Hey thanks for quick reply…
Thanks for explaining NavMeshes…
But does selecting buildings works? I tried and got no UI change, nothing was different that’s why I asked…
The camera thing is really common in game dev, I ran into it gazilion of times, was just so happy that finally something I’m currently studying @ faculty can be applied to some real-world stuff…
So I had to write that big post and be proud of myself, even for a few minutes (even tho that’s not rocket science and easily overlooked thing) lol…
Selecting building works the same as units and resources, all three implement the same interface and receive event Selected whenever the player clicks on them (though multiple selection only works for units).
Just for you i’ll add something to the hud to show what you’ve selected (expect it in a few minutes)
And i’m proud of you for writing all that stuff down, it made me scroll down faster because it’s late and it made my head hurt
Edit: pushed to Master, with working string splitting, both length and linebreaker works.
Okay, so I downloaded the project and then saw that the RTS_Character already is set to replicate and thought it’d be a nice idea to check out how the netcode holds up to masses of units. Unfortunately I’m only able to test it as localhost, but it should give a pretty okay-ish idea what’s going on. All-in-all, preliminary results are nice.
While I’m getting a lot of stuttering, that’s because my PC is not really the best, I managed to run the test map with 900 “Civilians” and this performed nicely. No “real” desync occurred, but there was plenty of rubberbanding.
Don’t take this too seriously though, as it was just a quick fire-up after getting to know what has already been done, but so far, so good. I am quite confident now in UE4’s ability to sync stuff, but until I’ve made a proper test-case with actual latency and some basic gameplay logic in addition to moving, I’m afraid I can’t say more.
Stay tuned for more tomorrow. Also I might be able to upload some gifs for you guys to witness the glorious dwarven rubberbanding if my internet allows.
EDIT: Also, I noticed that the characters might be using physics-based collision? This might be a major cause for rubberbanding. Correct me, please, if I’m wrong
EDIT2: Left it running, moving some stuff around on-and-off for about an hour and it did not crash, yay! >_> (Not sure if this is a testament to anything)
Just posting to let you guys know that I’m watching the hell out of this thread. I have a great idea for an RTS that I’ve had for some time now, and while I’m not working on it currently I plan to. I’m stoked on everything you guys are doing and am watching with awe
About the camera:
Currently I am about to finish two types of camera’s
A camera that keeps the same height from the terrain. It will adjust height when terrain height changes. A sample video is posted a couple of days ago.
Camera whcih will not try to keep same height. However height adjustment will be done if camera collides with something.
I will be able to push both by Staturday. You could try both and decide whcih one to keep. Or we could keep both and let the player decide
About increased deiagonal speed. This is normal. The readon is when you press W and D, the effctive movement (assuming movement rate is 1 unit) is 1 unit in X direction and 1 unit in Y direction. So the actual distance moved is sqrt(1^2 + 1^2) = sqrt(2) = 1.414, which is greater than 1. One way to avoid this would be to combine both vectors togther and normalize it which will give us a unit vector.
So:
User pressed W, effective movement vector is (0, 1, 0) whcih is already normalized.
User pressed D, effective movement vector is (1, 0, 0) whcih is again is normalized.
user pressed W+D, effective movement vector is (1, 1, 0), whcih when normzalied gives us (0.7072, 0.7072, 0) which is a unit vector ine the same movement direction, whose length is exactly 1 !!
The problem is addional sqrt operation on every key press. I try to avoid as many sqrt operations I can.
I will integrate into my camera integration.
PS: Sorry about the delay, I really hoped to psuh it by Thursday, but some work related emergency came up
EDIT: @ Oh I did not notice that you had posted the solution as well. Looks like we both think alike
Ok, I have pushed a new Camera to my fork. I have also submitted a pull request
Althoguh I initially planned to push two types of cameras, I found that one of them did not function the way I liked. So I decided to work on it a bit more.
The Camera which I have pushed is actually a Pawn. is how to use it:
To use:
Edit Project settings, and set BP_RTS_GodMode as default gamemode.
Select your Landascape, in collision properties, make sure ‘Terrain’ channel is set to ‘Block’
Remember that any other Actors other than the landscape MUST have ‘Ignore’ for ‘Terrain’ channel (this is the default)
Features:
It is pretty much similar to the current camera. However it does not move up and down too much. It tried to maintain the same Z level during movement. But if it is going to eventually collide with the terrain or the camera height is less than Min Camera Height, it will automatically adjust its height. After wards even if the terrain lowers, it will not immediately lower itself. Instead it moves down only if the distance is more than maximum allowed camera distance.
An experimental tilt feature is added as per forum request. Basically, the camera will stay perpendicular to the terrain if its too far away, but as it comes closer and closer, it becomes more and more parallel to terrain. The tilt angle is controlled by a curve. However it is in early stages and I have encountered several glitches, including terrain cutting and camera getting inverted. To enable this feature, open the blueprint ‘BP_RTS_God’ and goto default properties tab. Check ‘Auto Tilt with Zoom’ (or something like that).
