Month: February 2024

I think the biggest success I had during the capstone was the creation of our grid system. This was a crucial part of the project that allowed the user to create a board that would then become their game board. The grid went through several iterations, the initial implementation proved to be difficult to work with when accessing and changing the data of the tiles that made up the board. I struggled with trying to get the initial grid system to cooperate, and as I kept running into road blocks and problems it became apparent that remodeling the system would be more beneficial than continuing to try workarounds to get it to work. This situation helped me to focus on the importance of making sure the implemented system would be able to be expanded and scaled as the need for new features and functionality grew. The grid grew to be able to create an initial building area around a new board when it was created and allowing tiles to be added to the board. One of the most difficult things was learning to work with Instanced Static Meshes. The reason for using these over a normal static mesh actor is they decrease the amount of times the draw function has to go from the GPU to the CPU. When you have just a few actors it’s not that big of a deal but when you have hundreds it really helps with performance to have Instanced Static Meshes. I’m glad I kept on working with them though because I was able to learn different methods to manipulate their data. I could change their color, location and apply other data and effects to them. Working with them also helped me learn to stick with and solve problems. I learned that sometimes it is good to stop work on a problem and move to a different one to let your ideas reset and hopefully get a win elsewhere so you feel more motivated to finish your original problem.

For my capstone project we are building a game using Unreal Engine. The game we are building is a program that lets you build and play simple board games. I’ve dipped my toe into using unreal engine before but this is the first time I’m helping to build anything substantial. I like unreal engine because it allows a lot of freedom in how you can accomplish things. This can be both a boon and a bane. My team has been surprised at how sometimes a system or method of doing something common in game creation does not seem standardized. The lack of support for common systems leads to often having to implement a system that seemed like it should be easy to have canned in the engine already. The trade off though is that those systems are able to be more customized to your specific game than they would be if they were prepackaged. This also allows for developers to create tools and plugins that can be shared with the unreal community and used by teams that don’t want or necessarily need a completely customized system. I’m excited to continue using unreal engine and hope to be able to build more projects in it even after the capstone is over.