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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsReturn of the Obra Dinn [Releasing Oct 18]
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Author Topic: Return of the Obra Dinn [Releasing Oct 18]  (Read 927527 times)
sakuyo
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« Reply #20 on: May 24, 2014, 06:18:01 PM »

Looks really good so far, super excited to see more.
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dukope
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« Reply #21 on: May 24, 2014, 06:32:40 PM »

I'm glad you like it so far! This game has me both excited and terrified. It's really got nothing to do with Papers Please or my previous games. More fantasy and no political underovertones.

Is the gif you posted rendered in Unity or is it just a mock-up?

I made a mockup first, then modeled it in Unity.


Did you design the notice bill at the top of your post yourself or is that taken from a book? I can't find any record of an actual Obra Dinn, or of lost Indianmen in that same year.

The Obra Dinn is fictional. Most of the ships from that time period have pretty boring names; "Obra Dinn" is just something that came to me and sounded cool. I made the lost at sea notice myself, modeled after a for-sale notice from the time period. One of the fun things about this project so far is all the research I've been doing into 18th century merchant trade and ship construction.
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dukope
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« Reply #22 on: May 24, 2014, 06:39:07 PM »

Experimenting with the 3D visuals now. I want it to look like what you'd get with modern rendering techniques but only 1-bit display technology. Legibility will be the main challenge so the actual geometry will likely be pretty simple. I'm just getting a handle on Maya modeling though so for now the test geometry is a little too basic.

Normal rendering:


Dithered naively to 1-bit:


Well that doesn't look good to me. It could be improved with diffusion dithering but I don't want to just take a 24-bit image and dither it to 1-bit. I'd rather the scene be more stylized and easier to interpret. To me that means traced edges.

Basic wireframe rendering:


Straight-up wireframe rendering looks terrible. I want something to define boundaries between surfaces, not where triangles are. And even if I liked this look it's surprisingly not easy to get with modern rendering techniques. Wireframe rendering isn't supported in OpenGLES and performance-wise it's really bad on desktop cards. This needs to be done in a shader.

Unity Pro's built-in edge detection shader:


This generates edges based on depth and normal differences. Not bad, but it has a few key problems that make it feel wrong to me: missing edges and thick lines:


In the old days classic wireframe renderers plotted 1-pixel-thick lines directly, which means you'd never see these kinds of errors. It's a minor thing but I swim in a sea of minor things.

To get exactly what I want, I wrote a custom shader that has two steps:

Step 1: Give each poly face a random color based on the object's position and face normal.


Step 2: Use a post-processing shader to draw pixel-perfect lines separating each color area.


Perfect. (The doubled pixels in some spots here are due to adjacent edges in my shitty test geometry.) This technique has the benefit of giving me direct control over where the lines are. I plan to add texture influence over the color areas so I can put internal lines on faces.

Combining the lighting information with the wireframe, I can also switch to white-on-black lines for the dark areas:


Or add back the pattern dithering:


That's a bit overboard though. If I end up using dithering like this it'll probably be limited to a single shade:


The next step will be moving past this simple test geometry into something closer to the final level of detail. I'll probably try to build out this aft section of the ship while continuing to work on the rendering features.

It feels good to get back into shader programming. Still happy with Unity. I wish Maya had a modifier stack like Max.
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poe
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« Reply #23 on: May 24, 2014, 08:39:52 PM »

Looks good. Want.
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FK in the Coffee
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« Reply #24 on: May 24, 2014, 08:45:58 PM »

That shader is just  Epileptic

I'm expecting great things from this.
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forwardresent
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« Reply #25 on: May 24, 2014, 09:18:06 PM »

Shaders look wonderful. I hope it looks as good with a lot of details too, I'm sure you'll work it out. I'm really interested to see how the ocean will look from first person, I bet it'll look amazing.
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aberrantmike
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« Reply #26 on: May 24, 2014, 09:20:24 PM »

very nice!
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Irock
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« Reply #27 on: May 24, 2014, 10:12:26 PM »

Consider me intrigued. Can't wait to see more.
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UmutD
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« Reply #28 on: May 24, 2014, 11:50:00 PM »

Looks and sounds very interesting, definitely watching this.
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zombieonion
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« Reply #29 on: May 25, 2014, 05:48:53 AM »

This looks super cool. Awaiting eagerly.
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Eigen
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« Reply #30 on: May 25, 2014, 07:12:39 AM »

Obra Dinn Obra Dann game goes on bra
La-la how the game goes on
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mbalestrini
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« Reply #31 on: May 25, 2014, 07:42:45 AM »

I really like the idea of the 1bit 3D style. I've spent many hours playing Dark Castle I & II on my father's mac (first 512, then Classic).
I look forward to see the development progress.
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AlexKalopsia
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« Reply #32 on: May 25, 2014, 07:47:02 AM »

Hey Lucas,

you might want to check out Terry Cavanagh's "At a Distance", I think you want to achieve something similar?

http://distractionware.com/atadistance/screenshots.html
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gambrinous
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« Reply #33 on: May 25, 2014, 07:51:06 AM »

Looking forward to seeing more info. Got a screenshot of the title screen without the filters, to compare?
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Mef
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« Reply #34 on: May 25, 2014, 10:40:32 AM »

Did you consider giving it amber or green monitor look?*
When I looked at the shader comparison screens, the first thing that came to my mind was playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2 or 3 on an amber monitor connected to monochrome Hercules card. Those polys with different colours/shades simulated by various dither paterns were awesome. Definately the kind of visuals I'd like to see revived.

*(And perhaps the rounded edges and overall geometry similar to what you'd get on a CRT screen.)
« Last Edit: May 25, 2014, 10:50:34 AM by Mef » Logged

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« Reply #35 on: May 25, 2014, 10:57:39 AM »

Very refreshing style! Also thanks for posting the shader breakdown, can't wait to see how it looks with different scenes and shapes.
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kyotokid
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« Reply #36 on: May 25, 2014, 01:59:55 PM »

"3D first-person mystery game set on an East Indiaman merchant ship in 1808."

So generic! Ha, no this is quality, I'm tracking this one  Gentleman
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Ivan
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« Reply #37 on: May 25, 2014, 02:41:06 PM »

This looks great. I loved playing (and trying to create) hypercard adventure games and all of John Calhoun's games back in the day... and then there was David Allen Smith's "The Colony". The 3D in that was mind blowing for the time (I think it still holds up - just don't go into the 2001 room!). Really funny how much technology you have to throw at this to make it look like a mac paint image from 1987 Smiley
Looking forward to seeing how this all works out, really fun idea.
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One-bit Punch
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« Reply #38 on: May 25, 2014, 04:23:12 PM »

Funny how I just replied to a post talking about classic Macintosh games, and then I saw this thread and the b&w image. Man it looks great! Looking forward to see how this one develops!
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William Chyr
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« Reply #39 on: May 25, 2014, 04:44:36 PM »

Really loved the post about the edge-detection shader. I've been working on one for several weeks now, using a combination of normals and depth, but still getting tons of problems, specifically, lots of thick lines and weird artifacts here and there.

It didn't occur to me to apply a different color to each surface depending on the normals and position, and then draw edges based on that. It looks like it works really well! Thanks for sharing.

Also, quick question: when you say you're assigning color based on position, are you just using the depth value from the camera, or the actual x, y, z coordinates of the object? I didn't know you could access that information about specific objects from a shader.

Step 1: Give each poly face a random color based on the object's position and face normal.

« Last Edit: May 25, 2014, 11:44:03 PM by Willy Chyr » Logged

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