This is my personal blog its main purpose is just as a sort of work log for myself, but maybe someone might find some part of it interesting or useful at some point. I started keeping this log back in July 2025, but it was just on a text file on my desktop so everything up until the creation of this website will have a listed date in the title.
Work Log 8/18/2025
Had to fix a bunch of issue related to the codex not properly uploading to GitHub. I kinda fucking hate GitHub in my opinion its only useful for toy projects that don't have tons of data. I am aware that most of the world uses it for software development… I think that is a mistake.
Got Megan's computer set up to be able to package to android, always a fucking nightmare to get android setup to package to a headset even though i've done it dozens of times at this point.
Put in some error handling code for dealing with NPCs trying to initialize dialogue when the didn't have an NPC data ref
Removed refs to the Hair and beard meshes on the BP_AI_Parent because they are removed well before the could be used. These were causing log messages about invalid refs.
Added refs to weapons to the events for parrying and blocking that way we can choose what type of sound to play when we impact for a block or parry instead of it being hard coded
Added a recoil state to the animation graph for NPCs so they can properly respond to having their attack blocked.
Added an interface event called PassWeaponOwner_OnInterface to allow us to get a direct reference to who ever is using a weapon
Parrying and Blocking are now programmatically different blocking plays one set of sound and animations and parrying plays another
Shield bashing now has a chance to knock down an NPC, one of my favorite feature adds, just feels awesome in VR.
Updated the stunning functionality to make sure the npc stops strafing around the player when stunned
Added hit reactions to the anim graph they aren't perfect yet need Jackie to modify the length of the animations they are far too long and reset the npc to a neutral pose for like half a second before they go back to fighting looks super weird
Added a check to make sure npcs cant attack when they are stunned
Added a check to make sure we can still knock down npcs, if we shield bash an npc and it knocks them down we ignore hit reaction animations.
Work Log 8/15/2025
Interviewed a prospective hire today for a new narrative writer, took most of the day but went well.
Work Log 8/14/2025
Worked on combat code, blocking is much more reliable now, we have a block proxy set up for the top and bottom of the npc, if the player is faster than the block animation then they still get blocked if the npc has chosen to block.
Ai strafing around the player during combat works again!
Implemented a new selection thing for the npcs determining if the player is using a ranged weapon or melee weapon, similar to how they know if another npc is using ranged or melee.
Distance checking for blocking is now enabled, meaning the npc shouldn't fantom block when the player isn't even nearby
Fixed doors not closing
Fixed players taking forever to die at the end of the matches
Updated the weapon broken event to auto add the broken item to the inventory so the player wont be confused and continue to try to use it
Put in a temporary workaround for the two handed weapon blocking not really working with the new block system, if the system sees that the npc is using a two handed weapon it plays the two hand block instead of the normal block animations.
Tutorial is playable all the way through again
Temporarily fixed the weird issue with arrows freaking the fuck out when you pick them up turns out that only happens when they spawn from a quiver, its something wrong with their collision that i haven't quite solved yet, changing the response to the player channel seems to make no difference even though thats how non spawned arrows handle it. for now we just check to see if the owner and the hit thing is the player character if it is we ignore hits, bad for perf sure but works for now.
Work Log 8/13/2025
Worked on administrative stuff like the new list, codex stuff.
Worked on the blocking system we have a tentative solution to the issue of weapons not hitting if moving too fast.
Work Log 8/9/2025
More work on the crowd rendering system, ran into some issues with how PSO caching was handling the crowd actors, forcing them to always use the lowest lod even though im custom calculating the lods.
Crowd rendering system is working pretty well still needs to be instanced, but the actual rendering is doing fine the textures are a bit aliased at a distance, but id rather that than blocky blurry messes.
Work Log 8/8/2025
Spent the time since the last update working on the crowd system. Who would have though rendering 4k NPCs on a mobile chip would be hard.... Havent really taken a day off in a couple weeks, but theoretically I have a usable solution now all built in house too which is cool!
Readded the sky actor for the tutorial arena level
Had to rebuild the whole tool for generating the crowd npcs to use a editor utility widget instead of an editor utility actor
Generated around half of the animation texture arrays
Work Log 7/29/2025
Tried to compile to the headset and what a surprise Skelot is a piece of shit that crashes the build every time.
Tried switching back to 5.5 main branch for testing and now narrative wont work. Fuck.
Our crowd system is super important, I feel like this is gonna take some time to solve and a lot of R&D. All the plugins we have tried have not worked in one way or anolther. Might have to build something custom.
Work Log 7/22/2025 - 7/28/2025
Worked on the blocking system its working, but not perfectly. Feels like one of the hardest god damn problems of my career frankly.
