next »

[superflat]

Could you talk us through the postprocessing / shaders / FX you're using?  I've very keen on this sort of thing, and always in search of new tips!

[J. Kyle Pittman]

Could you talk us through the postprocessing / shaders / FX you're using?  I've very keen on this sort of thing, and always in search of new tips!

Sure, no problem, I'll put together some notes tonight. It'll be a good refresher for myself, too; I wrote most of the CRT sim for my AGBIC entry last year, and I've forgotten some of the subtleties of how it works.

[J. Kyle Pittman]

Epic 600KB PNG image to follow:

[TheLastBanana]

I love the way this looks. Nice technique to get it looking like a CRT monitor. I'll have to give it a try later!

[astrofra]

Amazing technique and outstanding 80's atmosphere :')

[superflat]

Thankyou so much for that!  I hadn't though of simulating after-images like that, and the refracted light offset in the corner to simulate a room light.  I notice a sort of simulated RGB going on, in your avatar for example, like each pixel has its TV colour components slightly visible... Is that added at the last stage?

I'm doing a similar thing in my new game, there's a devlog over here, although I'm going for more of a simulated pseudo-celluloid feel rather than a CRT look.

[J. Kyle Pittman]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. The scanline texture also provides RGB separation. I multiply the composited "in-game" texture by this one when rendering the CRT screen mesh. I also brighten up the whole scene to compensate, since this multiplication has the effect of darkening everything a bit.

It gets a little muddled with DXT compression and mipping, but at high resolutions, it adds a nice little touch, and at any resolution, the staggered scanlines do a pretty good job of simulating the waviness on vertical lines that real CRTs have. When I initially implemented this last year, I tried to animate it, too, to get that sort of "rolling" effect, but I never found a good middle ground between too subtle and too distracting, so I cut it.



That effect you've got in Lone Survivor looks sweet, I can't wait to see it in motion. It almost has a sort of "cross-stitch" look, especially in that last screenshot.

[J. Kyle Pittman]

Added frobbing for signposts while I put off actually implementing combat. Tomorrow: doors?

[powruser]

Just installed and played this.

This game is totally awesome! I love the visual style, as well as the auto-updating system. Runs extremely smooth on my rig as well.

With a good story and gameplay, this game has the possibility to be a indie HIT! Good luck! 

[J. Kyle Pittman]

Was planning to work on doors today, but improving dungeon generation won out. Lots of new improvements to make dungeons more interesting and less uniform. Dungeons no longer rigidly conform to rectangular bounds, and not every cell in the map is occupied. Corners have a chance to get rounded off or filled in to make things a little more organic.

Still no loops; not sure yet whether I'm going to add them. They would have some ramifications on high-level critical path planning that I haven't solved yet, but I feel like it's going to be really annoying traversing dungeons when there's only one way to get from point A to point B.

[J. Kyle Pittman]

Progress has been slower the last few days, but I finally stubbed out a combat manager so I can start to get a feel for how attacking will work. You can cut down shrubs and stuff.

[J. Kyle Pittman]

omg i made an update ever

Fixed up the stupid "doors are front-facing quads" issue and added loops to level generation where applicable.

[andy wolff]

This is looking rather nice

I sometimes get random hangs and jumps on the camera. The first thing I did was walk towards the closest chest, but when I reached it, I had passed through the wall it was up against, so I was stuck between the wall and the chest. This won't be a problem when you can loot chests, but if you plan on having an empty chest show up after you loot one, you should allow players to walk through the empty chests


I'll be watching this. Good luck on development

[J. Kyle Pittman]

Thanks for the info. Chests do block unit-width paths at the moment (eventually, they'll be placed against walls and in corners to circumvent that), but the phasing through the wall/chest definitely sounds like a bug; I'll look into that.

[ambinate]

i'm on a mac so i can't test it out, but i love the way this looks from the screens.  definitely looking forward to seeing where this goes.

[J. Kyle Pittman]

Working on world generation.

Each cell in this map represents one whole dungeon, probably around the size they're being generated now.

Too big?

[Lizardheim]

Nah, looks like a good size for a world.
It'd be fun if it was a bit more Zelda 1 like though, but that's just my opinion.

[Mhaine]

The game is extremely enjoyable for the content available for now. And since you are thinking of making a Shock-like, I doubt you can fail. The size of the current in-game level suggests that your world map is large enough, and certainly not too large.

[NFour]

Holy crap this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever encountered

[J. Kyle Pittman]

I haven't patched the game in a while since I've been working on world generation and don't really have anything playable to show for it, but here's some world visualization.

Each world will consist of five floors of increasing size. The top floor will always have the same layout, and it will be a sort of training/tutorial area. The bottom floor will be absolutely massive (over half of the entire play space in this case).

It won't be necessary to traverse every single cell to reach the goal, but I haven't decided yet whether non-critical branches will be distinguished in any way during gameplay.

I still need to add some shortcut planning so that the path isn't so linear.

I'm considering adding an optional "build-a-world" mode where you can get a preview of the world and play around with random seeds to change the layout, flow, and "feel" independently.