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[empika]

Hey champs,

It's been another busy week here! I've concentrated on a bunch of housework that I've been putting off for a long time. Mostly this has been to do with localisation, but I managed to squeeze some fun with shaders in too Not much of a visually exciting post this week I'm afraid.

I wrote my localisation system a long time ago, and it works pretty good, there are two things that I've been meaning to do for a long time though. Firstly, create a nice field attribute that I can stick on my scriptable objects and have the inspector render a nice editor field for them. And secondly, create a behaviour that I can throw on GUI text and get that translated.

Currently, everywhere I render a localised string editor field I've been copy and pasting a bunch of annoying code... annoying, due to the way unity's popup fields only work by gicing you back an int.

For example, to select something out of a big list you have to do something like

Code:

    string[] idsArray = ["id1", "id2", "id3"];
    string currentId = property.stringValue;
    int selectedIndex = Math.Max(0, Array.IndexOf(idsArray, currentId));
    int newSelectedIndex = EditorGUI.Popup(popupPosition, label.text, selectedIndex, stringsArray);
    property.stringValue = idsArray[newSelectedIndex];

So I finally got round to creating an Attribute+PropertyDrawer that will do this on any field I stick it on. It's super nice to tidy up a bunch of junk code like this :D Now it's much easier to translate stuff I've been going through and translating a ton of item fields and gui bits.

Other bits I've done this week...

* Tidy all the c# project warnings, there were about 200 of them as I've been toooo lazy to fix them as I go :s
* Improving some item creating bits, automatically adding arrows to map portals for example
* Adding a thing to show the name of important map locations when you load in, this was buried in the menus and people tend to get a bit lost when they first start playing so I figure this will help there
* Rebalance the screenshakes in battle as some of them were a bit too much or a bit lacklustre
* Reviewing some story stuff I've gotten back from a new editor

The last thing I've worked on this week was porting the old Unity fisheye fullscreen effect and the excellent Kino Glitch over to the new unity post processing stack. Now all my effects operate in the same way and are a bit easier to manage Perhaps I'll stick those up on github or something if people are interested? I also took a stab at getting some other effects working (twirl and zoom blur), but have put those on the back burner for the minute. I'm hoping to randomise the battle transition effects a bit once they're done

This next week I'm going to try and concentrate on testing and bugs as I've introduced a ton of new features recently that haven't been thouroughly tested yet.

Lastly, I'm wondering how I can get the word out about Jack Move a bit more. I'm really bad at self promotion, so if anyone has any good tips, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, if you like the look of Jack Move, please do let your freinds, familys, loved ones and anyone else you think might like it  know about it too!  

Thaaanks, till next week
 

[empika]

Hey champs!

Only a few little bits to show this week as most of the week has been spent playtesting, bug fixing and setting up a bunch of maps for light baking.

All I've got to show are some incremental improvements. First up, I've been tweaking the fountain particles to make them a bit fancier. A bit more bubbly, a bit more splooshy! (I also fixed an issue where particles were scaled weirdly, oops!)

Old:



New:



Secondly, whilst baking stuff I've been experimenting with normal mapping a few more things. Nothing too crazy, but it the object is simple then it's not too much hassle to do it. I'm worried that I'd end up sticking normal maps on everything and doubling my work load!

Old container:



You can see the top on this one has a little bump to it:



Much better, dont you think!?

Oh! I mentioned last week that I made some more post fx, I did some experiments with creating new battle transitions but I'm not super happy with them so have abandonned that for the moment.



Other than that, it's been bugs, balancing screenshake again, balancing rain brightness and a ton of under the hood stuff.

Till next week, have a good weekend!! :D

ps, I promise I'll start working on some new content again soon. Just waiting for some story stuff and things before I commit myself to any new larger scale assets

[empika]

Hey folks,

Another busy week but again not a whole lot to show because...

I got through to round two of the UK Games Fund application! :D I've spent most of my week on the next part of the application. Writing stuff is hard! So fingers crossed for my written application

I spent the rest of my time this week still setting up maps for light baking. As I convert prefabs this should get quicker, as they are used elsewhere.

In the process I've been normal mapping some more of those containers. Having experimented with converting greyscale images to normal maps I decided that they weren't quite good enough, I think this is due to the super low resolution of the textures. So the alternative is to pain my own normal maps! I came across this thread on Polycount that had a really useful palette to use (just ignore the argument over whether you should or shouldn't be doing this!).



Much better I want to take a look at mapping some of the crushed cars, but will leave that till I get a little more time.

Probably no update next week as I'll be away for a few days.

Thanks! 

[empika]

Hey folks!