Work Log 7/19/2025
Added missing Skill class base class for Megan to go through and make variants of
Added an interface event for GetSkillClass_OnInterface
Added the code to allow classes to actually modify skills and attributes on NPCs!!
Fixed missing Hit effect info for magic effects added to actor when hit
Promoted Weapon Hit to a variable for easier access
Cleaned up code for adding magic effects via weapon hit.
Added check to make sure we cant add magic effects if we dont have enough charge
Replaced the location for spawning VFX and SFX to the actual impact point instead of the stabber socket
Updated the armor durability log to better show what actor is having their armor damaged
cleaned up code for npc blocking player strikes
Added a bit of a recoil pop when the player gets parried ... this shit took 3 fucking hours
Added a way to stop player from dealing damage if their attack was parried
Rewrote the entire calculation for NPC parrying player attacks, We can get rid of the combat testers soon! (Future Robert here, took over a month to actually get rid of the combat testers.)
Work Log 7/18/2025
Fixed Crystal mat for staff
Cleaned up fist code a bit instead of a branch for selecting which socket to spawn a fist on we are just using a select node
Fixed player hands not being able to stretch far enough
Fixed missing data in NPC Weapon swing list of actors to ignore when tracing
Removed the old server checking code for checking NPC hits because it caused increased latency in registering hits and actually applying damage to the player hit detection is much more reliable now!!!
Added an additional check to see if an NPC is already playing an attack anim before attempting to play another we were sometimes loading new animations in the background and then playing them in the middle of already playing animations due to the delay with async loads. This change results in less spazzy looking npcs when attempting to play an animation and stops the premature stoppage of hit traces leading to more reliable hit detection for NPCs
Updated the debug damage info message to actually reflect base weapon damage, skill adjusted weapon damage, and post armor calculation weapon damage.
Added in a check to see if the cell state manager exists before we try to add stuff to its array inside the BP_AI_Parent because we were getting an error when it doesn't exist
Added a shield bash cool down inside of the melee component to help deal with the bug where shield bashes frequently don't deal damage this bug is caused by the anim notifies which call the end traces event, for some reason this never seems to be an issue inside of attack anims on regular weapons
Player now receives an impulse when killed… it’s awesome!
Work Log 7/17/2025
Moved my computer setup into the main office
Moved Megan's setup into the main office
Debugged physics on swords to figure out why they frequently just pass right through each other and stop registering as hits sometimes. Seems to just a combination of the VRGrip Settings and the fact that our collision objects are just really small even if i change the project settings for physics in multiple ways it doesn't seem to make too much of a difference. With a collision capsule of at least 3-4 we seem to always collide with a weapon in the other hand. This can sometimes leave a visible gap in between weapons that should be touching though perhaps the answer here is to make which weapon collision is used based on velocity so if a player is swinging slowly we can use a smaller collision object to get the blade much closer together if they are swinging fast we can make it much larger so that we guarantee a hit.
Fixed incorrectly rotated axes on hip socket and hand socket
Work Log 7/16/2025
Added match aligned array of sounds for male or female gasp sounds.
Got plugins updated on everyone's systems
Helped Megan rebuild old system to act as a build server
Attempted to Debug Skelot, the change to the architecture of the plugin has caused excess draw calls.
Downloaded the skelot template and tested to see if it was still an issue with a bare bones projects... it was
Tested the UE 5.6 version of skelot it does perform better, but not sure much it would make a difference and we cant upgrade to 5.6 until oculus releases their branch
Attempted a workaround that I found on the skelot discord that requires making a skelot asset for each piece of armor, tested in the skelot 5.5 test project it reduces draw calls anywhere between 30 and 40 percent better but not gonna make a huge dent when we are 70k draw calls over budget
Downloaded overcrowd plugin to start testing it will pass it off to megan tomorrow to attempt to make progress on
Work Log 7/13/2025
Added events for NPCs to run out to the center of the arena when the gates open.
Fixed hidden tags category on marker objects
Disabled All tick optimization Component settings on Long Tutorial Arena Combatants, was causing them to perform weird like ignoring AI Move To commands
Added Boolean to stats component for AllowTimeDilation sometimes we might want to disabled the possibility of time dilation such as in the tutorial until we get to that part.
Created a narrative event for toggling the ability for time dilation to occur
Fixed a bug causing the time dilation VFX to show even if there was no active time dilation
Added a complete narrative data task to the magic effect component for PlayerHealthRestoredViaSpell
Created Tasks for tracking if player has cast a spell. This should eventually replace the more specific player has cast healing spell task.
