[OPEN-SOURCE] Machinery Modelling Toolkit

[Dealman]

This is awesome! The sound adds really a lot to perception. Did you hooked it into RPM?
I didn't do anything for the sounds yet, perhaps I could add events that could be used to trigger sounds. For example when suspension gets compressed to limit or velocity of spring compression.

Another thing which can be done for controls is steering mechanism similar to what Panters had during WW2. Driver has a single gas pedal but two separate gear boxes for each track and separate brakes. This allows a lot of different combination in respect to turn radius and speed.

For multiplayer. If you are looking at building a coop type of gameplay and you don't expect people to cheat then you can build it as client authority. It's much simpler and smoother setup then server authority.

The sound's pretty bad, and yeah I just hooked it up to the RPM - it changes the pitch accordingly. Some events of such would be very nice indeed, I was thinking about adding events for gear shifting as it sounds rather odd when the RPM jumps straight back to 1400. I also noticed that the RPM doesn't really increase until you've got some speed going.

Thumbsticks work great as-is except for poor turning at higher speeds, but the braking method does work. Pretty fun for just being placeholder stuff.

The co-op stuff would just be for testing purposes and sort of a proof of concept I guess, so cheating shouldn't be a worry. I was pondering as to how I would replicate its movement so it moves around nicely on the other client(s) screen. Will do some testing at a later stage, gotta refine the controls a bit and model a new hull and a turret for it.

[BoredEngineer]

I also noticed that the RPM doesn't really increase until you've got some speed going.

The engine on M113 has a minimal RPM of 1400. On real machine they have automatic gear box, so no clutch and etc. From this perspective what I have is a bit of a weird setup. Right now engine doesn't receive torque from the wheel and engine curve starts from 1400 instead of 0. I need to look into this in greater detail and assemble proper drive train, with features likes braking using engine or getting it stalled.

The co-op stuff would just be for testing purposes and sort of a proof of concept I guess, so cheating shouldn't be a worry. I was pondering as to how I would replicate its movement so it moves around nicely on the other client(s) screen. Will do some testing at a later stage, gotta refine the controls a bit and model a new hull and a turret for it.

Client authority replication should work then. From what I understood it works just fine, the issue is that people can cheat with such setups so majority of games opt for server authority.

[Dealman]

I know the general logic behind client/server authority to prevent cheating, what I was referring to would be the optimal way to replicate its movement. If I should just replicate for example the velocity of it and such, or replicate its current amount of torque and all that stuff. Would need to do some testing to find out what's optimal as I have no clue.

I think the current way of doing it is pretty darn good, it's just that the RPM doesn't increase until you've reached around 10km/h which is a bit odd. As you'd start to move forward, but the audio of the engine wouldn't increase. That kind of stuff is way out of my league, though.

[BoredEngineer]

I know the general logic behind client/server authority to prevent cheating, what I was referring to would be the optimal way to replicate its movement. If I should just replicate for example the velocity of it and such, or replicate its current amount of torque and all that stuff. Would need to do some testing to find out what's optimal as I have no clue.

Ohh, sorry, have no clue either, just sharing what I know about it, which is not much.

I think the current way of doing it is pretty darn good, it's just that the RPM doesn't increase until you've reached around 10km/h which is a bit odd. As you'd start to move forward, but the audio of the engine wouldn't increase. That kind of stuff is way out of my league, though.

This happens because engine itself is not simulated. With a proper simulation there would be some minimal idle RPM and gas, which are enough to produce some torque to compensate engine own friction. What I've tried to do, is to add extra node in the engine torque curve like this:

then RPM start to go up pretty much as soon as tracks get some speed but this effects steering - you need engine torque to steer tracks.

Perhaps for the sound you could tie both RPM and Gas pedal somehow. I don't think that only tweaking torque curve without doing changes in other part of machine would work.

[OldRaven]

whoop.. you are featured on the spotlight page in the Epic Launcher!

Great work

[MuhammadMadi]

BoredEngineer thank you !

[BoredEngineer]

Thank you, guys!

I've got a new update ready but there is issue with packaging. Several static meshes are not being packaged which makes Fokker DrI physics glitch out. Meshes that are not packaged are engine, ailerons and elevators. Already posted bug-report on answer-hub:
https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...-packaged.html
Have zero clue what is going on. This is started when I've switched to 4.11.1 and added larger landscape for the airplanes level.

[BoredEngineer]

Update

- Added new actor Atmosphere Manager. Role of this actor is to provide data regarding air density at different altitudes and wind direction/magnitude. Right now only variable air density is implemented. As an input you can provide air density at sea level and curve coefficient which describes how air density changed with altitude. Default curve is a simple approximation of the Earth atmosphere.
- AirDrag3D and WingAirfoil components can be switched into using Variable Air Density. For this to work they expect their owner to implement AtmosphereQuery interface. For now only Fokker DrI supports this feature.
- Fixed bug where Debug Float Graph wasn't rendered correctly if Min and Max values where not symmetrical by magnitude.

Know issues:
following assets are not being packaged
SM_Fok_Engine.uasset
SM_Fok_ElevatorRight.uasset
SM_Fok_ElevatorLeft.uasset
SM_Fok_AileronRight.uasset
SM_Fok_AileronLeft.uasset
but everything works correctly in editor.

[Mr.BuBeR]

Hello ive downloaded a zip archive from git hub and paste the plugins folder to my project and now when i try run my project some window pop up and telling me -"Plugin "MMT' Failed to load because module 'MMT' does not appear to be compatible with the current version of the engine. The plugin may need to be recompiled' Im using 4.10.4 version of the engine and ive tried to recompile it in Visual Studio 2013 but i really dont know how to do this.
How can i get this to run?