It's been a while since I posted, but wanted to let you know that Jack Move isn't dead. I've had a lot of life stuff going on, I'm in the middle of moving countries, taking on freelance work to pay the bills etc. I think I'm in a good place to start working on the game again though :D I'll be doing a couple of hours work each morning.

I've also set up a discord server, so come and say hi if you'd like to chat about the game and see a bunch of more wip stuff https://discord.gg/47zYENN

Cheers!

[bacon]

Just discovering this and wanted to say it looks really cool! What sort of options are you giving the player in the city outside of combat?

[empika]

Just discovering this and wanted to say it looks really cool! What sort of options are you giving the player in the city outside of combat?

Hey there, thanks!

As the game is quite short (compared to most jrpg's) there will be a handful of sidequests, I'm hoping to add some minigames too. Every good jrpg needs a fishing game, right?!

[empika]

Hey folks,

I've been working on a new slums area this week. It's where a lot of bad guys hang out, but also where the protagonists father lives in seclusion, you need to venture in to this dangerous territory to pay him a visit!



(ignore the light... just there to test the mood )

I had some issue getting the decoration on the house to look good when using just flat tiles, so I've pulled that out into it's own layer to give it a bit more depth. Still a way to go on this area, but slowly getting there

I've started streaming some of my work sessions, which has been fun. So far it's been only been for an hour or so each morning (UTC+7, from about 9am). I'll probably stream next on Monday morning

Don't forget to hop in the discord and say hi if you think Jack Move looks interesting! https://discord.gg/47zYENN

[Schrompf]

This looks good! I think the normal maps really make a difference. Unfortunately that's also an additional burden on your workflow.

[bryku]

The graphics look amazing. Lightning and normal maps are surely adding a lot; great job!

[TonyManfredonia]

Wow. These visuals are stunning! Reminds me a bit of a point-and-click atmosphere, so the fact that it's a JRPG is really neat! Keep it up!

[empika]

Thanks guys!

I don't think I'll do to much normal mapped stuff, probably just bigger items that will benefit from it

[NajibSG]

The effects in your game look great 

[empika]

Thanks NajibSG!

I've been working on this run down kinda derelict area some more. Doing some more work on the front of the house and also testing out how bricks are going to look when their walls are falling down. I was a bit worried the tops would look a bit weird and I'd have to add an extra quad for each level of bricks, tilting them over 90 degrees so they lay flat. I think I can get away with having them on the same texture as the front face though. What do you folks think?



Thanks!

[TonyManfredonia]

Having the bricks a little off-kilter would be a great addition.

One other thought might be having two different textures for the boarded up window for the sake of variety. Or a slightly collapsed window? Just food for thought

Looking great!

[empika]

Hey folks,

It's been a few weeks since I last posted. I've been busy with freelance stuff, but have had a couple of week off working on Jack Move again!

I've been reworking the scrapyard area from my current demo, this is for a couple of reasons. It's the part of the demo I'm least happy with, I've switched to using a proper palette rather than just pulling colours out my butt (shouts to Adigun Polack and his Splendor 128 palette, I'm actually colourblind so using someone else's palette has been really helpful. And lastly, and the best reason to rework this area is that I'll be showing Jack Move at the Indies Festa B2B days at the Taipei Game Show in January!

For the show I'm removing all the cruft and exposition from the demo, it will just be the scrapyard dungeon crawl bookended by a couple of cutscenes. I'm hoping that keeping it tight and focused will show the game in the best light. I'm not entirely sure the scrapyard is the best section of the game to actually demo and sell people on, but the only enemies I have ready and animated are for the scrapyard area so I have to make the best of the situation. I kinda wish I hadn't made that descision all that time ago, but hey, you live and learn

It feels like I've spent most of my time making cars and then smashing them up. You can see a big twitter thread of inspiration for the cars right here, 70's and 80's concept cars are the best, I had a great time! I think it's really starting to come together and feel a whole lot more cohesive and consistent than the previous version.





Here's most of the cars (it's missing the camper van)



Another little feature I've worked on is dynamic cables. Rather than hand drawing cables that dangle from stuff I've always wanted a quick way of creating cables by just specifying start and end points, length and thickness and have a tool that generates a nicely draped cable. Inspired by Tiani Pixel I thought it would be nice if they could sway in the wind a bit too (https://twitter.com/TianiPixel/status/1055412629727010816).

First I tried using a variety of unity physics joints but I just couldn't get them to act how I wanted. Through a bunch of googling I eventually ended up finding this github repo that did dangly ropes using verlet integration. Although there is no collision using this method, the result is very smooth, just how I wanted! In order to simulate the wind I employed a super simple hack... every x seconds I just adjust the length of the cable by a small amount which makes is sway a bit. Perfect!

