: Devs that don’t appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn’t need to be detailed.
Unreal Engine 4.20 Upgrade Status
Work continues on the migration to Unreal Engine 4.20. We’ve been resolving various issues that cropped up regarding the move from 4.19 and 4.20, and we’re glad to say we’re wrapped up with the 4.20 upgrade. We’re working as hard as we can on the few remaining bugs. There were two sections of the game that broke regarding Steam Workshop when we migrated engines.
The first major issue was to the workshop static meshes, which are for condo items. There was an issue where the static meshes would not appear in the game whatsoever, and after many days of pulling our hair out, we managed to fix the issue.
The second major issue was a crash was introduced when trying to search for Workshop items, and this was pretty easy to resolve.
The third major issue affects the Workshop Skeletal Meshes, which are for the player models, and is the issue we’re still working on resolving as of this dev log. While the Workshop Player Models are visible in game, there’s some artifacting on the textures of the models creating dark blotches shown below.
4.20 Workshop Skeletal Mesh Artifacting
When attempting to debug this phenomenon, we noticed that the TangentZ might be the culprit.
4.20 Workshop Skeletal Mesh Debugging
We’ve gone through various fix attempts, but the complete solution still lies outside our grasp. At first, we thought tangents were flipped in some way, which later turned out not to be the case. We’ve also looked into the UVs, reverting the engine shaders, checking lighting, messing with mesh settings, etc.
We do have a workaround, which removes the blotching but the lighting on the model isn’t accurate, depending on the direction the model is facing.
4.20 Workshop Skeletal Mesh Workaround
If we cannot find a fix for this issue in the next couple days, our plan is to get the public beta ready with the workaround, so that we can start getting something actually shipped out for you guys.
Arcade Progress
@Johanna worked on trying to make the area less dark and dingy. She also added an upstairs “hang out” room, and created a Gumball Machine.
@macdguy worked on “Pluck-a-pal”, tackling some bugs with physics desyncing, crane grabbing improvements, and finishing the general gameplay loop.
@wheezwer worked on art for “The Day the Corn Stood Still” shooting gallery. She also worked on art for the 4-player game “Quick Service”.
Arcade Upstairs WIP
Arcade Overview w/ Upstairs WIP
Arcade Gumball Machine
“The Day the Corn Stood Still” Art WIP
“Pluck-a-pal Gameplay WIP”
“Quick Service” Art WIP
Minigolf: Forest Graphical Update
@Johanna worked on the graphical update to the Minigolf map, “Forest”.
Minigolf: Forest Graphical Update WIP
Cooking Items
@joshua continued working on items for Cooking, this week working on some deserts and chicken.
Cooking Items WIP
Updated Early Access Trailer
@ThisIsntNath worked on an updated early access trailer.
Updated Early Access Trailer
Miscellany
@Sketch and @macdguy continued working on the Unreal Engine 4.20 upgrade.
Wrap It Up
That about covers everything that happened since February 24th, 2020 at PixelTail Games.
