Megan Fox

How to improve the ProBuilder tool

First, read the $1+ post to get the source. Get it working. Got an arch? Cool, ok, let's talk about how to fix the source to work like you expect.

Now, first real code step, change DoAction() to look like this:

This wasn't intentional gelding, I just realized I'd broken this in the course of fighting with the code. That will make the "SubDivs" option do something again (w...

Who wants a custom ProBuilder tool?

This one's gonna go out to everyone including source, since I'm not a monster and am not gonna package this into a DLL just to spite people. ;)

What you've got here is a partially baked ProBuilder tool for making arches. By which I mean, it adds a button called "Arch" to ProBuilder's window. It enables when you have a single face selected, like so, and turns this:

Into this:

2019-03-05 21:44:47 +0000 UTC View Post

February code post is coming! Just delayed.

Just a quick update to say, working on a thing, it'll just be delayed. Was hoping to have it done, but wow the code is fighting me.

Gist is, people will get a custom ProBuilder tool this time :D

I'm building a tool that makes arches out of things! Because, well, an arch is incidentally also a half-pipe, and, uh. Yeah.

Choose your birb!

Ok y'all, time to decide what birb we should make next. This birb gets painted on top of the same base mesh for "birb needs to fit on the skateboard and not be a doofus who's way too big" reasons, so keep that in mind. Like a raven or a crow would be basically the same, cus - him a tiny corvid.

Also remember the beak shape won't change either. Kookaburra won't look quite right cus of the wrong size beak, parrots change slightly cus parrots would normally have curvy beaks, etc.

Her...

If I made older posts public, ok or no?

Hola, backers!

I'm considering going through and starting to make older posts public. Probably stuff that's 6 months or older. It'd give folks more of a taste of what this Patreon is and why they might like to back it, hopefully without eroding y'all's sense of value as backers.

I won't do it unless a pretty strong majority thinks it's ok, though. So let's hear opinions!

(also, this isn't the "real" poll post for the month - I think that will be y'all deciding on the next sp...

Neato changelog tool for Perforce (simplified)

Hola, backers!

(this is a chopped-down version of the code-tier post that ended up pretty big and complicated, just in case the $1+ folks also use Perforce)

So, I'm gonna assume you're all somewhat techy types that might use Perforce or like to as their version control. Which I highly recommend btw, it's a lot more stable than git is with big files, and like... big binary files are mo...

Ever wanted changelogs out of Perforce easily?

Hola, code tier!

So, I'm gonna assume you're all somewhat techy types that might use Perforce or like to as their version control. Which I highly recommend btw, it's a lot more stable than git is with big files, and like... big binary files are most of gamedev. If you're not techy btw, I'd still recommend against git, and instead suggest you maybe just try Unity Collaborate? It doesn't have...

Per-Camera Settings For Cinemachine Setup

It occurred I could probably give you more on this! Just to save you some additional fiddling. Below, you will find the settings for each of those cameras, so that you're not stuck there trying to figure out how to make it not twitch, or not-suck. Way easier if you've got a not-terrible starting point to tweak from.

Here's the chase cam. This is the main one, that follows you around while you're skating. See how it has no collision component? That's because I found that when you skated ...

SkateBIRD Camera Code

First, read this. Ok? Cool. This is the code for that (see attached). Instead of doing paste-bins, I'm just gonna give you the sources themselves, and let you poke around inside.

Between this and the rest, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to assemble a working camera pretty quickly. As usual, though, I'm always here if you have specific questions. Discord's usually a good way of asking them, but I read the comm...

Cinemachine For 3rd Person Action/Vehicle

First, check out the Patron page, 'cus I updated a bunch of stuff! Everyone still gets the same rewards they pledged at, I just cleaned up the explanations, and changed the goals. Now the goals are more like "things you guys get when we reach milestones" instead of "uh, thanks? yay!". When we hit the vote goal hopefully soon, you'll start seeing additional vote links in here n stuff.

