Today I decided to clean up, update the code, update to the most recent vs2017 version, and release for free one of my most beloved personal tools that I’ve developed to help me personally and commercially. It have been a good friend over the years, helping me in comparing animation shots, pre-rendered renderfarm shots in cartoons industry, games vfx and cinematic shots.
The app used to be only supporting AVI files (back then mp4 weren’t fun anyways), but there were many improvements that been added over the years, in the way it work, the performance, the file formats, etc. . Currently it supports AVI, mp4 & MKV. There are also few other options I’ve added during 2019, but not included with this liver version, as I’m not sure yet about those options usability, but for sure will push those updates to the executable as soon as they work in the way i hope for.
Well….By now you already know how this works! I’ve stopped tracking my pull requests, so I’m not sure which ones of my contributions are included within this release, but one thing to be sure about, it was either fixes or minor features, and it is not for sure related to Raytracing at all =D as I didn’t get an RTX card as gift yet!
In the past couple of months I’ve been working on porting the PoTN level editor to Android devices, so I can get the chance to Design level at any time. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Subway, Taxi, Queue, Bed or Toilet. I can always design new levels whenever I want, which is FANTASTIC!!!
Successfully running on all my devices despite their difference in brand, quality & aspect ratio
Most of the work went into optimizations, inputs handling & whatnot; in order to package the entire 2GB game editor, its assets and data, into 45mb APK, while keeping the same visual quality and identity and good performance at this less powerful devices.
All designed levels will be saved to the device, and then can be either synced to my google derive (which is not available without VPN currently) or just hook the USB and copy them over to the game directory!!! I guess I might release it with the final game at some point, so android users can build on the GO as well!
without further ado, I kept getting many requests of re-publishing that kinda old AssetStore project or someone want to buy a single license of it. But because I took the decision long time ago to not support it anymore due to my time barriers. And with those messages increasing, I decided to put it online fully for free, and anyone can use it as is, improve it or share it for any purpose. So Enjoy it
I have created a public repo where i’ll be cleaning up most of my personal unreal Python scripts that I’ve made (and keep making) to help me in processing many things faster while working with UE4 pipelines. You can access the public repository on GitHub here. I’ve another larger private repo on gitlab full of the entire library of my scripts, but i would not love to share it right away, as there are many many outdated scripts or chunks of scripts, things need updates, things are replaced or removed from the main Py api of UE4, so I found it more safe to pick them one by one, make sure it works without any errors, and then push it to the public repo.
And to warm up, here is the first one in this series, make sure to follow the channel or the twitter account to get the latest news regarding the new scripts, i won’t be posting here per script.
-m
____________________________________________________________________________ #Update: I’ve created a public playlist, so things get easier to follow while scripts getting added frequently
By now, you probably heard about my super old game Penguins of The north, either here, FB, YT or Twitter. If you don’t, then in a nutshell, it is one of those endless games, that i never feel it is the time to finish its development 😀 Funny thing, I’ve started this game almost 10 years ago. It went from idea, to 2d game, to 2.5d game, to 2d game again, to real 3d game, to 2d game (AGAIN), to a 2d game with level editor (now)!
POTN started many years ago as a kind of jam game, called Harmonics at that time, and then been polished an updated in 2013 to a 2.5d version. Later on I decided to take it further to be a full complete game, and set the theme to be 2d rather than 3d. I felt in love with penguins as creatures to replace my unknown old Harminion weird creatures, and that was a good decision, as the game passed steam’s greenlight (oh,…when greenlight was exist!). It moved to a full 3d version that i’ll share about it later as postmortem when the game get out! But while the two games seems a lot different, but they have always been the same project, same code base & same folder!
All that was great, but the real anchor point for that project, and the reason it never ended, is the level editor!
At somepoint in the game lifecycle, I’ve decided to add a level editor to help me iterate faster in creating new levels, not only that, but i can share an editor executable with my friends to toy with, and i get their final *.POTN files to check them out, and put the interesting ones into the game.
But editor meant more work for me to do. As my goal have always been a runtime editor, where at any moment you can show the editor and edit the level, and save it. So every single element of the game have to be in a good synchronization with the editor, and the vise versa! With some exceptions in mind, things that takes time to add, but it makes more sense, something like death situations that have to be ignored while editor UI is exist, but restart the level if you are in game mode. Again, this was not means to be editor where i create the game, but editor where the game can be edited at any time!
