Time flies when you’re having a good time! It’s almost 4 months since my last post but feels like just a couple of weeks.
Sekiro
In March/April I dedicated almost 2 weeks playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, not unexpected because I love all FromSoftware Games and it was one of my most antecipated game of 2019.
Honestly, I played the game the wrong way, the game design is made so you can revive yourself sometimes, but I throw aways this mechanic and played the masochist way without ever using the ressurection. If I died, I had to restart from checkpoint doesn’t matter how many times it takes until I got able to defeat the boss without diying. Horrible idea at first, but this made the game duration way longer than normal (30 or 40 hours for 100% main+side quests?) and I’m glad because I could spend more time checking and fighting everything in Sekiro.
Videos from the live streams
@ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxCwzyR8A_B-IDeFIFu3msUiwiOtYG8fT .
Dreams PS4
In April/May I’ve got Dreams PS4 Creators Early Access and I falled in love with it, Dreams PS4 is perfect for GameDev students and games designers enthusiasts, the tools are simple to use and learn, the engine is powerful and allows the creator to build from simple mini-games to some really ambitious and/or massive levels, it features an interesting structural system that allows multiple levels to connect into one big game where the levels/maps can share values and information.
It also comes with co-op local multiplayer features and I hope in the future it gets the PSVR support, it will be insanely cool to create your own VR games inside Dreams with all that engine power and features.
I really have high praises for the game and hopes that it will become a huge success with the right marketing and popularity. As someone who participate with the community for those 45 days of love, I also praise their community, most are old creators from LittleBigPlanet, some (like me) are new creators, but all helpful and the positivity from the community (whatever is from Discord, Reddit, Forums) is something that should be a reference to other games.
Videos from the live strams @ https://www.youtube.com/user/DarknessFXPS4/search?query=Dreams
DreamsPS4 Reddit GameJam Winner – Multiplayer Category
!!! I won one GameJam !!! So happy!!! 😀
In 2019 my main goal was to get into GameJams, build some small games fast and learn more about gamedev and game engines with the process. To win a GameJam wasn’t this year goal at all, participate and improve was enough for my realistic expectations.
Dreams PS4 have bi-weekly GameJams, that I did participate (I guess 2 real participations and 1 whatever throw) and I learned a lot from this GameJams, specially to temper my expectations, I was expecting something like a DemoScene competition where the Top 3 or Top 10 winners are really deserving and outstanding entries, instead I learned that popular vote jams are sometimes silly because some of the winners was things like a Super Mario Sculpt (Top10) in a Spring Element themed jam or other funny/meme things that received lots of votes. It was a good learning and experience.
There is also other GameJams, Contests, Challenges for the community in different channels.
Jetson Nano and UE4 ARM64/AARCH64
In June I’ve received my Nvidia Jetson Nano, this board is amazing and it have plenty of things that I felt missing on Raspberry 3B+, like more CPU power, more and faster RAM, better GPU, OpenGL/Vulkan 3D drivers, USB3. But, as a down point it have Linux Ubuntu Only support, at least I was able to change the enviroment to Lubuntu since I really dislike the Ubuntu Unity.
Anyway, with the board in hands, I spend a lot of time tinkering with the cool demos and samples inside, then I moved back to PC UE4 Engine to try to make it able to compile for Linux ARM64/AARCH64, the engine already have support for Linux ARM64 build and compile, but it’s hard coded in the source files and it took some time to learn how to change things. The end result is that it indeed works, the project compile and worked like a charm in the Jetson Nano, for better performance I had to reduce the resolution to 720p (or 480p) and deactivate some post-processing (I think Ambient Occlusion was the heavy hitter).
I also tried to run the entire UE4 engine directly on the Jetson Nano but I’ve got no luck because one file Linux.o is x84/x64 only. I’ve some ideas to keep one PC Linux UE4 ready to build for ARM64 but I’ll wait for the UE4 4.23 release before.
FXWeather for M5StickC
In July I received my M5Stack and M5StickC, I love the Arduinos but since I learned and got my hands into the ESP32 I could not go back to Arduinos, this Dual-core 240Mhz with WiFI and Bluetooth is something from the dreams and I loved it, even if it comes with only the chip (you need to build your own device adding buttons, LCD screen, sensors, etcs). When I learned about M5Stack (twitter: @M5Stack ) had some ESP32 devices with built-in buttons, LCD, sensors, case, I had to give it a try and it does works amazingly well and it have a good price too.
So, to get things started I developed one Weather + Time client using OpenWeather API and NTP and gave it as a gift to my mother whom wanted something always-on with climate real-time information.
The source code for this project is on my GitHub @ https://github.com/DarknessFX/FXNode_Weather .
