Build The Battlefield!
Strategy Maxed Out
Giant Space Battles
NEWS
The DirectX 12 compiler DXC has received a PR about a month ago that adds template support to HLSL. So you can now do this: Which is great since that’s all going to happen at compile time and so the compiler will be able to unroll the loop correctly. This, coupled with UE4’s shader permutation […]
Computes everything in compute shaders on the GPU, including LODs and frustum culling. No GPU-CPU stalls anymore, it’s faster than HISM or ISM. Since around 4.22 Epic has exposed indirect rendering via the RHI mostly because of Niagara, but this is a custom rendering component so there’s no overhead and is therefore faster where it […]
Implemented merge instancing in UE4 to render different meshes in a single draw call. Large meshes are multiple instances. Can render an entire level in a single draw call. Based on an older SIGGRAPH paper by Emil Persson of Epic Games. All the colored parts in the video below are one single draw call!
Fully deterministic unit movement integrated with custom P2P netcode. Features steering, unit clustering, 2D collision resolution, movement lanes, group splitting, regrouping on arrival and navmesh pathfinding. Animations are 100% done on the GPU to free up CPU capacity. Performance is 1.5ms per frame for 500 units moving concurrently, measured on an Intel i7-4770k in a […]
Implemented 2D blend spaces on the GPU so I can have giant armies with minimal impact on the CPU so I can use it for stuff that matters e.g. AI and navigation.
Starting to look like a game! Custom movement and collision system, swarm AI, first draft.
2 months of writing netcode finally paid off as I now have deterministic lockstep P2P multiplayer in UE4. This is a great step for the game and with it, the biggest technical challenge has been overcome.
Lower and upper body are decoupled so it can walk and shoot in different directions. Also quaternions.
Armored turret that can be found defending raidable spaceships and space stations.
Laser beams for larger ships Finally got to work on some VFX and made laser beams for the larger ships in the game!
Space dogfight explosions and smoke Lots of smoke and explosions in this dogfight now that I’ve finally optimized the rendering loop to a passable state.
SCREENSHOTS