Second - wanna know how this all looks in practice? 2019-01-05 23:08:58 +0000 UTC View Post

Faking Physics is good

Just a teensy bonus post here on... well... this.

Ok, so. This code went through three iterations. First, I was forcibly setting wheel rotations in my normal Update cycle, which then controlled steering. This was... dangerous.

That fed into the anistropic friction code, which did run in FixedUpdate, and was responsible for steering. Without this, when you try and turn the board, nothing w...

The December post is (still) coming!

Just a mini-post to say you'll be getting 2 posts this month / that the December post is still coming. I wanted it to be a big nice cool one for December, and then I ran out of year, eep.

It's gonna be about the camera system I made for SkateBIRD. It's gonna ROCK. My hope is there'll be enough detail in it that at least $3+ tier can just like, copy-paste some code and boom, have a kickass 3rd person camera in Unity. Hopefully the $1+ tier folks can also noodle it together, just without ...

Heading mirroring and ugly skate code

First, here's the heading mirroring function, and a bonus vector mirror that you probably already had. I don't claim this is the cleanest possible way, or the fastest way, but it's at least a way where you can intuit what's happening: https://pastebin.com/jn8Xwi3Q

Now this is how I use it. It won't make a ton of sense, but this is the code where I find the nearest point on the rail we're grinding along, snap to it, and then ...

Mirroring for skateboard tricks

So let's say you want to implement a Crooked Grind in your game, for some reason. It looks like this.

The front truck is grinding along the rail, while the back end of the board is pointed out away from the rail a bit. The important bit is that the board isn't at a clean angle - it's rotated about 20 degrees out, 30 degrees up, and even has a bit of twist.

Now comes the fun part.

So you st...

How to physically keep a thing at a specific tilt

Yikes, I missed a month! I am SO sorry about that. I, uh, basically had a major medical thing that involved food actually getting stuck in my throat, and then some doctor visits, and then a GI doctor visit where they stretched the throat out, and then I'm still recovering from general viral illness, and woof.

So! This month you get TWO code posts, one of which $1+ gets to see, and the other is only for $3+ up. So everyone gets a code (yay!), and code-tier gets two codes (double yay!)

Now...

How to control a physical thing's heading

Yikes, I missed a month! I am SO sorry about that. I, uh, basically had a major medical thing that involved food actually getting stuck in my throat, and then some doctor visits, and then a GI doctor visit where they stretched the throat out, and then I'm still recovering from general viral illness, and woof.

So! This month you get TWO code posts, one of which $1+ gets to see, and the other is only for $3+ up. So everyone gets a code (yay!), and code-tier gets two codes (double yay!)

Now...

Patreon Broke Pledges (you can fix it tho)

Sorry everyone, Patreon screwed up again.  They reported they're having issues processing some payments this month (ie. like 70-90% of their patrons for some people yikes), so if you could, please take a moment to check that your payment went through to all of the creators you're a patron of. I know it's annoying, but all of us super, super appreciate your support.

2018-08-02 18:43:44 +0000 UTC View Post

Getting Good GIFs

This one's public, since it's handy info for everyone. If any of my Patrons wants specific questions answered on how to do this or more specifics, hey, just message me. Y'all get extra service :D (you've all got special colors on our Discord and everything)

 Casual Social GIFs 

First, use ScreenToGIF: https://www.screent...

How Do You Auto-Dude Something?

First, check the associated $1 post, if you don't know what I mean by Dude Level: https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-heck-is-19672813 

Ok, read that? Good. So the code is anything but straightforward. The Turfster solved the problem through main force: https://pastebin.com/QUNuzSa9 

Still. It's an absolute beauty to se...

What The Heck Is A "Dude Level"?

This month, my $1 get the secret answer to a mystery: What the heck is with the Dude Level option in Spartan Fist.

The answer may shock you.

It's....

just a joke option that does absolutely nothing.

BUT! It wasn't always going to be that.  It began life as a joke option that would parse all text in the game, and turn it into valley/surfer/skater/etc speech automatically.

Behold: https://imgur.com/PCv...

