TIL: Learn to Code in C++ by Developing Your First Game (Section 4, Lectures 100-104)

Hooooooooo boy. Well, I’ve been rather busy for the past two months. When I’m not at work I’ve been making a podcast, buying video games like a mad man, playing with my two year old, and preparing for a move to Montréal. Speaking of the podcast, we missed an upload this week but fear not… that’s not the end of the podcast, it’s simply a result of files that didn’t get saved correctly. There’s still more on the way!

In regards to learning C++… the year is almost over, and I don’t think I’m going to manage to finish everything in my to-do list (I have 90 more videos to go in this series I’m learning from) but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up just yet. The kid is napping, so it’s time to resume my studies.

It looks like a new lecture has been added in the course introduction, so the numbering I’ve got is now changed! (hence there is no Lecture 99)

Section: 4 – Battle Tank – A Fun Tank Battle with Mortars

Lecture 100: A Landscaping Process
Lecture 101: Upgrading Engine Version
Lecture 102: Using Landscape Layers
Lecture 103: Flat Shading Low Poly Landscapes
Lecture 104: More Landscaping Tools

Lecture 100: A Landscaping Process

-Very simple lecture demonstrating the sculpt tools for landscapes.
-flat area in the middle, sculpted area as boundary

Lecture 101: Upgrading Engine Version

-He upgrades to V4.11 now that we’ve already started
-“convert in place” to upgrade a project and change which version it’s associated with
-SourceTree has a neat feature that allows “tagging” but I don’t see this option in perforce

Lecture 102: Using Landscape Layers

-layered material creation
-“used with landscapes” isn’t an option in 4.13
-holding v while clicking in material editor places a vector paramter
-setting up layers is super simple in the painting interface for landscapes

Lecture 103: Flat Shading Low Poly Landscapes

– I’m going to be sticking with high poly … just because I can
– a couple things of note, is that the terrain is smooth shaded by default, this is solved in the material
– additional layerinfo would need to be applied to the landscape target layers
– partial differentials (DDX, DDY) are used with a cross product to create sharp normals

Lecture 104: More Landscaping Tools

– You can import the Starter Content after the fact through the content browser
– Under the Landscape “sculpt” tools, you can create a height map
– You can also import the height map