Empires on UE4: UE4 is FREE edition

Discussion in 'Off Topic' started by Kylegar, Mar 3, 2015.

  1. Grantrithor

    Grantrithor Member

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    I've been trying to get heightmaps of real world places to work in ue4.
     
  2. Redskull

    Redskull Member

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    I want to to work on this but I can't dedicate a lot of time at the moment since I'm working on my exams, but in 6-8 weeks (possibly sooner) I'll be able to help out for real :)
     
  3. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    im just learning my way around the engine since installing anything after 4.6 gets stuck in this "verifying"-state and i still have no fucking clue why. once i feel save enough, im going to invest time with fixing that (unless someone tells me something else i could try in the meanwhile)
    [​IMG]

    i also made a fireextinquisher for the tutorial i said im going to record this weekend, but i also figured that - especially a decent lowpoly - might a bit boring to watch. so maybe i throw everything over board and do something easier.
    thats what i did to proof-to-myself last weekend. during the week i played around a bit with importing and material setups (i think i get PBR now), but i have other things to do aswell.
    [​IMG]
    yes i noticed that black circle, its on my list of mistakes to not make in the tutorial, its also gonna be lower poly since i made a booboo that made it overly complicated to merge vertices where the hose connects, modeling is a process isnt it. but i think for the tut we might be better off building the lowpoly from scratch anyway ^^
    so i hope that normals - and actually most texture maps - will come out better in the finished tutorial. and i figured i probably also should make a LoD model as it has lots of small details that dont need drawing at a distance of more then 5m, its on my list for today/tomorrow depending when i have time, then start recording on the weekends. i doubt ill get it in one take, so ill also have to learn how to videoedit this shit together - i hope i can release it by next weekend :D

    anyway - eventually, when i got this done, id like to get deeper into navmeshes and behaviour trees. i sadly dont have 16h/day for this though.

    so yes, i aswell want to help.

    please? :D
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2015
  4. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    That looks nice, I can't wait for that tutorial. I keep putting off blender due it using hot keys for a lot of things and the tutorial I saw for it the last time I tried to learn was for an older version with everything moved around.
     
  5. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    if you dont want to wait, search for andrew price on youtube. his stuff is easy to follow and well explained. he is using some 2.7 version of blender, so the interface fits.
    although its not for games, it should help to get familiar with blender.

    you will want to get used to the hotkeys anyway. most are intuitive, ctrl+a adds stuff, tab switches between modes, ctrl+ v/e/f are menus concerning vertex, edge and face manipulation respectively, r rotates, s scales, g grabs (translates), you get the point. and you really want to start with learning hotkeys, if you intend to click yourself through blender i doubt youll have much fun with it ^^
    independent of that, i think blender has one of the best interfaces i ever worked with.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2015
  6. 101010

    101010 Member

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    The simple way would be just use the github
    https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/tree/release

    If that is still showing as private then
    "Go to your Unreal Engine 4 account and link your GitHub account. You will receive an email from GitHub notifying you that you have been invited to join the EpicGames Organization."
     
  7. Kylegar

    Kylegar Specstax Rule

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    Yeah, making blueprints is probably a good path to start. Particle effects are another pretty good place to start

    There is quite a bit to be done, like captureable objectives, UI work (there is no scoreboard, we need to add that), Gamemodes, and the like.
     
  8. Z100000M

    Z100000M Vithered Weteran

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    For particles you probably might want to list what types do you want; maybe you want new effects for damaged/unbukld buildings and so on and so forth
     
  9. Krenzo

    Krenzo Administrator

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    Small team projects like this get a lot of help when people can come up with tasks for themselves and be self motivated. If you're going to work on particles, think of what cool particles you would like to see in the game and start making them. You've played Empires and already have a general idea of what effects there should be. When a programmer has time and looking for a task, they can say: "Wow, there are some cool particles already made. I really want to add them into the game now." That was how I stayed motivated most of the time. I would be mulling what to do, not even wanting to work on the game, and Duke would say, "here, I made this cool tank." I would say, "awesome, I want to get that into the game right now!"

    There was a sound effects guy who wanted to work on Empires ten years ago. He asked me what to do, and I said, "I don't have a list, but you can play the game and see what stock sounds there are now that need replacements, at least to get started." By the time I came up with an official list for this guy, he had left and started working on another mod.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2015
  10. Kylegar

    Kylegar Specstax Rule

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    Right now we need bullet particles and muzzle flashes. Impact Effects would also be needed.

    But what Krenzo said. Download the project and look at what needs to be done. Open a single weapon and see if it has muzzle flashes and do that.
     
