Tuesday 21 January 2014

Save Standalone In Progress

Work

I started at 9AM today with the mission to get Save Standalone working. Alas due to some PC technical issues and a rather long induction for one of our third party developers, I was only able to do half.  The good news is that the Save Standalone button is in the IDE and it can produce a few of the game files in the My Documents folder under it's own folder. I have cleaned up the old legacy code which was redundant to the process which means Wednesday I can finish it off and get it producing runnable levels from the IDE.

The induction Google call (which lasted over 2 hours) involved going through the integration guidelines for the new Construction Kit module which is under development. It might seem a distraction but was probably the most valuable 2 hours of the month as it will allow a relatively large module to slide into the main engine almost effortlessly.  Early prototype works is also looking very nice, and I think you will like the kinds of things you will be able to make, not least because of it's ease and fun factor!

Also got some help from Intel so I can uninstall the old Perceptual Computing SDK (allowing me to install the new one with the fancy new voice detection). I've only been able to play with the SDK on a second machine but it will be great to have it on my main machine again.

A dozen or so other delegation-style emails finished off my mandatory 9 hour day and apart from this blog post, that pretty much covers Tuesday.  I am sorry for the lack of screen shots at the moment but it really is pretty dry stuff adding save features and knocking up small prototypes. Maybe the VR stuff will be more exciting and produce some screen shots. It was scheduled for Wednesday but I want to get Save EXE finished before starting the exciting stuff!  Who knows the VR could be integrated in less than an hour, but since when has anything taken less than an hour ;)

Play


Managed to do a walking circuit today to the delight of Jack the dog.  A little rainy but as Billy Connolly would say, 'there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes'.  Going to try and grab an early night to continue my 9am-7pm ritual.

8 comments:

  1. (I am sorry for the lack of screen shots at the moment )Dont worry about that Lee,its nice to here about your progress.Also nice to here what the other people are getting up to.

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  2. Hi Lee - in terms of the Rift - are you planning on separating the head movement (Rift head tracking) from the gun (gun controlled by mouse or joystick)?

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  3. What Valve cleverly did to get around the issue of controlling an FPS with the Rift was to allow the head to rotate freely and body (and therefore the gun) to rotate with the mouse, but to avoid having slight twitchy movement cause vomiting, they gave the mouse a deadzone and just the crosshair moved on the screen, until you moved the mouse too far and then the whole body turned. A very effective method, works extremely well :)

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    1. When I say the head rotates freely, I mean you can look around with the Rift freely without affecting aim point or body rotation.

      Also when I say twitchy movement causes vomiting, I mean that rotation of the body (with the mouse) also rotates the screen (despite the Rift not moving) because the body supports the head,

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    2. Agreed - Half Life 2 is an unbelievable experience in the Rift - and I can play for hours with no nauseous feelings whatsoever.

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  4. There are certain words that make me sit up, and "unbelievable experience" is one of them :) I have just bought HL2 on steam and will certainly be checking out the way they deal with nausea and the Rift ;)

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  5. HL2 - Rift - and the Razor Hydra.... now that is an experience!

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