Jean-Paul Software

What could possibly go wrong?

Obviously there’s drawbacks here: This atlas limits me to an NxN grid of materials, which with current settings limits me to “just” 256 metallic and 256 non-metallic materials. If for some reason I decide that’s too few, or that I want to adjust the ratio of non-metallic to metallic, I’ll need to re-process all the models I’ve made or the materials will be wrong. And that will be shit.

How to think about PCG in Unreal Engine 5?

One of the aims for the game I’m writing is that it’s set in the here and now- or at least, the here soon-to-be-now. I find it odd that in contrast to other media, there’s not a lot of games that go down that route.

What is a State Tree?

Wikipedia lists these as the official trees of the US States.

What is in a State Tree?

You can skip this part if you just want to get to the headaches. A State Tree has several top-level concepts: Context: an object describing and storing what the State Tree is controlling- typically an actor or an AI Controller. Parameters: global variables that you can set and read from, although as of 5.4 setting them at runtime is a bit awkward.

What can possibly go wrong?

Again, I like State Trees. But there are some things you should be aware of so you don’t spend as much time as I did wondering why they’re not fucking working properly. Headache number 1: multiple active states and tasks Multiple states can be active at the same time. Multiple tasks can be active at the same time. Each state can have its own transitions.