Gamedev \ Game Modding

[OnlyOneKenobi]

I've dabbled in various game engines over the years, from the original Doom and Duke Nukem 3D level editors, as well as StarCraft, WarCraft and so on - to the more modern idTech and Unreal engines. I got some pretty impressive results at times and had lots of fun making some stuff, but I wouldn't say I ever took it very far other than sharing some mods and levels with friends for kicks and multiplayer fun. I even made a few short point and click adventure games as those are a bit easier for one person to create.
Unfortunately there aren't very many modern games that come with robust level editors and mod tools, or rather those that do actually require serious work to get anything off the ground. Now with the recent Unreal Engine 5 making waves not only in gaming but also in film production, it seems many more people are playing around with game engines again.
Have you made any standalone video games or mods? Which tools and \ or engines have you used?

 

[Moosedrool]

UE is great but spending most of my time with the VRC sdk in unity now. Ugh Universal pipeline renderer is a boring mess but I'm building this:

The networking for the video panels was the biggest challenge and it's even worse that I'm stuck having to use some cruddy Udon or Udon# limited language to do it in. The SDK doesn't take custom c# script.

Looks nice and stays in sync for everyone (sort of).

Since it's URP I'm getting my hands dirty with shaders and hlsl to do the lights. Realtime lights is a nightmare for performance so I'd rather do it in shader language and use GPU for the rendering. Also it's not the craziest polycount for a reason. I'm trying to keep this optimised to the max since custom avatars will be what's in this world.

The idea behind the video panels is to use touch designer and stream it perfectly in sync with live content for the music.

 

[Barbarian Conan]

Build for some level editing back in the day.
Recently Unity. I just built a "test" game (asteroids clone) which I published on Google Play store to put some of the tutorials into practice.

After programming at work I'm seldom in the mood to program at home as well. Add to that wanting to play games, spending time with family and I think my game took 2 years to complete working on it more off than on.

 

[Moosedrool]

Realtime SRP Day and Night in sync with everyone.

 

[Adeptus Mechanicus]

Wish I could get back into this sort of thing. If only I had the time.

I dabbled for a bit about 15 years ago, firstly in 3d modeling/texturing then animation and mapping, for mostly Source and id Tech based "complete conversion" mods.

Ended up working on 2 Dragonball Z projects for a few years before I had to go out into the working world and earn a living

 

[Beyond.Celsus]

I've been wanting to get into Fallout 4 modding, but damn

Where to get the time?

 

[cguy]

The last time I did anything game related it was OpenGL and Direct3D. Prior to that I would just access the frame buffer directly.

 

[Moosedrool]

The last time I did anything game related it was OpenGL and Direct3D. Prior to that I would just access the frame buffer directly.

High-level shader language (HLSL) - Win32 apps

HLSL is the C-like high-level shader language that you use with programmable shaders in DirectX.

docs.microsoft.com

 

[cguy]

High-level shader language (HLSL) - Win32 apps

HLSL is the C-like high-level shader language that you use with programmable shaders in DirectX.

docs.microsoft.com

Anything in particular about it? It was/is an amazing innovation.

 

[Moosedrool]

Anything in particular about it? It was/is an amazing innovation.

Nothing changed since the times you where messing with direct3d. Depending on how long ago that was you still dig into it for anything specific. These engines are just groundwork for making life a lot easier.

Here's a crazy dude who built a pixel shader that runs the linux kernel.

https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/

GitHub - PiMaker/rvc: A 32-bit RISC-V emulator in a shader (and C)

A 32-bit RISC-V emulator in a shader (and C). Contribute to PiMaker/rvc development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Moosedrool]

Stylising it a bit more with the colours:



Some VR compatible post processing for the underwater effect:



Also the day night cycle works perfectly. With stars and even a moon. Don't ask about the moon texture...





Mostly busy with the 3d stuff and UV mapping textures. I took a hands on approach to make things look wonky and deteriorated for the theme. There is a lot to build:



I'll do some custom LOD for each section I built to reduce poly for stuff that is not close by. Gonna admit draw calls seems to be the biggest performance hit and not poly count so old school mipmapping is basically eliminating alpha's on the LED panels when the holes are smaller than a pixel.

 

[Moosedrool]

All this started because I wanted to customize a avatar one day on VRC.

 

[Moosedrool]

Finally after LOD optimising and blood sweat and tears I got a bit further with the stuff at least now in unity.

 

[Moosedrool]

Now the trick is to have light at night. The script I’m moulding uses a ntp time server and can easily trigger lights but.

Having a bunch of realtime lights is gonna rape even the heaviest gpus. I’m trying to figure out a way within the limitations of vrc to simply replace the entire light scene with a backed scene. If that is even remotely doable (with ease)

 

[Moosedrool]

Post processing where needed.

 

[Moosedrool]

Ugh too much work still left. But at least there are some free prefabs we're allowed to use.

 

[semaphore]

I’ve tried to do some game dev so many times, I get bored before I’ve even written a line of code. So I’ll just be a spectator.

 

[cguy]

I’ve tried to do some game dev so many times, I get bored before I’ve even written a line of code. So I’ll just be a spectator.

I loved the tech, but once I got the graphics engine working, I would lose interest and do something else.

 

[Moosedrool]

I’ve tried to do some game dev so many times, I get bored before I’ve even written a line of code. So I’ll just be a spectator.

I never took an interest in it. I can 3d model, script in c# and understand the basics of materials and stuff. I'm not a great shader crazy guy who never leaves his basement and creates unbelievable ****. But for unrelated purposes I kinda know my way around the tools for various things.

This all started because in 2020 I wanted my own shiba inu for VRChat.

I have to admit. It's more fun developing stuff for VR than just a video game. Whether it's a VR game or just a scene. I've digged a bit into UE as well, looking for better performance. Unreal is great for reducing CPU and memory overhead just due to the language but since nothing like what I'm faffing around in exist you have to build it from the ground up and creating multiplayer environments is a lot of networking code.. It really isn't just simple game triggers and stuff. But I'm learning here and there. So currently I'm just building on top of the Neos SDK and VRC sdk.

 

[animal531]

I loved the tech, but once I got the graphics engine working, I would lose interest and do something else.

There's always something neat to play with when making a game, or working with graphics. I found this today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/12fkdrt