DIGM 540

I have been looking around for a jumping-off point to get the fishing line going, and I have not had much success. However, I dug and dug and finally found my plan. So this plan of action came from this link right here:  https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-implement-a-pulling-chain-in-vr-in-ue4-4abdca5ed817 This is a pulley system which is not quite a fishing rod, but it's not quite so far off of not only what I have, but where I want to go with the project. This project has the length of the cable component being set and measured, which activates certain things in the scene. Theoretically, this means two things: 1. Cables and their lengths can be accessed and controlled with scripts 2. That length would be able to looked at and measured, and the delta of the length could also potentially be able to trigger things with scripts.  The implementation for how I see this would be as follows: -Getting the initial cable length -Changing the fish to not just disappear but to grab the bobbe...

 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...

 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.

  Today is another day of material and tutorial gathering before I embark on the testing phase. I found the official documentation of Unreal 4's VR Suite here: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/SharingAndReleasing/XRDevelopment/VR/  Another quick tutorial by Epic I found: https://youtu.be/Asw4C51RH9I For right now just trying to get the project off the ground, I'm going to start with materials from Epic themselves, and hopefully, they are enough. These tutorials and yesterday's one should get me out of the gate. I will start experimenting within the next few days. 

 Based on what I discussed in class in terms of where my project should go, we decided that starting with a general Unreal VR Space for the first half would be a good jumping-off point, then continuing to refine it in the second half into something a little more unique.  The first major resource I found was this:  https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/courses/5YG/unreal-engine-vr-3d/m221/unreal-engine-2eb563 It's a full tutorial by Epic themselves on getting the movement going in the 3d space. The tutorial and its headings and descriptions are in Japanese, but in the video, Unreal is in English so it should work fine.