Magic Dog

 Experiment Success! Look at that nasty texture bleed. Problem Solved.     So what happened? Well. It involves how 3D software does texture mapping. Unfortunetly, I found no reasonable way for it to function without adding some "UV padding" as it is called. I basically added 1 pixel of padding, and that solved the entire problem.     Now that I know this, I can learn to do textures properly from here on out! ✌ Now I am onto a new problem involving shadows. Wish me luck.

I can often times become paralyzed if I have to redo work. I shouldn't get used to that idea, its a bad habit. But its no ENTIRELY bad. The reason I say this is often times it forces me to stop and think of solutions. Needless to say. I was not aware about texture bleeding. And... well. I am now. I will need to perform ONE MORE test to unsure my theory is solid about how unreal handles textures. Today's Word: Gumpalumpa Meaning: Someone who gumps lumps. Use in a Sentence: Bradley is a Gumpalumpa, how pathetic. Country of Origin: None

Unreal has overwhelmed me. There is a lot to learn, and a lot of good practices I am trying to be mindful of. I am not giving up. But, I am feeling greatly overwhelmed. While a normal amount of feeling overwhelmed is normal, this feeling of overwhelmingness is strong. Programing, Rendering, Lighting, Shadows, and Cameras... its all soooo much. I think part of it is that I have a lot of engrained habits that are hard to break, and Unreal is so vastly different than anything I have worked with. It also doesn't help, that Unreal is complex. While I am learning a lot, I fear that my brain is retaining very little as I find myself revisiting the computer and wondering what the hell I did the night before.

I just learned about Pixel bleed. See that greenish line? You cab even see where I cut the tile in the middle and where the door itself is a separate tile. Its not good! Yeah. Turns out... I can't be doing my tiles like this...      See how my bricks touch empty space? Causes bleed. I need to seperate my tiles. So they bleed into themselves. It may require more tilesets to be created, but its likely to be the best method.      I am going to need to develop an organizational system for this. Likely: Tileset_CityHouse_Roof.png as an example.      I wrote all this on the toilet. I wasn't feeling good. But this helped.

     I am staying positive. I am seeking others who are making games so I can remain positive and give them motivation.      Little fun fact. If you spitball motivation with other people and cause praise loops, you can feed that dopamine in your brain because you are getting good feedback from people who actually know what they are doing.      You gotta get others involved in your projects. People gotta see what you are doing.

This little house is simply a proof of concept.      I can see my errors. I have tile flipping on the chimney. I also notice the planks sticking out of the roof. This is fixable, I just need to remind myself to be vigilant. I want to redo the windows so they will be reflective without the cheesey self drawn reflection.      So what did I do? I went ahead and made the wood parts 3D myself. I think I want to do the same to the doorway as well.

Turns out I don't know anything about texturing in the slightest. This house looks realitively normal. Then I ruined it.

This is Bosley, my friend's dog. It is silly little dogs like this that encourage me to continue with life. I understand why people have pets. They are the sweetest Chaos.

     I have a convention coming up in October but I don't want to go to it. I am disappointed in the lack of work I have done on Machina and Magic , and feel like being there is going to be a waste of time. I hate that this is how I feel about it. Because I do want to go, for the sake of my friends and for myself.      The part that worries me the most, is that I don't want to tell some of my friends I haven't been working on Machina and Magic and have been focusing on videogame stuff. I don't want them to feel like I gave up on them, I just need them to understand I have to switch to something that will make me money in the future. Machina and Magic ain't it.      Please don't view this as me being bitter about my own projects, but... I am pouring out my feelings onto my dev blog so people can see the raw emotion behind all of this.

     I don't live in a good neighborhood. I don't have a landlord that takes care of the place. I need out of this place. My oven doesn't work, my refrigerator bearly keeps temperature. It is emotionally draining, as often times I suffer from paranoia since the crime is extremely heavy in my neighborhood.      Just a couple weeks ago I witnessed police officers break up a fight between a man and woman three houses down. And a few weeks ago before that we had a hit and run as a (possibly drunk) driver hit another car and ran off. This isn't the first hit and run, as another car hit the electrical pole to our place and cut off the power a few months prior.      This type of living situation is not okay. I may have to consider drastic measures and move out. Unfortunately, rent is so costly, I cannot afford anywhere else at this moment. This is such a terrible situation to be in.      Its the big reason I work on the game alot now....

  Making furnishing for inside of a islander's home.     A very simple update, but, I had begun making objects for the island homes. Can't wait to see how they look in Unreal.

     The Abilify comercials that involve the CGI family should he banned by the FCC. I already hate depression medicine commercials, but these commercials are somehow... worse.

  Just a fun picture showing what the lighting is doing. That's my update for now.

  Everything looks so nice and shiny.     Too shiny in fact. I don't like it, but I am sure I can fix it. Other problem I am experiencing is with the  collision. The default collision on my imported objects are too big and blocky. I know this is to save on resources, and I will have to keep that in mind with background trees. Time to learn about collision I guess... lol. Go figure, collision was actually the easiest part.     This took no time to figure out, as all I had to do was change it from simple collision to complext collision. This is actually really helpfully because I can treat my background plants as having simple collision to create "walls" so people can't get to places they shouldn't. Great idea!     

     Don't get me wrong. The bakery is an amazing place. This is the most ethical job I have ever worked. We feed the homeless. I purposely took a picture of the raw atmosphere of the bakery. This is as raw as it gets. Muffins.      I just don't want to be working here anymore. It goes against my destiny.

