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[chris wade]

Sorry, for the colored edges I meant to look at the faces nearby and pick a color based on that.

Here's a mock-up of what I mean:


On edges, the line would be a darker version of the faces color. Make sense?

I haven't played around with the edge detection, but it does sound like you are gonna need to write some shaders anyway. Cool stuff, I'll be interested to see what you come up with.

[William Chyr]

Ah, I see what you mean. Thanks for taking the time to do the mock-up!

That could be tricky to implement. I guess it would have to pick a color from a nearby plane. Although, since all the color planes are the ground surfaces, and I know what the color of the ground is depending on player position, I think I could fake the effect by having the edges that touch the ground surface be a certain color. Not as elegant from a programming standpoint, but could do the trick.

Anyway, I'll jump into hacking the edge-detection shader later this week once I've taken care of some the bureaucratic stuff, and keep you guys posted.

[William Chyr]

Just a quick update to say that I've finally set up version control with git for Relativity. Should have done this a long time ago. But anyway, better late than never.

[William Chyr]

DevLog Update #17 - 01/08/2014

Yesterday, I experimented with a couple of other grid textures. In approaching this, I wanted there to be a standard unit in the size of the grid (i.e. the size of the grid would be a multiple of the length of the cube).

This is because the grid exists primarily to help the player gauge distance for puzzles, and if the lines weren't following a standard unit, it wouldn't be very helpful.

I didn't want to get too carried away at this point, so just tried varying the size of grid boxes. This already made a huge difference to the look. I also tried narrowing the lines and lightening the color. I figured that the grid doesn't need to be very dominating, especially if I already have ambient occlusion defining the volume. It just needs to be visible enough that the player can see it when they need to.




I also took Juan Raigada's suggestion and made the ambient occlusion (AO) radius larger. At first, I set the radisu to 5, but it made everything too dark, as I had the contrast set at 1.8. So I played around with the values a bit, and eventually found a sweet spot of AO radius at 3, and contrast at 1.

I also raised the ambient light a bit, and increased the intensity of the directional light. It made a huge difference! So much so, in fact, that the AO alone seems to define the geometry quite well without any edge-detection.

Anyway, I took a couple more comparison screenshots between having edge-detetction on vs off. To be fair, I'm still using the default Unity edge-detection shader, which, as previously discussed, is not sufficient for my purposes. So these shots are not meant to be for making final judgement calls.

In any case, they look pretty cool, and I definitely feel like I'm getting closer to finding the appropriate art style for Relativity. 

[OniWorld]

I think I prefer it without any edge detection, although I've never been one for cell shading.

[William Chyr]

I think I prefer it without any edge detection, although I've never been one for cell shading.

Yeah, with the improved ambient occlusion, it does render the edge-detection to be less effective, as far as defining the geometry is concerned.

However, I haven't given up on it, as I have yet to dive into the code and play around. I think the problem with the edge detection is that my current options are: none, and everywhere. If I can figure out a right balance, I think it can work really well.

We'll see.

[noumenus]

Wow! The levels are looking a lot more intricate than before. I like the ao, but on the fence about the toon shading. It clashes with the ao textures. But if you want to use it sparingly, maybe only put it on the small objects you interact with. That way the player will recognize it better as something that involves the puzzle

[William Chyr]

Wow! The levels are looking a lot more intricate than before. I like the ao, but on the fence about the toon shading. It clashes with the ao textures. But if you want to use it sparingly, maybe only put it on the small objects you interact with. That way the player will recognize it better as something that involves the puzzle

Thanks noumenus! The architecture here is definitely more in line with what I have in mind for the style of the entire game. I'll need to go back and redesign a bunch of previous levels now to keep the look consistent.

Not a bad idea with edge-detection only on interactable objects. Not sure how this would be addressed technically though - probably putting interactable objects on a separate layer, and having edge-detection only be applied to that?

[Juan Raigada]

Not sure how this would be addressed technically though - probably putting interactable objects on a separate layer, and having edge-detection only be applied to that?

Put them in a layer and have a second camera with no clear flags draw that layer in a second pass. Should work.

[William Chyr]

Put them in a layer and have a second camera with no clear flags draw that layer in a second pass. Should work.

Thanks Juan! That sounds like a good approach. I will give it a try.

Been having a one-step-forward-two-steps-back kind of day, but finally got through a major hurdle. Details and more to come in a full update tomorrow.

[noumenus]

Wow! The levels are looking a lot more intricate than before. I like the ao, but on the fence about the toon shading. It clashes with the ao textures. But if you want to use it sparingly, maybe only put it on the small objects you interact with. That way the player will recognize it better as something that involves the puzzle

Thanks noumenus! The architecture here is definitely more in line with what I have in mind for the style of the entire game. I'll need to go back and redesign a bunch of previous levels now to keep the look consistent.

Not a bad idea with edge-detection only on interactable objects. Not sure how this would be addressed technically though - probably putting interactable objects on a separate layer, and having edge-detection only be applied to that?

