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[acatalept]

I feel like a skating function would be nice, instead of the traditional "hold shift to move faster". It looks like a nice place to ice skate.

It's funny, there've been times when I've taken a break and messed with the terrain traversal mechanics just to try new things, to sort of throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks -- which is how I ended up with the original prototype having a default movement that almost felt like a "rover" driving over an alien planet rather than a humanoid walking.  That had the interesting side-effect of making the experience feel more dreamy/floaty and unnerving, although the final game will default to a more traditional walking mode.  But ice skating... I'd never considered that.  Though I have to admit, I'd be more tempted to do something with a little less control: ice yes, in some of those areas where there's an flat expansive surface:



but to make things interesting, you wouldn't have any skates

uhnnf this is gorgeous
it reminds me of some stuff robot pencil did, very cool feel

Robotpencil did some amazing work on a labyrinth/minotaur prototype called "LAB" (which he sadly hasn't updated in months):



https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?31005-Using-the-UE4-engine-for-concept



Which helped motivate me to start my other unfinished game thing, Parasomnia (which I sadly haven't updated in months):



Video:


Download: http://acatalept.itch.io/parasomnia



But I can see the resemblance to singmestosleep too: severe geometry; stark, moody visuals; and of course the maze

[acatalept]

Soundscaping has been a huge part of developing singmetosleep (as discussed in this post), and I've especially been concerned with, for lack of a better term, "high dynamic range" audio: audio with a wide range of dynamics from very subtle all the way up to "wall of sound" intensity.  I want it to sound as much as possible like being in this other place, not a filtered, compressed, radio-friendly representation of it.

There are some challenges with this approach: The best experience of this kind of audio palette is decent headphones or a surround sound speaker system, but obviously I don't want players with small desktop speakers or inexpensive earbuds missing important audio cues, so there will probably ultimately be a setting for "HDR" audio or standard (compressed) dynamic range.  I've seen several games going this route in recent years (notably racing games which use it to great effect), so I'm not thinking this will be too off-putting to players.

I've also been struggling to build a soundscape that's expressive and helps tell the story of this place, without overtly sounding like a "song", or even necessarily a "soundtrack" overlaid on the experience, but almost sounding as if it exists naturally within this place -- that almost begs the question, "Am I the player the only one hearing this, or would the in-game character be hearing this as well and responding accordingly?"  My goal is the latter... The reasons for this will make more sense when the time comes  I'm not there yet, but here's an example of walking around the demo area with something akin to "in-world" soundscaping:



And I'm still not happy with the level of quality in my home-brewed sound effects, which has been holding me back a bit.  This isn't a sound-effects-heavy game, but those that are there should speak volumes.  For example, here's an experiment I did a while back using a bit of sound I sampled from Ben Lukas Boysen's incredible Restive OST: https://hymen-records.bandcamp.com/track/hoe-fight



I just can't make any sounds that are nearly as intense as that  Suffice to say I won't be using that sound effect in the final game...

Attention to audio is particularly crucial for those aspects of the experience that I'm trying to convey via the player's imagination versus simply dropping something in front of them.  There's an old adage writers go by: show, don't tell.  I would extend this further for visual mediums like film and games, where we find it comparatively easy (with the right budget and artistic resources) to show the viewer/player exactly what the artist envisaged... but this doesn't have nearly as much potential for personal impact as what the viewer/player may themselves imagine when the right cues are presented, the right seeds are planted.

Don't show, don't tell: just suggest.

[oldblood]

This game looks so good in HD...

[acatalept]

singmetosleep is still taking shape... some recent screens with nod toward soft focus, toy lens, and/or tilt/shift photography:



















(EDIT: fixed links)

[acatalept]

Experimenting with visuals, in pursuit of a dreamy, half-asleep, photographic aesthetic.  A sort of "fake photorealism"?  Blatantly minimalist, unrealistic subjects, presented as if seen through a camera lens... trying to fake depth of field, realtime lighting/shadow, etc as much as possible within the capabilities of Unreal Engine 4 on mid-spec hardware.

