Hi! Here you’ll find info and developer diaries on my upcoming game Grab n' Throw, Unreal Engine 4 -specific tips, fixes and implementations, posts on programming, IT and music, and various other writings.

Grab n Throw

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Azure Infrastructure as Code - 2 - Deploying the rest

 Posted on May 3, 2023  |  8 minutes  |  1597 words  |  Ben Renninson

1 - Intro 2 - Deploying the rest Deploying the rest of the platform landing zone Now that we’ve some code showing infrastructure changes and deploying, lets extend it to include the rest of the core ALZ resources. You can follow along with the code in the repo. The below is written chronologically but you’ll be looking at the completed version of the code. It should still be understandable. [Read More]
Azure  DevOps  IaC 

Azure Infrastructure as Code - 1 - Intro

 Posted on April 20, 2023  |  10 minutes  |  2120 words  |  Ben Renninson

1 - Intro 2 - Deploying the rest Series Overview Say you’re an organisation who’s started their cloud journey, but hasn’t fully dove (doven? dove’st?) in. You’ve got some solid business reasons that mean you now need to lean into it. You know you want to do it properly - you want to move to Infrastructure as Code and set up a modern architecture that will grow with you. [Read More]
Azure  DevOps  IaC 

BGP on Windows Desktop

BGP on Windows Desktop

 Posted on January 14, 2023  |  6 minutes  |  1083 words  |  Ben Renninson

I love seeing BGP pushed to the edges of its intended use-case, and I’d been wanting to learn Go for a while. I’d also been frustrated that I couldn’t ingest BGP routes on my Windows desktop - it’s only included in the server OS versions. So I decided that my holiday project would be extending GoBGP to get my network’s BGP routes into my Windows 10 desktop’s routing table. I’m also a huge fan of “Why not? [Read More]
Programming  Networking  Golang  BGP  Windows 10 

Devlog - Jazz Hands

 Posted on January 13, 2023  |  1 minutes  |  180 words  |  Ben Renninson

Grab n' Throw has reached an important milestone - we now have hands! With the core gameplay features in place it was time to add some GameJuice™. Over the last few months I’ve added visible hands, hand animations, camera animations and more. To make everything more immersive I’ve opted to re-use the same external player model that other players see - you can look down and see your feet, and your hands grab the actual character you’re holding. [Read More]
UE4  Grab n' Throw 

Python-automated lightweight BGP lab in GNS3

Python-automated lightweight BGP lab in GNS3

 Posted on August 26, 2022  |  1 minutes  |  102 words  |  Ben Renninson

I was looking to play around with some BGP changes so I set up a topology in GNS3 using FRR docker containers. Once I laid out the topology I didn’t want to manually address it, so I automated the entire lifecycle. Address generation, config application etc. This ended up taking way longer than manually doing it but was also way more fun and is now much easier to reset! BTW: FRR docker containers are incredible if you’re just looking to lab routing protocols. [Read More]
Programming  Networking 

How to Rename a UE4 or UE5 C++ Class Used by Blueprints

 Posted on April 19, 2022  |  1 minutes  |  192 words  |  Ben Renninson

Commit all existing changes so you can cleanly roll back if required Stop the editor Add something like the following to <your game folder>\Config\DefaultEngine.ini, where: <ProjectName> is the official project name UE4 uses in C++ for your project. E.g. the GT in GT_API that shows at the top of class declarations <OldClassName> is the name of the class you’re renaming from, with no A, U etc prefix. E.g. GTPlayerState instead of AGTPlayerState <NewClassName> is the name of the class you’re renaming to, again with no A, U etc prefix. [Read More]
UE4   

Compilers for programming while tired

 Posted on February 11, 2022  |  1 minutes  |  164 words  |  Ben Renninson

Strongly typed languages and compilers are wonderful. Especially when my eyes are struggling to stay open and the bed is calling. Usually by this time of night I can’t complete a full task, but I can plan and start one. If I’m refactoring I might change the parameter type in one function. If I come back a few days later and didn’t note exactly where I got to, I press CTRL+B and the compiler will dutifully show all the calls I have left to change. [Read More]
Programming 

Simple two-way serial between Raspberry Pi Pico and Pi (or PC)

Nobody will ever need more than 115200 baud

Simple two-way serial between Raspberry Pi Pico and Pi (or PC)

 Posted on February 4, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  1010 words  |  Ben Renninson

I love Rube Goldberg machines. Love them. So when I wanted to add some physical IO to one, I figured it would be much more thematic and fun to connect my Pico-based Waveshare LCD + buttons to a Pi via serial, instead of simply using a Pi hat directly. I found a few guides around for getting the serial communication going, but none were exactly in the form I needed. I ended up breaking them down and combining them to create a simpler foundation for my own use. [Read More]
Python  Raspberry Pi  Pico 

Devlog - Big Huge Throws

Bigger and Huge-er and Throwier

 Posted on January 19, 2022  |  1 minutes  |  183 words  |  Ben Renninson

Over the holiday break I prototyped a whole new gamemode and map, which are Hole in One and The Distant Links respectively. They’re based on the thought “what if I just multiplied all the throw force, sizes, etc by 11?" and it quickly became apparent this is the most fun game mode so far. Even just the basic actions feel good. Check this out: The map is “what if a golf course was 256km^2? [Read More]
UE4  Grab n' Throw 

Visual Studio Code - Change inline braces in snippets to newline braces

 Posted on December 10, 2017  |  1 minutes  |  96 words  |  Ben Renninson

Situation You’re a monster like me and have standardised on newline braces in PowerShell, but the vscode PowerShell extension has used inline braces. Solution Copy the snippets you use from %userprofile%\.vscode\extensions\ms-vscode.powershell-1.5.1\snippets\PowerShell.json Add them to your user snippets for PowerShell (CTRL+SHIFT+P > Open User Snippets > PowerShell) CTRL+F, regex mode Find \{", Replace with ",\n\t\t\t"{", CTRL+, to open user settings, then add "editor.snippetSuggestions": "top" Note: there are PowerShell user settings for code formatting, but I found these didn’t apply to snippets. [Read More]
PowerShell, VSCode