Team Entity Blog

Week 9 Unreal Pathfinding and Starting Unity

Published:November 8th, 2022
Category:CAE, Fall Semester, Unity, Unreal Engine
Unreal Entities Spawning
Unreal Entities Moving to Target Location
Unreal Entities End of Pathfinding
Unreal Entities Converging on Moved Targets
Unity ECS Randomly Generated Spawners
Unity Small Prototype Map

Good day everyone! It looks like a tropical storm is barreling down Florida at the time of writing this, but there’s still so much work to be done. Here is our progress for the week:

  • Scoured documentation, sample projects, and tutorials to implement the pathfinding trait for the Unreal entities as discussed last week.
  • Created a map for our small-scale Unity prototype.
  • Started experimenting with the Unity ECS. Created randomly generated entity spawners.

Our sponsor meeting covered this progress, travel and prototype dates, and more logistical hubbub like signing forms, just as usual.

Let’s consider what we have planned for next week:

  • The Unreal pathfinding trait is just a start, we are going to have to adapt the trait into a task which can be utilized in a state tree, giving us more control in manipulating the entities within the simulation.
  • Continued ECS implementation in Unity. We will be using those spawners to spawn some entities! For now, Unity is about 2 weeks behind the progress we have in Unreal thus far.
  • Prepare travel forms for our in-person CAE visit.

We are notably putting performance metrics and data gathering on the back burner as we approach our prototype day next week. See you then!

Week 8 Facing Unreal Obstacles

Published:October 31st, 2022
Category:CAE, Fall Semester, Research, Sponsor Meeting, Unreal Engine
Entities Bottlenecked from Collision
Entities Attempt to Follow Zone Graph

Good day folks, hopefully everyone is having fun preparing for Halloween. Team Entity continues to wrestle with the Unreal game engine. However, in poking, prodding, and experimenting we luckily managed to hit roadblocks that actually gave us a really strong sense of direction for the development of our Unreal simulations next semester.

  • Unreal’s Mass Entity System reveals the lack of a set pathfinding implementation for entities that exists for an object oriented approach.
  • The zone graph does not accommodate entity collision or intelligently path find after colliding.
  • The Stats system in Unreal is extremely self-contained.

This week’s sponsor meeting:

  • Discussed logistics in setting up our PDR to be signed
  • Reviewed performance metrics on our simulation
  • Brainstormed ideas for exceeding speed caps on Unreal and Unity
  • Demonstrated entity zone graph limitations
  • Considered plans for pathfinding trait implementation

Moving forward, we want to look into implementing traits as complex as pathfinding within the Unreal ECS entities. Meanwhile, the Stats system will require more research and code review, but some suggestions on forums may have insight into writing that information which we can leverage.

Week 7 Progress and a Presentation

Published:October 25th, 2022
Category:CAE, Fall Semester, Presentations, Sponsor Meeting, Unreal Engine
Project Roadmap on Future Plans
Dear ImGUI Demo

Our work continues this week, here’s what we did this week:

  • Refined our CAE presentation summarizing our concepts, designs, progress, and plans.
  • Implemented timers to the Unreal demo to illustrate time dilation effects.
  • Finalized other aspects of the small-scale demo for our CAE presentation.
  • Experimented with the implementation of Dear ImGUI in our Unreal prototype.

The CAE presentation went well:

  • Gave our presentation, received feedback, and set up further action items.
  • Gave demonstrations of our Unreal prototype and Dear ImGUI.
  • Discussed logistics for an in-person visit to CAE.

Moving forward, we are looking to wrap up our small-scale Unreal demo and incorporate some data visualizations on basic performance metrics. See you next week!

Week 6 Presentation Practice

Published:October 20th, 2022
Category:Fall Semester, Presentations
Presentation Introduction Slide

This week, we worked on our Preliminary Design Report presentation and had a practice session along the rest of the IPPD class. There was plenty to discuss and review:

  • Project Details: Problem Statement, Statement of Work, and Roadmap
  • Design: Performance Measures, Functional Architecture, Concept Combinations, and Risks
  • Research: Initial Findings and Sources Summary

Our liaison meeting this week was once again very productive:

  • Discussed our progress in our initial Unreal Demo and the application Dear ImGUI so far.
  • Asked for further insight on CAE’s simulations and analysis.
  • Considering logistics for a company visit.
  • CAE also introduced us to one of their experts in game engine technology. We are really grateful to have him on the team and look forward to working with him.

Week 5 Technology Experiments

Published:October 8th, 2022
Category:Fall Semester, Sponsor Meeting, Unreal Engine
Experimenting with Unreal Engine’s ECS.
Initial Demo of Dear ImGui, a GUI library that supports Unreal.

It’s homecoming day here at UF! Plenty of progress this week with the threat of Hurricane Ian behind us. Our research has shifted into poking, prodding, experimenting, and debugging the application of technologies we are studying for CAE. As you can see, we already have some basic demos of the ECS in Unreal Engine. We also started testing Dear ImGui, a GUI library well-represented in the video game industry and promising for streamlining the design of our interface and analytics tools. Our meeting with CAE this week was also very productive. A lot of clarity was provided for the scope of our work in orienting ourselves around documentation, performance research, and simulation scenarios to highlight notable benefits of ECS. Moving forward, we have upcoming presentations to prepare. See you next week!

Week 4 Planning, Planning, Hurricane

Published:September 30th, 2022
Category:Fall Semester, Hurricane Ian, Research

This week has us strategizing, making plans, and setting goals. We’ve oriented ourselves around a long term plan for our continued research, prototyping, and presentations. Besides continued exploration of the Unity and Unreal game engines, we are engaging with various perspectives for concept generation in our simulations. As a software project, we have to consider various software choices like operating systems, GUI libraries, and simulation design choices to ensure our prototype meets expectations. We also put together some initial drafting for our project report and assessed project risks. To note, UF canceled classes this week from Wednesday to Friday due to Hurricane Ian, so no significant meetings to discuss. ‘Till next week.

Week 3 Liaison and Sponsor Meeting

Published:September 23rd, 2022
Category:Fall Semester, Research, Sponsor Meeting
Sponsor Meeting: It went great!

Hello everyone! Another week with more progress to discuss. This past Thursday, we met with our CAE liaison and other related sponsor staff. There was plenty to talk about:

  1. We met and learned about each other.
  2. Asked our prepared questions relating to our project.
  3. Received details and developed ideas relating to hardware specs, simulation requirements, scenario expectations, analysis/report information for our project.
  4. Most importantly, we took screenshots of our Teams meeting.

With the conclusion of our meeting and a refined understanding of our project expectations, we have started planning our next steps for research, design, and prototyping. Prior to our meeting, we already started to learn more about ECS’s in general. We also started brainstorming ideas and looking for resources for our simulation software design. Our next 2 weeks will involve looking deeply into each game engine, one after another, and experimenting with their respective tools to see how well they can accommodate our specific expectations.

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