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   PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷 (psychicparrot42@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 01:23:46 JST PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷

   Did a bit of work on the AI last night for my stunt racer … hmm .. prototype? I don’t want to call it a game because I haven’t fully committed to making it yet 🤪 Anyway, I realized that the ‘quick hacks to get things going’ were utterly rubbish and my Blueprints were fast becoming spaghetti so it’s time to rebuild it all in C++.

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 01:23:40 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

     in reply to

     • Jeremiah Fieldhaven
     • crussel

     @psychicparrot42 @JeremiahFieldhaven @crussel I usually write all my "systems" in C++ but I've been writing more BPs than usual this week mainly because it's all player-facing in-game visual interface type stuff and that always feels better to noodle with in BPs because of all the tweaking

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     PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷 (psychicparrot42@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 01:23:41 JST PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷

     in reply to

     • Jeremiah Fieldhaven
     • crussel

     @JeremiahFieldhaven @crussel I think as long as you can manage it and keep track of it, then it's all good. It only becomes a problem when it becomes a problem for you to manage, I reckon. My graphs were getting messy and I know that in a few months there's a strong chance they'll deteriorate into total insanity. I'll still use Blueprints for a bunch of other stuff, but as soon as things start getting messy my brain works better in code.

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     Jeremiah Fieldhaven (jeremiahfieldhaven@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 01:23:42 JST Jeremiah Fieldhaven

     in reply to

     • crussel

     @psychicparrot42 @crussel Project Shinar is mostly blueprint.

     There are some C++ classes in there, primarily a NavigationInstanceSubsystem that handles the grid-based pathfinding and conversion from grid positions to "forward", "turn left", "turn right", etc commands that robots and NPCs follow.

     Now whether that's a good idea or not is another matter entirely. So far it's mostly working okay (electric nodes really does help). But I am also a muppet, so it may bite me terribly at some point!

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     crussel (crussel@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 01:23:44 JST crussel

     in reply to

     @psychicparrot42 totally. Too many times I've let it get to the point where there are multiple BPs depending on each other, and you come to port one to C++ only to realise you'll have to do all of them. The days I've lost...

     That said I did catch myself going all in on a blueprint this morning and had a moment of Good Sense, so hopefully I'm getting better 😆

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     PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷 (psychicparrot42@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 01:23:44 JST PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷

     in reply to

     • crussel

     @crussel Not saying you can't do just Blueprints, like, but it's just that I know my brain will struggle a *lot* once the Blueprints get over a certain size. I was chatting to the person who made the snowboarding game 'Slopecrashers' a little bit ago, and he told me the whole game is Blueprints! No C++. So I know it's possible, but I know in my own brain the code is more manageable in the long term.

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     crussel (crussel@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 01:23:45 JST crussel

     in reply to

     @psychicparrot42 always the way. After working with Unreal for years I still fall for it. "It's just to test something, it'll be quicker in blueprints"..

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     PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷 (psychicparrot42@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 01:23:45 JST PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷

     in reply to

     • crussel

     @crussel Yeah for a minute I thought “hey this is working well, maybe I should just leave it” but I don’t fancy its chances of remaining anything like readable after 6 or 12 months of chucking more stuff into it! It’s already becoming a mess, so best to just sort it, eh? 🤓

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     PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷 (psychicparrot42@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Jan-2025 01:29:33 JST PsychicParrot (Jeff) 😷

     in reply to

     • The Seven Voyages Of Steve
     • Jeremiah Fieldhaven
     • crussel

     @sinbad @JeremiahFieldhaven @crussel I'm hoping I can stick to 'when it makes sense' on both sides, really. Like I doubt I'll be moving any input code over to C++ any time soon, just because it's loads more complicated to set up in C++ than it is in Blueprints so I don't really see much point at this stage. Everything can be passed into the components I'm using, so may as well keep it simple. On the other hand, there are times my graph has 10 nodes to do something I can do in 1 line of code etc.