[BoredEngineer]

Hello ive downloaded a zip archive from git hub and paste the plugins folder to my project and now when i try run my project some window pop up and telling me -"Plugin "MMT' Failed to load because module 'MMT' does not appear to be compatible with the current version of the engine. The plugin may need to be recompiled' Im using 4.10.4 version of the engine and ive tried to recompile it in Visual Studio 2013 but i really dont know how to do this.
How can i get this to run?

Make sure you download a 4.10 version of plugin, it's stored in the separate branch. To switch branch, click on "master" on the repo page.
Ohh and after you copy proper version, right click on your project file in explorer and regenerate visual studio project. This is for c++ project, right?

[Freakazoid!]

I don't know if this has been asked, but will Trains (Steam or Diesel Locomotives) be added to this? I think this would be an awesome thing to add to a plugin like this. Considering that trains are non-wheel based (at least car/road wise), I think they would be a great option to add.
There is one video on the web that I have found that the user has done an incredible job making. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVNS...&nohtml5=False

I have noticed that a lot of UE4 users just go and use a single Spline and have the train follow it. However this create unrealistic movement and the wheels of the train look absolutely terrible (meaning they always go around corners and just clip through the rail). This give the train a verystiff and rigid look, adding to a unrealistic feel of the game.

My message to the Original Poster,
Do you think you could add a functionality that can be seen in the video I posted? Or would it require an entire separate plugin on its own? It's obviously possible to make a Train look and move correctly, but the common user is having trouble with this (you can find a multitude of examples where people just use Splines for the train track and then just tell the train to follow the track). I think having someone who already knows how to implement non-wheel/road based vehicles into UE4 would be the best bet to making Trains look and function on a higher level of realism.

[BoredEngineer]

I don't know if this has been asked, but will Trains (Steam or Diesel Locomotives) be added to this? I think this would be an awesome thing to add to a plugin like this. Considering that trains are non-wheel based (at least car/road wise), I think they would be a great option to add.
There is one video on the web that I have found that the user has done an incredible job making. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVNS...&nohtml5=False

I have noticed that a lot of UE4 users just go and use a single Spline and have the train follow it. However this create unrealistic movement and the wheels of the train look absolutely terrible (meaning they always go around corners and just clip through the rail). This give the train a verystiff and rigid look, adding to a unrealistic feel of the game.

My message to the Original Poster,
Do you think you could add a functionality that can be seen in the video I posted? Or would it require an entire separate plugin on its own? It's obviously possible to make a Train look and move correctly, but the common user is having trouble with this (you can find a multitude of examples where people just use Splines for the train track and then just tell the train to follow the track). I think having someone who already knows how to implement non-wheel/road based vehicles into UE4 would be the best bet to making Trains look and function on a higher level of realism.

Honestly, I have zero knowledge of the train physics. The video does look cool and I'm curious how interaction of the wheels with rails is calculated. Driving along the spline approach is very convenient from the game play point of view, unless you are building a real train simulator. I wouldn't be surprised if with a proper simulation of the wheel / rail interaction you would have to build rather realistic tracks for trains to actually work. Which can place quite a heavy limit on your level design.

[Dealman]

Working on adding my tank and I'm at the part where I need to make my own custom splines for the tracks, however, following the tutorial I just can't wrap my head around it. It seems like a rather big design flaw that you can't edit splines in the BP Viewport but only in the actual PIE viewport. So I can't seem to find a way to get the positions of the spline points from the PIE view to the actual BP.

How did you go about setting the tracks up for your M113? If I try and use the sliders, UE4 will freeze for 10-20 seconds which makes it absolutely impossible to use the sliders for smooth and accurate transitions. So I have to enter numbers over and over and just play the guessing game.

[BoredEngineer]

Working on adding my tank and I'm at the part where I need to make my own custom splines for the tracks, however, following the tutorial I just can't wrap my head around it. It seems like a rather big design flaw that you can't edit splines in the BP Viewport but only in the actual PIE viewport. So I can't seem to find a way to get the positions of the spline points from the PIE view to the actual BP.

How did you go about setting the tracks up for your M113? If I try and use the sliders, UE4 will freeze for 10-20 seconds which makes it absolutely impossible to use the sliders for smooth and accurate transitions. So I have to enter numbers over and over and just play the guessing game.

Maybe this helps:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...l=1#post425218

Otherwise I've just added a box component, then allign it with wheels where spline control point should be and copy coordinates into array, move box to the next point and repeat. With tangents this doesn't work and you have to tweak them manually.

[Dealman]

Aye, just after posting that reply I figured out how to do it. Resizing the boxes to a size of 0.2 helps as you can easily align it to the middle of your wheels, after that it was a pretty straight forward procedure, especially due to the fact the other side is simply mirrored but with a different Y coordinate.

The tangents, however, would've been a massive pain. Luckily, removing the default ones ended up with somewhat decent results.

Here's a little quick preview of my first test;
https://streamable.com/qtd7

I'm getting there, but there's some weird stuff going on and I quite frankly am rather clueless as of now. As you can see, it doesn't really like driving over stuff and easily gets stuck. I have absolutely no idea what's going on with some of the wheels on the right-hand side as they're clipping into eachother in some rather odd fashion.

How important is it that collisions are accurate? I followed a similar scheme you used for the M113, the road wheels have a fairly detailed cylinder and the sprockets have octagon-like shape instead. The collision for the hull's something I threw together rather fast, but it shouldn't be colliding with the wheels. Also, as for the suspension, can I place them a bit as I please(both in terms of height and offset from middle)?

Will continue to fiddle a bit with it and then I'll move on to adding the turret and barrel.

Edit:

Oh and forgot to mention, I did not make that model. It was available as a free download on a website and was fairly detailed and nicely modeled. Wheels however aren't accurate it seems.