Previously the curves were dependent on the camera height. But now I have made it a ratio based system. So no matter how tall the map is or what is the maximum allowed height, the same curve will work. The curves now start from 0 to 1. 0 reprecents MinCameraDistance and 1 reprecents MaxCameraDistance. So you can change MinCameraDistance and MaxCameraDistance in default properties without touching the curves.
I did it in a hurry and I did not comment the graphs. But if you are interested I will add the comments and perhaps refactor it a little bit.
Known issues:
Camera movement speed is suppoed to change with distance, however this only takes effect once you Zoom in or Out. So after stopping movement, you need to use the scroll wheel to reset the movement speed.
Auto tilt is glitchy and frequently cuts into rough terrain
WIP:
Camera auto-focus after several seconds of inactivity. (almost done)
Pivoted rotation. ie Rotate around the selected actor.
Hey great work! Yeah I know, I basically said the same thing, but just wanted to let you guys know, it’s easily overlooked thing…
Also guys, what’s up with no news, let’s get this one going! I passed my exam today, actually I’m still waiting for results but I’m pretty positive I did good… So I’ll start to carefully examine this project, and try to contribute something to it, be it via C++/BPs or even some models…
@: Awesome dude. I pushed your changes to the master branch.
@: The reason why there is no news is because there are still no assets to work with. All the contributors so far are Blueprinters. We need modelers, animators, artists etc.
I think I might be able to provide some low-poly models. I can do some basic modeling (placeholder stuff and very low-poly items). I am not making any promises as I am a bit busy these days.
See if you can post what you need and some sample images and constraints (polycount, vertcount, texture resolution…) and I will see what I can do. I can also do basic animated materials and effects. But if someone who is good at these stuff can do it, thats better. However skeletal animations/meshes are beyond me.
About the current Maps, I think the terrain is too rough for an RTS. I havent played that many RTS (just Tropico, Civilizations and some AOE), but most of them had rather flatter terrain. An the size, I think its a bit too big, but then again, we cannot have a good assessment without knowing the size of the props, buildings…
I would like to suggest that rather than using landscapes for the terrain, you create and use tilesets. As once created, this method is very easy to work with and is correct, I think, most RTSs in this sort of style are either completely flat, or with only slight variations in height.
Sorry, mate. I cannot help you with any high quality textures. I can do only do low-poly static meshes. I am a programmer and I only do modeling for props and placeholdersand only if I have no other choice. So what I can provide is some small meshes…like Carts, Wells, Resource, Small rocks…(with proper UV maps). High quality textures are way beyond me, mainly because of the cost of necessary tools. For modeling I use blender, which is free and is pretty good.
I think we need some contribution from people who have access to professional tools (like Photoshop, 3Dsmax, Maya, Houdini) and other middlewares like Substance. So I advice lets keep to placeholders for the moment and see if we can get our hands on proper models later.
Another thing: The images in you previous post, it looks like the shading is pretty flat. So don’t think we need highly detailed normal maps. I usually create two models (low poly and high poly) and bake normals from one to the other. Thats how I get around without using any graphics tools. So if we dont need very detailed normals, this method could work.
PS: I am very slow when it comes to modeling. I am not very skilful. So you’ll have to bear with me. Lets see if I can create some small stuff by next week.
@
"The reason why there is no news is because there are still no assets to work with. All the contributors so far are Blueprinters. We need modelers, animators, artists etc. "
Yep, but that makes me think, wouldn’t it a be a good idea to ask for some models on a more CG-oriented forums as well as ? Like: CGSociety?
I can also do some drawings of building based on the pics you posted to make them a bit unique to our game, I love drawing lol…
@
Totally agree with you on this! Like, let’s create a bunch of placeholders for now, so that we can continue to work on functionality, and in the mean time we can hope someone can aid us with some true models… About poly counts, I read online that PC should be able to handle from 300k to 1,500,000 polygons per frame… And about each unit/building, I’m not really sure, a lot of people said they are working with unit of poly count of around 1440 and so…
Thanks . Placeholder meshes will do. Do you know of any good texture websites (not CGTextures) from where we can get some textures for non-commercial use? I use Google and Flickr with modified usage rights.
Yeah and i dont think we need normal maps at all since as you mentioned the shading is flat.
No hurries mate. Take your own time.
Do you have an account on CGSociety? If so, would you mind making a thread there for some 3d models with link to this thread?
By tilesets I mean that you have a bunch of premade parts to make levels with, ie. 1*1m blocks that have floors and/or walls that make up the level, so that you can easily and quickly make them, then you can hand place any extra details (which you wouldnt really have any of in an RTS.)
If you’d like an example of what I mean in an RTS, then please follow this link to the game called ‘Folk Tale’ currently being developed in Unity, it will help you understand what I mean
.youtube.com/?v=luFhbQx1rnk&list=UUa7W66RPP2X-BKPhhH1a4nw
They have of course massively updated it since with more pieces, but you get the idea. We make loads of premade pieces with small variations in height that all snap together, so that we can quickly place down anything we need, we can then use that tree blutility you made to place
But someone might appreciate it… 