Did a little sightseeing earlier with a vaguely daguerreotype-esque tonality:

[oldblood]

Glad to see this is still a thing. This is the type of VR stuff that gets me excited... the ability to be in an unreal place or experience unnatural architecture while still getting that realistic aesthetic.

[io3 creations]

Loving the style and mysterious "giant building" environment! 

Playing with the camera in your last few posts can certainly add to a dreamy/mysterious experience.

[acatalept]

Sorry I've been neglecting this thread, and neglecting devlogging in general... I've posted a few times recently over at the Unreal Engine forums, so thought I'd catch up this thread a bit in case anyone's still following ;)

Someone had asked about the buggy and old playable download available from itch.io: Sorry the most recent (now two-year-old) atmosphere prototype is in such a state.  It was originally intended to be just a milestone, an early and hastily-released snapshot of a work-in-progress, and just one of a continually improving series to demonstrate the aesthetic and give an impression of some of the otherwise hard-to-verbalize ideas that might be present in the final product.  There have been many points since then while working on it that I've told myself:

"OK, time to lock down a milestone so people can try it without dealing with some of the bugs in the existing prototype, or try it on newer VR hardware, etc... but just let me polish this and fix that and maybe disable this system and that area that aren't ready to be shown..."

And before I know it another month has passed and I'm just as far away from a vertical slice that's ready for consumption.

I'm still working on singmetosleep -- albeit not as feverishly as in those first couple months after UE4 was released, and I occasionally get distracted working on side projects ;)





... but I still have the same very strong conception as I had in the beginning of what I would like it to be before it's "done."  I would rather not give away any story details as part of the prototype or in these development notes (such as they are); much more than what has already been revealed will be better shown fully realized in the final product.

I'd like to share more of the technical hurdles I've encountered and how I've overcome them, various design ideas, what has worked and what has not worked so well, etc. (you know, like a normal game dev log); but I'd prefer opacity over transparency at this point even if it means "going dark" and possibly losing the interest of some players.  It's better (IMHO) than the alternative of dragging the nebulous insides of this thing out into the bright light of day for scrutiny and classification.

Sorry (again) -- this isn't a satisfactory response, is it? ;)  But rest assured, the self-replicating machine elves toil tirelessly at their stations, chipping away at this rock to reveal what lies within...

[acatalept]

Warning: actual devlog content (from Unreal Engine forum devlog thread)

Hey, curiosity is eating me. It's about that really nice looking "vignette blur" post process shader (not sure if it has an official name). It certainly fits "dreamy" environments well, for example I remember that LIMBO had it too. So how did you made it? Any tips?
I know that there's custom "radial blur" post process material on these forums, and also you can mask gaussian depth of field in the Post Process Volume settings, but it's not really work that well.

Sorry for the belated reply, I've been meaning to describe the blur effect for a long time, and got sidetracked breaking things up, making toggles, etc to help portray the impact of the postprocessing.

I love the Limbo look -- no doubt it informed my aesthetic quite a lot though I hadn't really thought about it at the time.  I think you're only asking about the peripheral blurring, not the peripheral darkening... but I'll mention both since the synergy of the two effects is important to the surreal look I'm going for.  More consciously I'm aiming for something maybe akin to some of the Brothers Quay work, e.g. the video for Can't Go Wrong Without You:





Well, not exactly that, but I can't think of a better example offhand...



Peripheral darkening (traditional "vignette" effect)

Implemented with the built-in postprocess volume effects.  I have a global PPV with the following settings:

Scene Color -> Vignette Intensity: 0.85
Film -> Contrast: 0.75
Scene Color -> Scene Tint: any shade with a Value around 0.5

Importantly, the extreme contrast and dark overall tint significantly increase the impact of the vignette effect:





You can see in the video that there is a major blurring artifact along the right edge of the screen (more noticeable in some scenes than others): a blurred black band pulling inward from the edge.  I've only noticed this since the changes in 4.9+, and don't have the technical prowess to track down and resolve the issue (thinking this is more to do with the way my mask is used in the postprocess material than the gaussian blur per se).



