@Naam I actually had the character there by default before because it’s a multiplayer game so shows players; I had to explicitly exclude the local player. He just sat in the middle

@logicalerror I did consider a ring around the character but it would get in the way so would need to be activated or something. So I figured this is kind of a solved problem and not worth deviating from the norm for. You can never pivot the camera perfectly down so in 2D terms nothing much changes

@bitinn I don’t think there’s a better solution to LFS hosting than “do it yourself” either on a NAS or a VPS via a docker image of Gitea or similar

I prefer the camera position as a basis. The trouble with using the character position is that even though it's technically accurate (and I always use that for the distance), it means when you walk past something the compass icon zips behind you even though you can still see it on screen.The camera position is not strictly the direction from the character, but it lines up better with the actual view and feels more natural. At least I think so

Today's job was implementing a compass in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIq2OmLZWI

I discovered that determining the direction to a POI isn't as obvious as I thought, because I use a distant 3rd person camera.

Looks like vector-based fantasy consoles are a fairly unexplored area, barring an abandoned Unity-based one (https://davidjalbert.itch.io/vectorboy). One day I'd like to make a fully standalone attempt at this, with proper glowy lines and stuff

This is a pleasant surprise, Epic actually worked on reducing Unreal's disk size. The core components are around 9 GB smaller and the templates were even shrunk down from 3.7 to 0.8 GB 🥳

....oh and the new MetaHuman stuff added back another 5 GB and there are 12 GB more debug symbols 🙃
Well, it's something

There are loads of pixel focused fantasy consoles, but are there any vector ones? Something like a better / friendlier version of a Vectrex / Asteroids machine

Future UE tech looks lovely, I did a bunch of work with SpeedTree 20 years ago so it’s amazing to see how far things have come. Infinite Twig Tech is apparently coming. But also: hell no. If my twigs looked that good, they’d make everything else I’d have time to make look like crap. It would only be practical if I was making an entirely twig-based game

I realise LLMs will just steal all my writing just like everything else but screw it, someone has to put new stuff out there instead of just riding the human centipede

Not quite half way through 2025 and I’ve averaged more than one blog post per month so far. All of them contain at least some information I haven’t seen covered anywhere else (it might exist, but I couldn’t find it!). Pleased with that.

Ever wondered how to render an in-game map from the world in Unreal, but you want to completely change how it looks on the map screen, and not be bound to normal in-game materials? Here's my solution: https://www.stevestreeting.com/2025/06/03/creating-an-in-game-map-with-unreal-runtime-virtual-textures/ #unrealengine

@kwramm but you still have one!

@klord the only way I could even write the BP version for comparison was having written the C++ version first

James Hoffman made a good video about why everyone has a V60, and I thought “wait, don’t I have one of those?”. Sure enough, I have one of the nice porcelain ones in my cupboard. I’ve never used it, someone gave it to me (a former client maybe?) but I’ve been solely an espresso guy. But I’m thinking about trying it, now that I have a single dose grinder and changing grind from espresso to drip and back is no big deal https://youtu.be/BfNoNTjcRbE?si=jphh43llebxKmb15

An example of why, even though it makes sense to do UI in Blueprints, I always end up writing any math function as a utility C++ function instead.
I'm sure there are some who find the BP version OK. But I really, really don't.

@eniko I still reference it today, which probably makes me old

@jonikorpi @eniko C++ certainly has those vibes. But at least our environments sit still for 5 minutes 😉

@eniko I honestly think that whole sector has gotten so used to doing things in a way that’s an incredibly bad idea that they have no idea what sensible practice looks like anymore. Anyone growing up only doing webdev in the last 5/10y has been gaslit by a 100% terrible environment: no compile errors, changing frameworks, variable browser implementations, no stdlib and 1000 tiny dependencies that might all be shit/compromised, stupid velocity expectations. Poor bastards didn’t have a chance

@eniko you’re absolutely correct in theory but I don’t think you realise just how bad webdev has become. You need a decontamination shower every 30 minutes