Week 9 Day 2 - Matrix Multiplies and Interactivity
1Talked about three things today -
1) We talked about the elements of Wargame: Red Dragon and what we liked and didn't like about it. It's a different take on the RTS genre, and worth spending some time with, but overall I think the problems with it are pretty severe, especially with the interface and micromanagement issues.
2) We went over Matrix multiplication. If you can do a Matrix x Vector, which we covered last class, then Matrix x Matrix is easy. You just do Matrix x Vector repeatedly for each column, saving the result in the same column in the output. Transformation matrices underlie a lot of the stuff going on in 3D games.
3) We continued our discussion of the three T's - touch, think, and traceline. Last time we made a hitscan weapon with traceline, this time I flipped back to a project I made last semester with a charged weapon (showing how to set up key binds in UE4 along the way) and how to make a projectile weapon that way, then finished by showing how to make a door. Bit ironic, as the game industry is talking about how annoying doors are to get right in games, but where we're going we don't need to get them right. So I made a quick and dirty door in a couple of minutes. Box trigger, that when entered, causes the door to slide down and rotate into the ground, and then when the player leaves the box trigger, it slides back up. Quick and dirty, but functional.
If you're interested in seeing how hard doors can be (if you want to do it right), Google Naughty Dog's experience making doors in The Last of Us 2. As with all things, you can make things more realistic and better aesthetically by putting more work in, and they put a *lot* of work in.