Megan Fox

Falling Down Code

There's two parts of this. There's the logic I run when you're not bailed, and then the logic I run when it's bailed. Running both sides is important, because you get into situations where by the time you're bailed, you're stuck in a corner. You are ALREADY in an invalid, can't-get-up-safely position. So you'd better have been sweeping for your get-up position before ever even bailing, so there's an option available at that...

Falling Down In December

Ok, if you want the general dev update, just scroll to the bottom. For now, let's talk about safely falling!

Falling Down

One of the oddest problems in a skateboarding game is safely transitioning from being a skateboard, to being a body rolling around on the ground. Running your skater as a live ragdoll really isn't an option due to the jitter it introduces, and as a replacement to that, you're likely doing a lot of stancing logic that leans your skater around to...

Bird Poll (November edition)

You get ANOTHER birb.

But first, here is the Dwarf Kingfisher that was voted on 2 polls ago :D

We're currently working on the Stellar Jay, so let's figure out what comes after that...

Red Lored Amazon, so friendly

Guacamaya, so proud

2020-11-06 21:53:18 +0000 UTC View Post

November Code (gap logic)

So yeah, like I said in the main update, this is just weird. Trying to generalize it got super nasty, and you can... I mean yeah just see here. https://pastebin.com/d6PzunQL 

The core is the GapGatePassed function. That's an external static function (this logic lives in the singleton MissionManager) which gets called by detectors in the world when the player skates through them. The dumb form of those detectors a...

November Update (skateboard pre-orders!)

Ok, let's start with the cool thing! For the patron-exclusive stuff, scroll to the bottom.

Board Pre-Orders

Check it out! We've partnered with DJ Skate to produce SkateBIRD skateboards (like actual skateboards for skating, not cheap decorations) and you can pre-order them here! https://djskate.com/

Canonically, this mean...

Bird Poll (October AGAIN)

I owed you a bird poll! So here's another to catch up.

Quaker Parrot, so chonky

Gouldian finch, so artistic

Starling, such a scrappy baby

<...

Bird Poll (October)

HERE WE GO

Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher - so fierce

Guacamaya - so proud

Rainbow Lorrikeet - so fancy

Quail - with the lil dan...

Bird Poll (pictures of birbs in-game)

Figured it had been a while since I showed these, so to catch up, here's a bunch of the recent poll-winners, in their in-game forms! You have picked well, so now, BEHOLD.

Rose Ringed Parakeet

Chickadee

Cardinal

2020-10-20 22:13:46 +0000 UTC View Post

Bird Poll (September, yes it's late)

Sorry! I thought this already went out, seems it didn't. So we'll do 2 polls this month. First up, the poor green parrots keep getting skipped over, so this month, it's ALL green parrots :D They're all good birbs.

Quaker Parrot, so poofy

Caique, so sneaky

<...

Gap Detection Is Horrifying

This isn't aspirational code. It's more like an unavoidable car crash, where the expert driver steers into the inevitable hit to control and minimize any injuries.

I'm sharing this because I think it's an interesting, incredibly dense bit of logic. I mean LOOK AT THIS SELF-RELOOPING DOUBLE LOOP:

It's horrible, but it's...

September Update

I started with playing more with the wire-tool my partner made, including making birb grind the loopy, showed off one of the fun transfer step-ups later in the game, and really 2020-10-01 23:25:00 +0000 UTC View Post

How My Tooling Looks

So this isn't glamorous, but I thought it would be interesting. This is how my SkateMaker tool looks and works: https://pastebin.com/m7Zesx4Y

To use this, you'll need OdinInspector of course, and it won't work anyways because it relies on my own stuff, but like. This is how the tool looks:

... and thanks to Odin, it was...

August Update

Yeeaah I know I'm past August. Sorry! I got super busy. This schedule of digital shows is killing me. It sort of feels like I've been working on nothing but demos for virtual showcases for the last half year.

But I know, if i think about it, that I haven't...

Level Design

Because I've been working on A NEW LEVEL:

This is level 4, the server closet. That white...

Bird Poll (August)

Cardinals won and are in. YAY!

Alex is presently making a Golden Eagle too, which will be done by the time this poll is, soooo let's pick the next birb!

Quaker Parrot (so floofy!)

Rainbow Lorrikeet (so fancy!)

English Robin (so roundb)

2020-09-04 17:04:07 +0000 UTC View Post

WE BLING THE BIRB

Woke up this morning, and, what's this? 100 patrons? GASP.

So now we need to narrow down what "bling" entails. Figure there'll be a few polls to figure it out. Let's start with, what clothing slot shall we do first? (not a hat, because the last goal already locked in a backer hat)

I think we'll end up doing multiple slots here, so that collectively we have a cool costume that kind of goes...

July Update (+music)

What? Of course it's still July. Your calendar is just running fast, probably. Yes, definitely. Anyways!

So instead of a code sample, figured it'd been a while since I did a music sample, so EVERYONE gets music this month! This is a chunk of Atlas' Gospel, featuring: Atlas!

Atlas is @EmpyreTTV's boy, and is a cutey patooty. I especially like the bit where Nathan broke it down and just ...

