DIGM 540

 So, with the very rudimentary fishing system in place, it was time to start moving forward with getting the next mechanic in place.  First, I started with a look at why my UE5 keeps crashing.  This resource from Epic themselves has a few possible solutions to the error that comes up: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/how-to-fix-a-gpu-driver-crash-when-using-unreal-engine/ In addition, here's a video I found that does look that those solutions in action: https://youtu.be/Vejhv9QmNGM After spending time getting those things in order it was time to look into the fishing line itself, starting with looking at how other people have done something similar.  The closest example I could find was this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/s0aw03/i_made_a_toy_fishing_rod_using_cable_components/ He achieves the look of the rod with 3 cable components, and it's only really the one on the end that changes length. This might be the easier of the ...

I met my goals for this week more so then I thought I would. There are some not-great parts of whats in there that still needs some work, but for the most part, what I wanted to get into there for the week is in there.      Once I got over getting the fish to move around, the next step was getting a fishing rod to try and be able to grab and move around in VR. This is the point where my research led me to UE's rope tool, and a video that helped me a lot was this one: https://youtu.be/ikTujgYI_Io From that tutorial and getting everything set up, I was able to get a very simple system in place that resembles fishing as seen below: This was achieved by having a grabbable cylinder with a cable and ball attached to it, all with a physics constraint. The purely white ball is a "fish" that using the level blueprint moves to the bobber; the ball with a gradient on it. On the bobber, there is a cast that finds the fish's blueprint that then deletes that fish when they collide....

With everything in working order, it was back to experimenting today. Getting back into it was yet another reminder of how lost I really am when it comes to this stuff, but some really key videos and channels came in handy, as shown below: General Tutorial: https://youtu.be/uyp1I4HJJBg?list=PLGEDpELN0zHDiStehu4bleZ7KVhOaGAUK When looking at this tutorial, I was using the parts where he makes coins and collectibles to hide/destroy a traced blueprint Good Concept Application Tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/@MattAspland Good Concept Explanations: https://www.youtube.com/@MathewWadsteinTutorials These two were sources that I found that had not a whole lot of actual use for me this week but were consistently great at showing general mechanics and concepts that I can reference and build upon in the future I've do ne a lot of experimenting today, and an update with pictures is overdue, but that will come in time. For now, there's still some catching up to do, starting with some blo...

 This week has not seen a whole lot in terms of this project. Lot of things happening over the weekend and a hard drive later I'm just digging into blueprints and which components do what. I've watched a couple of super basic blueprint videos like the one below:  https://youtu.be/tCJ3174CssY However, the application is way behind where I want it to be. 

 Original Plan: Making a VR project in Unreal, hand-coding the controllers Pros: New software Relearning C++ Cons: I know nothing about Unreal New Plan: Making a VR Fishing game where  -The fish is controlled by someone else with a phone using OSC - Project is in UE5 now - Logic Done with Blueprints Current Timeline: This week:  I'm going to familiarize myself with Unreal and its VR package, I will also try to build a small scene in the engine. Next Week:  Next week I will work on the actual fishing controls and get everything working Week 7:  I will work on getting the fish into the pond and making the player able to catch them Week 8:  This week will be dedicated to refining what is already in the game (Mechanics and assets) Week 9:  This week will be for getting the fishing moving with the phone Week 10:  This will be for the finishing touches. This week: where I want to be kinda.     Coming up: OSC Implementation: Also, the Actual fi...

  So far for production today, things have been going awful.  Mainly, my main drive is only 128gb, which has given me way more trouble than it should be. It has held me back from updating Steam Vr, it throws up 2-3 errors per time I open Unreal, but I'm pushing through it.  I've fought through it all to get a small scene together after hours of trying to get everything working. The number of hours just watching shaders compile and trying to get through all the Facebook walls just to use my quest after not turning it on in a while is insane but I managed to be sort of where I wanted to be.  A lot of the struggle this week was getting the pipeline for the new project in place, and now with all that set up and figured out, full production should go alright.

My plan for the project has shifted pretty heavily so here is the updated plan and idea.  The New Plan:  I plan on making a small VR game where you fish into a small pond. The twist is that another player is going to controlling the fish from a phone. The C++ aspect of the project is no longer apart of it in favor of blueprints and bringing more experimental tech into Unreal. The new schedule: This week: Im going to continue to just familiarize myself with Unreal and its VR package, I will also try to build a small scene in the engine. Next Week: Next week I will work on the actual fishing controls and getting everything workong Week 7: I will work on getting the fish into the pond and making the player able to catch them Week 8: This week will be dedicated to refining what is already in the game (Mechanics and assets) Week 9: This week will be for getting the fishing moving with the phone Week 10: This will be for finishing touches.

 No visual update, got pulled away by other homework. In the little downtime I did have, I have been looking at the documentation. I'm trying to make sure as I go through the tutorial I'm understanding what I'm looking at rather than just getting through it, because if I just wanted the VR controller that's what the default project is for.  This was a pretty good starting spot to dig through blueprints:  https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/ProgrammingAndScripting/Blueprints/BestPractices/ It helped me to read exactly what these certain parent classes were and what I was making rather than just making the blueprints according to the tutorial.  Hopefully, I can get back to development soon.

Finally, time to get into Unreal.   Upon opening it, I decided to check out the VR Starter scene and see what that was all about. At that point I was faced with a choice, I could either  A. Use the starter scene to have a VR controller and try to do something unique with it or B. Start with a blank scene and continue with the making my own controller Idea for now As I thought about that I realized I had no idea how anything in that starter scene worked, so building something unique off of that would be pretty tricky. So in the essence of learning, I decided to stick to option B.  In the talks in class on Thursday, an idea was proposed to me as well that I thought might be helpful which was to make things in blueprints first, then try to convert them to C++ after the fact. At first, I was pretty confident like "Yeah if something is difficult maybe but I'll just see about coding first" but now Im realizing just how little Unreal I am familiar with.  I'm currently makin...