You are using unity right? I thought you were just using the toon shader with the edges on

[William Chyr]

You are using unity right? I thought you were just using the toon shader with the edges on

Actually I'm not using the toon shader. There's a separate edge-detection image effect in Unity Pro, which you attach to the camera, that just adds the black edges to everything you see, and leaves the faces alone. The toon shader, on the other hand, is different, and goes on as a material on the geometry. 

[William Chyr]

Although, I guess if I just want edges on select objects, I could just apply the toon shader to those objects, which would be easier than an overall edge-detection image effect.

I'll have to see. I remember using the toon shader with edge-detection once, and not being super happy with the look. I think I remember it only getting the silhouette outline, and thus missing any edges that are 'inside' the silhouette of the object.

[oleomingus]

Hello, I have been looking at screens from the game, intermittently, across a few weeks of screenshotsaturday, and the bizarre architectural constructions of the game look wonderfully complex. But your recent update with ao is absolutely brilliant !

Great work ! 

( I do like the screens without the outlines much better, the ao gets overshadowed by such a bold demarcation of the edges )

[William Chyr]

Hello, I have been looking at screens from the game, intermittently, across a few weeks of screenshotsaturday, and the bizarre architectural constructions of the game look wonderfully complex. But your recent update with ao is absolutely brilliant !

Great work ! 

( I do like the screens without the outlines much better, the ao gets overshadowed by such a bold demarcation of the edges )

Thanks so much, oleomingus! It's great to hear from you. Makes me very happy to learn that the posts on screenshotsaturday are reaching people. Sometimes it kind of feels like sending stuff out into the void.

Yeah, I think with the new AO settings, I'm going to stick with only that for now as I work towards the next stable demo build. I'll continue to experiment with the edge-detection on the side, but my focus now is going to be refining game mechanics, and building out new levels.

P.S. I just checked out your tumblr. Not sure what's going on there, but whatever it is, it looks beautiful!

[William Chyr]

DevLog Update #18 - 01/10/2014

The last two days have been pretty slow with regards to productivity. Lots of "one step forward, two steps back" moments.

The one problem that plagued me for hours was that my animations would only move the colliders of the objects, and nothing else. Like this:



As you can see, for everything except the stairs, only the collider (the green outline) is moving, but the rest of the object remains behind.

For hours, I struggled over this, and couldn't seem to figure out what was wrong. Eventually, I put the question to twitter, and David Laskey pointed out that it might be due to having the geometry set as static. It turns out he was right! Thanks to him, I did not destroy my keyboard out of frustration.

I was aware of the static setting for game objects, but up until this issue came up, I thought it applied only in the context of lightmapping. I didn't realized it affected animation as well.

I think what threw me off also is that previously when I animated, I was using Unity's primitive shapes, which are by default not set to static. However, this time I was using objects created with ProBuilder, and those are by default set to static, so that threw me off a bit.

Anyway, got the animation working eventually, here it is in action:


I'm continuing to work on redesigning the first stage of the game, refining the architecture, and polishing bits here and there.

Here's one of the red doors:


And this is a clip of a bridge that forms itself in front of you (Bastion inspired), plus a gravity rotation:

[Connor]

YES.

im glad im not the only one here who adores bastion.

[William Chyr]

YES.

im glad im not the only one here who adores bastion.

Wait, what!? There are people that don't like Bastion?

[William Chyr]

DevLog Update #19 - 01/11/2014

Continuing to work on the redesign of the first stage. Happy to say that it is almost done, probably around to 90% mark now. Still plenty of finishing touches to add, but the end is in sight (well, just for this level at least).

Anyway, more GIFs!

Here's another platform rising from beneath the water:


And here's a special-purpose door opening and closing:


This is my to do list for the rest of the day:

• Add sound effects to the various elements in the first stage of the level
• Add a slight delay before platform emerges from the water after the button is pressed
• Fix the respawn triggers in the scene
• Add teleportation chambers

Bonus: I've been listing to 'Magic Arrow' by Timber Timbre on repeat these last few days while working. It's a great track! You guys should all check it out:

[Christian]

DevLog Update #19 - 01/11/2014

Continuing to work on the redesign of the first stage. Happy to say that it is almost done, probably around to 90% mark now. Still plenty of finishing touches to add, but the end is in sight (well, just for this level at least).

Anyway, more GIFs!

Here's another platform rising from beneath the water:


And here's a special-purpose door opening and closing:


This is my to do list for the rest of the day:

• Add sound effects to the various elements in the first stage of the level
• Add a slight delay before platform emerges from the water after the button is pressed
• Fix the respawn triggers in the scene
• Add teleportation chambers

Bonus: I've been listing to 'Magic Arrow' by Timber Timbre on repeat these last few days while working. It's a great track! You guys should all check it out:

Great song. Forgot where I first heard it though. Think it was a movie or show trailer