Bird Poll (July)

SORRY FOR THE DUPLICATE. Patreon is bugging out. Surprise surprise. Let's see if this one works and actually has a poll attached.

Anywho, like I said in the comments of the last one, I used the top 2 instead of running two polls, since they were pretty clear winners. Accordingly, behold the cinnamon green cheek conure, and 2020-07-20 21:49:21 +0000 UTC View Post

Preventing Bouncing At Phys-Seams

You know how things in Unity (and UE4 - it's a PhysX bug) tend to bounce when rolling over seams? How if you roll a ball down a slope made up of multiple boxes sitting perfectly end to end, the ball often still jiggles or outright bounces when going over the seams? Ever noticed how it gets even worse if your collisions are set to continuous?

Want to fix that? Simply zero out the impulse that the collision tries to apply to your bouncing object.

2020-07-01 21:20:30 +0000 UTC View Post

THERE IS A DEMO ON STEAM

This will function as the general June progress update. We're a little early, but wanted to make sure everyone saw the Steam event! You can go download a demo of it RIGHT NOW: https://store.steampowered.com/app/971030/SkateBIRD/

It's up as part of Steam's Summer of Games festival thingy, so the demo will be up for about a week. You've got time. Try it out, have fun!

Game Progress

O...

Pick You A Birb (May edition)

First, last month's winner was Rose Breasted Grosbeak, and

He cute.

Anyways yes I know it's not quite may anymore, whatevs, I'll run another poll this month to make up for that. Anyways, it is time to PICK. A. BIIIRRRB.

Your options this month are:

Sun Conure (so bright 'n fancy)

2020-06-08 16:38:10 +0000 UTC View Post

General May Update

I'm separating this out from the code'n'stuff posts because those got LONG, and this is also LONG. Nothing bad happened or anything, I just need to cover a few months worth of meandering work here that did eventually lead to cool stuff. So, let's begin!

First of all, please join us on Steam on the June 9th for the Summer Games Festival (that we can talk about now, yay)! There will be a new demo up for the week, and everyone can try it. We'll also be doing a dev stream on the 9th at 4pm ...

Button glyphs for rebindable inputs

I'm going to try and walk you through how I generate the button glyphs for my inputs. That is, the "<press A to> Ollie!" kind of prompts, that show the right button whether you've rebound the input, or are using a keyboard instead of a gamepad, or etc. They're adaptive.

Click here for a video of how it looks in action. The buttons are changing on their own as I touch my keyboard o...

Controlling my dialog with Timeline (the code)

DialogAsset: https://pastebin.com/qeeQ3Jvg 

DialogBehaviour: https://pastebin.com/EV20VRrY 

DialogMixerBehaviour: https://pastebin.com/ZPhdtQZw 

DialogTrack: https://pastebin.com/VmQQU7sv<...

Controlling my dialog with Timeline

Ok! I'm going to brush over the basics of Timeline, or the full process of how to make custom Timeline nodes, because hey there's a lot of material on that. What I want to dig into is something specific: how can you use Timeline to play dialog during your cutscenes?

At ...

It's bird pickin' time

First: the main post this month will be delayed. I've got some big deadlines hitting in early May related to, well. We don't call it E3 this year, but there's a lot of stuff happening in the vacuum E3 left, and "that", you know? That stuff. So you'll get 2 main posts in May, they'll just be in the second half of the month.

Second: Why no bird poll this month? Because we did TINY HAWKS. We technically had a tiny hawk in game already, but the shape wasn't quite right for ...

March Update (+ music!)

I figure this month is a good one for some chill music, so may I present a relatively large chunk of the much-longer "Dominic's Skate Camp". This track features both Dominic and I believe Alex, both of @alexthehonk fame. It's a great example of how Nathan is working the birbs into the music as something approaching proper vocalists!

As is my habit in music-months, all Patrons gets the bonus content this month! Yay!<...

The Windowing Code

In the February update, I talk about windowing code, and - this is that!

There's a ton of files, so I just threw them all into a zip. Like I said, this won't compile, and it'll have a lot of external dependencies. I tend to write self-documenting code, though, and then also write a ton of comments, so hopefully you'll be able to see how it was meant to go together and wire the bits into your own equivalents.<...

Basic Windowing (+ February Update)

First,

Why No Bird Poll?!

Because we've been getting tons and tons of requests for owls from y'all ;) Owls always come up in the comments on polls, they're a top choice whenever we casually mention them on Twitter, etc. Well here you go: OWLS!

In the process of making him, we realized that 2020-03-03 20:25:43 +0000 UTC View Post

January Update (+ music!)

So first, general project update. You'll have already seen this if you were a Kickstarter backer (in which case just scroll down), but if not, hey!

January Update

Kind of an uneventful month for SkateBIRD in terms of things I can  show. I spent a few weeks at the end of December learning Houdini, which  will pay off later, but for now just meant I made some silly...

Time to pick ANOTHER bird type

Ok, you know the drill by now. Pick the next bird we do. The galah came out great, btw.

 Pineapple Conure (so loyal and rude)

 Caique (so cheeky)

2020-01-06 17:49:45 +0000 UTC View Post