Dungeon Seeds and Dailies

Hola folks! Today's one of those "everyone gets code" sort of updates, since we just launched the game, and I figure everyone gets a bonus for helping us get here: https://pastebin.com/03HBJ8fr

If you somehow missed our launch, tada! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DF4s3bqsJ8

Everyone gets a bonus especially because Spartan Fist, eh, d...

Making rounded voxels

This one's a quick freebie, since Zach Soares (our awesome artist) is who actually made the attached guide.

Did you ever see Spartan Fist's first-person fists? Ever wonder how we got them to look that way? Then grab the attached PDF and WONDER NO MORE.

This is the process that turns this...

... into this:

2018-05-18 22:13:12 +0000 UTC View Post

HMMMMM

Hmmm. What's that. Looks new. I wonder why I've got new video footage. It's almost like something is coming, sort of like... well like a train. Get off the tracks! Oh no!

(this will make more sense soon)

Also, thanks everyone for your help thus far. You've made it a ton easier for me to get us to where we are now. Ahem.

MYSTERIOUS.

Keep It On The Downlow

This is a preview of our next trailer. I mean this IS our next trailer, we're just not releasing it quiiiite yet.

Please don't share it. Don't wanna see it on any socials. Cool? Cool.

Y'all can see it a bit early, and get some cool trivia:

That's Fryda Wolff's voice!

We did a VA session with Fryda, and she ended up voicing our entire cast. So whenever you punch a cat and hear an angry hiss, or hear... whatever the heck noise pigeons make when flustered, well, that's Fryda. Ju...

Expanding Particle Rings

I'm confident everyone could figure this out eventually, but it took me a few hours to fiddle the math into the right form, so here, save ya some time.

This is exactly what it says on the tin. You want an expanding ring of particles, right? Thousands of uses. Anime stuff uses this constantly. The thing is, if you just expand the ring, the particle density gets lower as the ring gets bigger, and the relationship of radius to emission rate to keep the density consistent is non-linear.

So, ...

Making A Perfect Throw (The Code!)

Ok, first, go read the post that covers the topic.

Good? Good.

Now then, "well what does that code look like". Here you go.

It really is pretty self-explanatory, and already documented. Inclination in degrees, start pos, end pos, it hands you back a velocity. Put a rigid body at the start pos, set its velocity to the return of this, an...

Making A Perfect Throw (With Physics)

I don't know about you, but I can nail an underhand toss almost every time. It's something human brains are good at. Maybe it's because I grew up loving baseball? Dunno. It's just one of those things.

In physics though? Holy wow is this a complicated topic. Finding ballistics tables and equations is all very possible, but mostly those are concerned with figuring out how far a thing is going to go if you know the initial force and angle. They aren't usually built for the ball tossing problem: 2018-02-02 00:04:09 +0000 UTC View Post

Drag-And-Drop Fill A GIANT Array In Unity

Ever had this problem? You've got this Inspector, with an array object, that you need to assign a ton of something into. In this case, Sprites, but it could be anything - Prefabs, sound files, whatever. Some HUGE number of objects. That you're about to hand-drag-across, one by one.

Well yeah. I did too! Too bad I didn't know how to fix it. I was gonna write a big custom inspector.

Darn, boring u...

Math Checks Everyone Needs

Merry Christmas $1 backers, you get a code-tier post. Merry Christmas $3 tier backers, you get a HUGE list of functions that just about everyone should have somewhere in their codebase.

Mostly I just want to make sure EVERYONE has these.

We're all programmers here, so hopefully everyone knows why "== 0.0" is a super dang bad idea most of the time. Or even why "floatA == floatB" is a bad idea. You don't? 2017-12-24 06:39:16 +0000 UTC View Post

Patreon's changing their fee structure

See here, if you haven't seen it yet.

Gist is, the fees are going up a bit, and I totally understand if you have to cancel your pledge. You do you. I appreciate the folks who stick around, but for some, that'll be the difference between can and can't afford it.

I think it's a dumb move on their part, and a pretty clear example of meddling by ne...