  I really don't know what I am doing.     Every time I think I am getting closer to figuring out Unreal, the less sure I am. See how the trees don't cast shadows on themselves or on other trees? Yeah, I don't know what I am doing wrong either. With Unity or Godot, it was as easy as putting it in there and switching the rendering to transparent, but Unreal doesn't think like that. Not to mention this default project has so many lighting and camera effects going on, I am curious if that's the reason its not working as believed.     Well... time for more experimentation. Oh yeah... and maybe I need to upgrade that graphic's card.

     I am undergoing the process of learning Unreal. Wish me luck, this is going to require me to learn alot. I am already getting swamped with information and doing my best to process it all. I've got myself in the optimal learning state, so I will learn the best I can. Unreal took a grand total of two hours to properly and update, this was a little stressful, but part of it was me slacking and not checking the download state. I also need a better graphics card, or at least Unreal believes so.

Its 3:05am right now... time for another blog post. I need a cheap camera for video blogging.

    I have been feeling better mentally as of late. I am enjoying working on the video game, but these beginning stages create a lot of headaches. My lack of knowledge makes it difficult to understand what I need, and perhaps I might require some more traditional learning first before tackling such a huge project. It doesn't help that the software I have been using, Unity, is causing problems for my work.     Unity was going to be the program I chose to work on this game, in fact, everything  I have been doing shader wise, has been done in Unity. I fully understand the work I have already done is minor, and I am at the stage in game development where this is the best time to switch platforms. For those who don't understand what is going on, Unity announced a couple days ago that they were increasing their prices for their licence. Due to inflation, this price increase was expected, companies have to make profit and Unity is no different, so that aspect was full ...

The glorious tree!     One of the biggest things I didn't understand, was that graphical images aren't double sided unless you intend them to be. I realize now, that's a "cost" saving measure. If you aren't familiar with game development/programing lingo, "cost" is basically  equivalent "resources" in the sense that computers only have a certain amount of resources they can allocate to any given game scene. If a side isn't visable, then there is no reason to draw it. This tree in the picture isn't perfect, but I plan on fixing later when I get the chance, since the trunk shouldn't be double sided (you can't and shouldn't see inside the trunk.). However, the leaves need to be double sided, so they are. As soon as I figure out how to animate this tree with wind effects, I will create an extremely large area filled with them, so I can watch for slow down. In theory, Unity does a good job with this anyways, since Unity's...

     I don't know anything about shaders, and honestly, it looks confusing as all hell. But in theory, I will only need to learn how to use it once, as most of the design choices in the game will only require one shader shared universally. Let me show you what the tree looks like after making some selections. This is what the tree looks like using the Legacy Transparent Cutout shader. Looks like plastic. Shiny. Here is the Partical Surface shader, but the problem, with this (and you might not see it here), is that the draw order is wrong, causing massive clipping and clip through. It shouldn't look like that. Here is the basic "cutout" shader. It doesn't provide any "shade" at all. On one hand, its nice to actually see it without any shadow effects, as this is the "intended" look based off the sprite sheet. But I would like some basic shading. In fact, if I could get some basic cell shading, that would be wonderful, but I want to at least see m...

       Back with another talk about the trees I am working on. Adding more leaves requires me to shape the leaves above the "pile" as to ensure I don't mess up the other leaves. As you can see, I've added more leaves. A single leaf is above the "pile" being shapped. Trying to fill it out nicely. Do we think it has a nice head of hair? Lets try one more well-placed leaf...     The last step is the hardest in a way... I have to give it the one-over, and see what it's missing. For starters, I do actually think it's missing the trunk roots. You can see, actual palm trees got this cool thing going on... Splits open, and has visable roots. Look at this! It's looking about right! Now I must scour the tree and see how much I really like it.      Well, that's it. Thanks for reading. Oh, I guess I forgot to mention, All of the tiles for crocotile were made by me, I drew a bunch of leaves and the textures. I might explain 3D textures and my technique i...

In this terrible guide, I will be showing you how I made the palm tree.      First we start off with a simple stalk. This is done using my tileset, and some finagling. Basically this is a weirdly attached octogonal prism that is broken up into skinner prisms to give the "tiered" effect. Notice that it isn't perfect, that is intentional. Plants are allowed to be a little weird, that's what gives it character. Nice Straight Stem.      Second off, we got to bend the stalk to our will. Nothing too crazy on our first tree, we can get some crazier bends on other trees, but for now, lets keep it simple. Firm with a little give.      Third, we start the leaf process with a simple layer of base leaves. Small leaves inside to give the illusion of some depth, I will likely go back and add a few more "under layer" leaves just to fill the center out. 4 inside leaves for thicc-ness.      To me, this looks like a good under base spread. I wil...

    Been modeling some low-poly 3D plants. The program being used is Crocotile, and it doesn't do transparancy well except in the case of full transparancy. This is why you see the artifacts on the edges of the leaves. This is fine, as Unity renders it a lot better and makes it smooth. So far, all I have been doing is experimentation.

Been distracted by Balder's Gate III, and I have developed some eye strain from it. Have to take a break.

When I was 16 years old, I played Jimmy Buffet in a game of cornhole and lost. He played at Riverbend in Cincinnati and my best friend's dad was the caterer, and we got to chill with Jimmy and the parrot heads that attended the after concert party. It was fun, but Jimmy is WAY TOO GOOD at cornhole. Rest in Peace Jimmy.