  11. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    but uempires is on 4.7.2 or 4.7.3 dunno really. wouldnt this be a problem?

    also this link tells me this that it would not be the website i was looking for (404)
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2015
  12. 101010

    101010 Member

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    Try just https://github.com/EpicGames/
    If still "404" Log into github b4 trying link

    You then pick UnrealEngine.
    Scroll down and choose

    https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/tree/release
    The release branch is extensively tested by our QA team and makes a great starting point for learning the engine or making your own games. We work hard to make releases stable and reliable, and aim to publish new releases every 1-2 months.


    https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/tree/promoted
    The promoted branch is updated with builds for our artists and designers to use. We try to update it daily (though we often catch things that prevent us from doing so) and it's a good balance between getting the latest cool stuff and knowing most things work.


    https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/tree/master
    The master branch tracks live changes by our engine team. This is the cutting edge and may be buggy - it may not even compile. Battle-hardened developers eager to work lock-step with us on the latest and greatest should head here.

    As far as the 4.7.2 / 4.7.3 Since we are just rolling with all the updates and not sticking to a set version it shouldn't matter. Things are pretty forward and backwards compatible. If you run empires on a different version it should auto recompile to what ever version you are using. But I would go with the released version.
    There is also older versions here https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/releases
    4.0.1 - 4.7.3
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2015
  13. JustGoFly

    JustGoFly Member

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    Thanks Kylegar for your help. Flasche - I had the same screen you showed. Then I closed the launcher and reopened and it showed only the 4.7.3 launcher. I launched it and got an error of "Modules are missing or built with a different engine version: UE4Editor-Empires2.dll. Would you like the rebuild them now?" I chose yes and it shows a Empires2 Editor screen initializing upto 100%.

    At this point Empires2 showed up in My Projects and the editor spawned with an example_map loaded.

    Everything builds in Visual Studio 2013 Update 4.

    There is a lot to learn now that the project is setup.

    I'm a C++ programmer, actually learned it around 1985, prior to that I developed in C and Pascal. Turbo Pascal rocked, then before Windows Hewlett Packard Basic, and some old calculators to drive monsterous coordinate measuring machines. Yes calculators to drive equipment. And to date myself before that worked for a company outside NYC who had a 300 baud modem, to a mainframe in NYC, shared by 20 developers to send pages of COBOL for compilation. The mainframe was probably not nearly as powerful as your desktop PC. I'd type a page, and hit send, switch to a second page in the amber monitor, and type the next page. Within five minutes the first page might be sent, along with everyone elses first pages. We'd do nightly builds since one syntax error ruined the build and people got shit for causing the build to fail. You got very good at visually compiling your code.

    I hope to contribute at some point.
     
  14. Kylegar

    Kylegar Specstax Rule

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    If you are getting into the C++ side of building this game, I recommend diving into the programming documentation:

    https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Programming/index.html

    There are a number of Macros and boilerplate things that UE4 does and it's important to know what they are. Also, how Client/Server interact is a big one as well.
     
  15. f1r3w4rr10r

    f1r3w4rr10r Modeler

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  16. JustGoFly

    JustGoFly Member

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    Thanks for the tips.

    I'm hoping we can engage DocRabbit and Creeper. Doc has originated a few maps recently, and is obviously talented in graphics design. Creeper has written many plug ins and add-ons.

    Unreal Tournament has been my favorite engine of all time. I'd love to see low gravity infantry maps, I thought that was so fun. Not very Empires like - but could fun. It forces map design to be more 3D since you can jump to any location on the map.
     
  17. Trainzack

    Trainzack Member

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    Once in srcpires I made a moon map. Even giving it an above Earth-moon gravity, some vehicle chassis did not work, like jeeps. The angular force of the spinning wheels caused the entire vehicle to do back-flips.
     
  18. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    so ya... won't let me clone using the git extensions. Putty says I need a SSH private key.
     
  19. Vdragon

    Vdragon Member

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    You need to upload a public ssh key (which is in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub usually on linux if you ever ran ssh-keygen, you can probably get a private and public key set with putty or something on window(apparently, this http://www.ualberta.ca/CNS/RESEARCH/LinuxClusters/pka-putty.html is aout it)) on your github account (it's in the account settings, somewhere, probably here for you as well: https://github.com/settings/ssh).
    Or more simply on window, you can use SVN to clone the repository (tortoise svn is really good at this, and btw could be a better solution for interacting with github than git, on windows, svn url is thsi for the Empires2 repo: https://github.com/RoyAwesome/Empires2).
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2015
  20. 101010

    101010 Member

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    Just thought I would share this - As it was driving me nuts
    If you keep getting the "compiling shaders" every time you apply a texture you can fix that with a setting in Epic Games\4.7\Engine\Config\BaseEngine.ini
    go to down to DevOptions.Shaders you will see
    bAllowAsynchronousShaderCompiling=true
    Change that to false.
     

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