Peripheral blurring (dream-like toy lens effect)

I used a PostProcess material to apply a gaussian blur using a texture mask.  Thanks to the ingenuity of other devs much better at this stuff than me (thanks @EdWasHere!), this was simple enough in older versions of UE4 (but note the bottom of this post for a fix in 4.9+):

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?70143-So-Blurred-glass-material-is-impossible-in-Unreal-Engine-4&p=293408&viewfull=1#post293408

For anyone unfamiliar with the technique (or if the above thread doesn't make it clear), I essentially created a new material using a SceneColor lookup node to combine the rendered output with and without postprocess settings according to a texture mask:



Using a radial gradient texture mask (actual gradient is smoother than this appears) -- white passes through postprocess settings (gaussian blur in this case) that this material will be applied to, and black masks the postprocess (unblurred image):



Set the material domain to "Post Process":



Then create a new unbound PostProcess Volume in your scene, and add the material you just created to the list of Blendables:



Then configure any settings you want to be applied by the mask (in this case a very strong gaussian blur):





Major caveat: As of version 4.9, SceneColor lookups are no longer available in PostProcess materials (you'll get a material compile error if the material domain is set to "Post Process").  But again thanks to some clever trickery (thanks, @BlueSpud!) we can reenable it by commenting out the sections that throw the error in a single file of the UE4 source code:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?95982-Will-scenecolor-be-available-again-in-post-process-materials&p=447113&viewfull=1#post447113

Note that the most recent source code version I've applied this change to is 4.12, so your mileage may vary if applying this to newer releases.

I read somewhere (sorry can't find link), the engine devs stated that this attempt to prevent SceneColor lookups for PostProcess materials was implemented for compatibility with some rendering refactoring in 4.9+ specifically for the console rendering path (which benefits console performance).  However I have not experienced any issues with PC builds (again only as of 4.12), and performance impact is minimal in my use case.

[Bricabrac]

Following for prettiness.

[PirateFish]

The atmosphere is really eerie. Amazing work.

[Aloft]

Glad to see others working on projects like this (and with a conscientous eye for detail in the massing, materials, and post-processing).

I want to see another NaissanceE make it through one of these years!

[acatalept]

I want to see another NaissanceE make it through one of these years!

Every once in a while I google Limasse Five to see what they're working on next, but haven't turned up anything.  I hope Naissancee was at least enough of a financial success to enable them to keep working in this vein...

In the meantime, we can go back to school now that Tsutomu Nihei's Blame! 10-volume series is being reissued in a larger format, higher quality 6-volume set (English volumes 3-6 still to be released over the course of this year, but can be preordered already): https://www.amazon.com/BLAME-1-Tsutomu-Nihei/dp/1942993773

[Aloft]

very once in a while I google Limasse Five to see what they're working on next, but haven't turned up anything.

Same, lol!

If you check out some of his past projects in his portfolio section, you can run into some work that definitely seems to be channeling Nihei more directly (Sidonia / Blame! Abara):

http://www.mavrosarts.com/game.html

He made sales numbers good enough to support a 2-3 year project. Hopefully he keeps at it!

From what he is saying on twitter, he is working on a prototype for a work he will show when he feels it is appropriate.

Great to see Blame! Released again as well... I consider it a work of importance beyond its own scope.

[Cristiano Vitorino]

very once in a while I google Limasse Five to see what they're working on next, but haven't turned up anything.

Same, lol!

If you check out some of his past projects in his portfolio section, you can run into some work that definitely seems to be channeling Nihei more directly (Sidonia / Blame! Abara):

http://www.mavrosarts.com/game.html

He made sales numbers good enough to support a 2-3 year project. Hopefully he keeps at it!

From what he is saying on twitter, he is working on a prototype for a work he will show when he feels it is appropriate.

Great to see Blame! Released again as well... I consider it a work of importance beyond its own scope.

I agree 100% with this! And I do check it from time to time too haha.

Following his work and saw he commenting about that.

Also a huge fan of Nihei's work here. Such a big influence to me. To the point of helping shape the mood of the game I'm currently working on.

Just awesome times, to see many great looking games approaching Brutalist Architecture and Nihei's work as inspiration recently.

[Taugeshtu]

The visuals are stunning and inspiring Following to see this through.