Created task to track if NPC has cast a spell
Disabled pickpocketing code for now seeing as it needs a refactor and it shouldn't be enabled for the tutorial anyway
Added the tutorial helper card to the arena default behavior now is to show the current task description if the player doesn't complete it within 10 seconds
Added an event to destroy the items spawned for the previous match, previously only the items npc used would be destroyed
Created new material instance for NPC Invisibility, old invisibility was way too visible.
Updated volume of crowd cheers louder
Updated volume of impact sounds quieter
Not totally fixed but the annoying sound spam is kind of better doesn't clang every time it hits anything
Fixed the sneak sound being a loud fucking thud that played everytime you hit anything.
Work Log 7/12/2025
Created narrative event to make npcs invincible
Fixed a bunch of missing anim notifies on weapon anims that Jackie missed
Created several new data table rows for the tutorial npc weapons so that they can do more damage to end the matches quicker as intended
Fixed missing player character in end of matches spawn
All 7 matches playable
Fixed NPC and player spawn locations
Fixed NPC and Player Team assignments
Add OnDestroyed Event to get rid of spawn holsters, weapons, etc to properly reset arena in between matches
Items up until match 5 are spawning on each side but the transforms are broken
Fixed issue with the heart shards not being allowed inside soft class refs, apparently our tool for making items named them with () and that isn't allowed in unreal’s naming scheme surprised they ever worked at all frankly
Work Log 7/11/2025
Curated possible underwear models for our characters, we need to just attach the models to our characters permanently instead of trying to get the built in underwear to look good its far too modern anyway
Spent most of the day getting unreal engine asset aliases to work
New tool to add aliases exists now
Programmed the ability for us to actually reset into a new body after each death
Programmed npc spawning for each long tutorial match
fixed the low damage output combat bug
Long tutorial playable up to match 5
Work Log 7/10/2025
Live demo to Brock and Andrew over discord, lots of bugs
Curated character bodies and heads to use for demo player characters
Debugged tutorial character bodies not working
Character bodies working
Player characters for long tutorial created
Work Log 7/9/2025
Created potion for player invisibility
created task for tracking player potion use
Fixed bug in the way potions were drank
Changed event for potion use tracking to support players or npcs
Fixed bug in NPC archery where they weren't activating the projectile component due to previous optimization.
Discovered that there’s a homing setting inside the projectile component could be useful for perks later
created interface events to mark start and end of invisibility, needed to fire off task completion of invisibility in tutorial can also be used later to actually make npcs not track player if they are invisible
Created task to track actors becoming visible, attempting to make this one more generic so it can support NPCs or Players.
Created a task to track NPC damaging the player also made more generic so we can hopefully use it in a bunch of ways such as player hit with arrow or player hit with spell
Changed WeaponUsedToDealDamage_OnInterface to have an input for who damage was applied to
Created a task to track Player damaging NPCs also made more generic so we can hopefully use it in a bunch of ways such as player hit with arrow or player hit with spell
Created healing potion for player for the tutorial
Replaced invisibility end event at the start of the invisibility effect with a duplicate event without the call to all actors saying visibility has been reset inside magic effect component because it was causing the task to fire twice
Created task to track player healing via spell
Match 5 is playable!
Created Tutorial Staff Weapon
Created Tutorial Wand Weapon
Created task to track what weapon the player has selected
Created task for attuning a wand to a spell
Player wand casting with spells has been converted to using projectiles instead of channel spells
Created task for tracking if placement spell from staff has been cast
Created task for tracking if a weapon is out of charge
Created task for tracking if player was frozen by npc via spell
Created data table rows for tutorial staff and wand
Created interface event for WeaponUsedToCastSpell_OnIterface
Created task for tracking if a weapon was recharged
Created interface event for WeaponOutOfCharge_OnIterface
Match 6 is around 45 percent playable before i took a break for a few hours
Wand attunement is working!
Player spell casting with wands is working again.
Match 6 is now fully playable albeit we have to manually set the npc using staff or wand for now
Crated events for adding and removing spells from npcs
Spell scrolls work again for the player
Work Log 7/8/2025
Curated animation for npc tip grip block
Added an input to the WeaponUsedToBlock_OnInterface event for whether or not it was a tip grip block
Added a variable for whether or not a weapon is tip gripped to the base object
Added an interface event for getting if an item is tip gripped.
Added Tasks for player tip grip block and npc tip grip block
Added the code for player and npcs being able to tip grip block
match 3 is playable if not a bit buggy.
Created task to track player and npc arrow firing
Created Invisibility potion for NPC to use during match 4
Created narrative event to force npc to use an item.
Created interface event to handle forcing npcs to use items. Only works for potions right now.
Created an interface event PotionDrank_OnInterface to give individual items a trigger for if they have been drank.
Added interface events for BowUsedToFireArrow_OnInterface and ArrowFiredEvent_OnInterface
Match 4 works!