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[Dr. Cooldude]

This looks great, following this thread.

[OniWorld]

Happy holidays from all of us here at Oni World, especially Klank!

[AullenVerch]

great art!

[OniWorld]

Happy new year!

Here's a little preview of the energy crystals that you'll have to find and use

[OniWorld]

Working on some fluid physics and effects, going really well so far - still a lot to do but getting there!

[Blink]

I would have no objection to a 2D anything with these graphics. Subscribing to the thread, looking forward to how this turns out!

[William Chyr]

The fluid dynamics is looking real good! Especially the movement of the balls floating on the surface, and the way they dip down then jump back up when bounced on. Are you just letting the physics take care of that, or are you adding some animation to the balls?

I know it's still a work in progress, so you've probably already thought of these things. But anyway, the splash looks a little too even - maybe add a random function to vary the height? Perhaps also having some small bits fly off? I think that'd make the effect look really great.

Also, not so sure about the sideways grass. maybe it's just the way it gets cut off when the land bends away... feels too abrupt.

[karlozalb]

This is totally amazing :O, you said that you like the art style of Trashman, but your art is outstanding . Keep up the superb work!

[OniWorld]

The fluid dynamics is looking real good! Especially the movement of the balls floating on the surface, and the way they dip down then jump back up when bounced on. Are you just letting the physics take care of that, or are you adding some animation to the balls?

I know it's still a work in progress, so you've probably already thought of these things. But anyway, the splash looks a little too even - maybe add a random function to vary the height? Perhaps also having some small bits fly off? I think that'd make the effect look really great.

Also, not so sure about the sideways grass. maybe it's just the way it gets cut off when the land bends away... feels too abrupt.

Thanks! Yeah I'm just letting physics handle most of it, Nape is a really good library. I have a few subtle animation effects to help make everything even more beautiful though

There's alot of ways I can tweak the splash effect, my main issue however is I'm drawing the water using triangles. To get any kind of alpha effects, I had to render to a texture/render target and then draw that. Usually, the waves can go higher, but using this render target limits that. I need to find a workaround, I sort of started one but decided to go kill my liver some more last night   

I'm going to add some particle effects to make it look a little better when I get the rest of it sorted out. I still need to work out how to make the water actually look nice and fit in with the art style. Here's a fun glitch while trying to figure out waves:



The sideways grass is just placeholder artwork, I figured that everyone was getting sick of seeing the same test level and editor screenshots - so I decided to work on something fun for once.

I have to give credit where credit is due though. An amazing game called Kara gave me the inspiration to get some fluid dynamics in there.

I would have no objection to a 2D anything with these graphics. Subscribing to the thread, looking forward to how this turns out!

This is totally amazing :O, you said that you like the art style of Trashman, but your art is outstanding . Keep up the superb work!

Thank you both! Really means a lot!

[William Chyr]

I still need to work out how to make the water actually look nice and fit in with the art style.

Yeah - it can be really tricky to get the art direction of water right. I know that's something I'm struggling a lot with my own game.

BTW, I highly recommend checking out this book, Elemental Magic by Joseph Gilland. Gilland was a special effects animator that worked on many disney films. There's a wonderful section covering splashes. It's mostly directed towards hand-drawn animation, so I think it'd apply well to Oni World.

I went to a talk he gave in Toronto a few years ago, and the one thing he talked about that I remember very well was the importance of matching art direction of water (the patterns, waves, splashes) to the rest of the film. I had never really thought too much about water before this point, just kind of thought they were all the same in all the films.

But one example he gave of bad water art direction was the Incredibles - lots of attention paid to characters and environment, but totally skimped on water. So in scenes where you see a a character jump into the ocean, the splash is just kind of bland and generic, without any personality. I don't think I noticed it before he pointed it out, but after he did, it was kind of hard to overlook it.

He also gave an example of good water art direction, where the water actually felt like it belonged in that world, but I can't remember exactly which film it was. I think it may have been Lilo & Stitch.

[OniWorld]

Yeah - it can be really tricky to get the art direction of water right. I know that's something I'm struggling a lot with my own game.

BTW, I highly recommend checking out this book, Elemental Magic by Joseph Gilland. Gilland was a special effects animator that worked on many disney films. There's a wonderful section covering splashes. It's mostly directed towards hand-drawn animation, so I think it'd apply well to Oni World.

I went to a talk he gave in Toronto a few years ago, and the one thing he talked about that I remember very well was the importance of matching art direction of water (the patterns, waves, splashes) to the rest of the film. I had never really thought too much about water before this point, just kind of thought they were all the same in all the films.

But one example he gave of bad water art direction was the Incredibles - lots of attention paid to characters and environment, but totally skimped on water. So in scenes where you see a a character jump into the ocean, the splash is just kind of bland and generic, without any personality. I don't think I noticed it before he pointed it out, but after he did, it was kind of hard to overlook it.

He also gave an example of good water art direction, where the water actually felt like it belonged in that world, but I can't remember exactly which film it was. I think it may have been Lilo & Stitch.

Oh nice, thanks for the awesome suggestion - I might have to buy that. First book I've bought in a long time... I might have to whip Lloyd to draw me up a water body so I know what to work with also. In the meantime, here's some really dense water

[BinaryMoon]

Really liking how this is coming together. The graphics look great and the editor looks really clever.

[OniWorld]

DevLog update #3

The past week has been pretty good in terms of development. I've mainly been working on some gimmicks and optimisations, such as the fluid physics and effects that I have already shown off. I've improved these a lot, and they now look, feel and perform much better. To show this off, I've committed a FluidScene example to GitHub so you can all pull it and try it out yourselves.

I've also added support for quadratic bezier curves on smart textures and started working on a vector polygon editor. You can now draw environments just like you would draw something in Adobe Illustrator using the pen tool. This is awesome, as it allows anyone to easily design a level or even some supporting background elements using smart textures. The idea behind them was to minimize the effort needed to plan, draw and then build a level by having a set of 3 textures that make up the floor, walls and the background. Using this method, we can save alot of memory and processing power.

Without curves

or

With curves

As you can see, it makes a massive difference with just one little change. The grass no longer splits into two and it looks seamless. It also allows us to do some pretty cool mind bending effects...

[HughSJ]

Killer job on getting in those bezier curves-- that should be a huge time saver, especially in the long run. On those organic elements in the game especially you've got a real nice result with what now takes minimal effort.

I've found it's tough to take time off dev to work on tools, but we never regret it when we do.

[William Chyr]

The bezier stuff looks fantastic! The grass is a big improvement for sure. I feel like adjusting curves could be an interesting game mechanic by itself.

Anyway, really loving the updates on tool development. You seem to have a very well thought-out and organized approach to game development. Definitely something I can learn from.

[adnzzzzZ]

Nice use of bezier curves indeed. I don't even know how I'd get the textures to behave nicely like yours do. Really good job!

[OniWorld]

Nice use of bezier curves indeed. I don't even know how I'd get the textures to behave nicely like yours do. Really good job!

Thanks alot guys! Yeah, getting those textures to work was one of the hardest things. Here's the grass:

and the metal

To get it to work, I'm applying the texture to each vertex in the shape to be drawn, and then draw it through a shader. Took a lot of work, maybe about a week, to get right.

[OniWorld]

Just a quick update to let you guys know that we haven't been able to receive emails until just now. If you've sent an email to [email protected], please resend it.

We haven't been ignoring you all, honest

[OniWorld]

Lloyd has been hard at work on some of the Shifting City assets!

[FraktalZero]

Really beautiful artwork and the game concept it's very appealing!