And what i wanted to share here today, is the most recent update in the Editor, you can see it has more functions now, better and unified UI, and most importantly, better experience to have the game living while being created!
Also I’ve noticed that the game page on the Unity Connect hub became one of the most visited pages in there, it’s been long time since i created this page, but seeing this huge interest in the game is really impressive. I don’t usually keep an eye in there, but seems I must do now!
Today while cleaning-up old files, that proj came on my radar, and it brought some nice memories, so I wanted to share more about it.
Years ago, specifically at the peak of X360 era. I was still 100% Gameplay programmer, I took a decision to show myself in a different way as a GPP who can do a bit of everything else. @ the end of the day, the more u know about the pipeline, the higher ur chances r.
Seeing my avatar daily hanging around the X360 menu got me the idea of remake my console avatar in game, and make a little demo with the minimal elements of a game. Not only that! But everytime I get and HR asking for my PDF file, I send the game instead!
This became interesting and super beneficial thing @ my career at that time. Opportunities was countless @ that time, not to mention, sending that resume was my green-card to get the job I want!!!!
Last time I updated and used that “interactive” resume was 3 years ago, but still, the project itself can stand today. In the future, I’ll defiantly work on a similar one again, but totally different, and including what been learned in the past decade since that demo!
I hope this can inspire you with something different.
It is happening again, this morning I noticed that my contributions in adding features and fixing some UE4 issues was included in 4.21 again. Supper happy with that great community and seeing everyone helping each-other and pushing the engine as far as we can. Despite the fact of being busy at daily work, and working in my free-time in making personal projects and experimentation, but there is always a buffer of time to work something into the UE4 core.
I still didn’t get the official 4.21, so I’ve no idea what fixes or features from my branch are in there, but regardless; I’m proud of whatever of my work! =D Let’s see if something gonna come in 4.22, 4.23 ^_^
Few months ago I did dump all the info regarding the UnrealEngine git repo. It was interesting seeing how many commits are in there, who made them, who is the most active user, who did the first commit,…etc. A ton of interesting data to know, not critical or essential, but nice to know if you love that tech!
But at the same time it never been enough or user friendly, so I started looking up for any previous tries of visualizing git data in more friendly way than text in a console font! and I was lucky to find out Gource (GitRepo or PreCompiled)! Which is an opensource git repo/app that allow you to visualize all the data related to any sourcecontrol based repo by going through it’s logs.
And as soon as I found it, I totally forgot the main reason i was looking for such a project. I enjoyed during all this time toying with it, as it is an opensource software, so it was a good chance to see its inner workings specially when I found out it is based on my beloved-sweet-darling-ex-api OGL, and when i’m done with my researches, I decided to go back to the main goal, which is visualizing the entire history of UE4 git repo.
As promised in the last time to start putting the different systems together, and get something out of it. Here you can see a skeletal mesh (UE4’s Mannequin) driven by animations and physics at the same time, with IK manipulations, and the ability to be totally destructible at any moment.
Soon I’ll upload another video (same duration) but 60fps. so it can be easier to watch in slomo (the one above is 30fps). so you can have better chance in checking the mesh destruction and the accuracy it tries to have to match the character animation and posing (even though the animation is totally physics based and unpredictable). Below are some gathered screenshot from this video of play through, of course there were many many moments in that ~5 min video, but I can list everything in a single image.
Click to open a full res. version
Next step still not yet planned. But it could be either doing more test cases or put those studies into a higher and more mature/advanced uses.
Born in Egypt & worked there, traveled a lot to work in different countries & now working in SE-Asia as a Programmer for PC, XB1 & PS4 in the AAA industry (Gameplay, AI, Engine/Graphics, UI, Tools). Very passionate about games and like to write codes using any language, SDK, Framework or even engine. Like to have new challenges to learn new thing everyday.
Note:
*All the work here is personal and represent what I'm doing in my free time(Because this site just for my personal & free time activities.), for a list of commercial projects I took part in, please contact me; or simply check my LinkedIn profile.
*More about me in the about section
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