 You can grab the code for the main cable stuff here. Thanks David G. Miguel! https://github.com/NoxWings/Cable-Component



I also spent some time reevaluating what Jack Move is, what it's doing and where I want to take it. This was after having watched Zak McClendon's (of Bioshock 2/Doublefine fame) talk

. For the longest time all this stuff has just been in my head or in various text documents, which has not been super helpful as it's just never visible.

The result is this cork board of postit notes which should hopefully contain all the creative, design, technology, aesthetic, and cultural tenets of Jack Move. I've pushed some things around since taking this photo, removed a couple of things and added some others but it feels good to have a big physical thing I can look over at and remind myself what I'm making



This process has really helped cement what the game is, what it's core features are and what I should be concentrating on for this demo!

Has anyone else used something similar to help ground their design and process?

Phew! Big update there, I hope folks found it interesting.

Ooh, don't forget, I have a Jack Move Discord server where I've been posting a bunch more WIP bits and talking through some of my design process etc

And if you're going to be at the Taipei Game Show in Jan then give me a shout! :D

Have a great weekend

[Lorenze]

DAMN this looks dope as hell. Love the aesthetics and gameplay you've shown off, seems pretty special.

Keep it up! Can't wait to see the final result.

[empika]

DAMN this looks dope as hell. Love the aesthetics and gameplay you've shown off, seems pretty special.

Keep it up! Can't wait to see the final result.

Aaah, thanks Lorenze! That means a lot

[empika]

Hey everyone!

Apologies for the huge gap in between updates, it's been a verrrry busy few months. I got married in December, then moved to Taiwan permanently a week later, then I was super busy preparing the demo for Taipei Game Show (more on this below). The good new is that things have calmed down a lot now so I have more time to work on Jack Move when not on contract stuff :D

Taipei Game Show went really well. I was only there for the two business days and met tons of cool folks from all over. I had a few good meetings with publishers who might be interested in publishing in Japan and Asia, so that's good, keep those fingers crossed  

The new demo seemed to go over well and I think it shows the game in a much better light, so I'm really happy with that. Here's the new version of the car crusher, complete with squishable car!



The things I have planned for the next few weeks are mostly housework for the time being. I'm having a big tidy up of the project. It's been 4 years since I started this project in Unity and I still have junk materials, textures shaders and scripts lying around that I really should get rid of.

That also means taking a big long look at my current materials and shaders in preparation for when the new lightweight render pipeline stuff is production ready. I've just grabbed the Amplify Shader Editor and have been rebuilding a bunch of my existing frankenstein shaders, so hopefully when i switch to the new pipeline stuff it will be easier to port the shaders.

One added benefit of this is that it's much easier for me to build new shaders and understand what's actually going on! My first one is a player silhouette for when you're behind objects. I'm pretty please how this has turned out, there's an extra shader for scenery so that I can only have the silhouette show when behind certain scenery. Under the hood it uses stencils to write the scenery to the stencil buffer if the player is behind it, then in an extra pass on top of the player sprite it reads the scenery and draws to those pixels :D



Other bits on the todo list are refactoring some data stuff to use the new addressables system rather than Resources.Load as the current method is not the best way to do it. I also need to move my UI over to using Text Mesh Pro and resizing a whole bunch of text fields, having done a bunch more research, the smallest pixel size I can use for asian fonts is 11x11px and TMP will help with generating font files and things. Now that the smallest resolution I'm targeting is 720p, it shouldn't affect the UI spacing too much (I hope!)

I'll be going to Bitsummit in Kyoto in June so want to give myself another deadline to get another chunk of the game done. So whilst all this housework stuff is going on I'll be planning the next bunch of content (probably the part of the game story before the current demo). Perhaps I'll post some more game designy/art designy stuff, would that be of interest?

Oh, something that folks might find interesting... I did a big twitter thread of influences the other day. It has a bunch of movies, music, anime etc https://twitter.com/empika/status/1094950699488534530

As ever, the Discord is there if people want to come and chat about the game. I usually post a lot more WIP stuff in there https://discord.gg/DA9PkQ7

Cheers,
Edd

[Beastboy]

Character art is a bit to clean for a cyberpunk theme, some cyber arms and armours and scifi weapons would be nice.

Good luck, seems promising

[empika]

Character art is a bit to clean for a cyberpunk theme, some cyber arms and armours and scifi weapons would be nice.

Good luck, seems promising

Thanks! :D

I'm going for less of an augmented body thing than a lot of cyberpunk. Like if someone has a mechanical arm, it'll be janky as hell, and look more like Short Circuit than a real arm!

As for weapons and armour, there will be some cool stuff, but the guys I've shown so far are just street punks so they can't afford the cool stuff