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[propapanda]

I've run some more tests with various noise and grain options and finally came to the conclusion that it needs to be pretty subtle, regardless of whether it might look better or not when it's grainier: Many of the backgrounds will feature animation in one form or another. Rain storms, flashes of lightning, flickering candles, that sort of thing.
That animation looks pretty silly with static film grain layered on top, and so the grain would need to be animated. And while that's technically easy enough to do in a shader, it's rather jarring to look at. Even while debugging the shader I was starting to get a headache with all the flickering going on.

The alternative again would be ordered dithering: This is visually stable and hence it works fine in animation without inducing a seizure. The effect however is more digital and less film-like.

More stuff to play around with over the holidays!

[JobLeonard]

If you want to experiment with the "look" of ordered dithering, I "invented" a method to create "hybrids" of ordered and error diffusion dithering last year:



https://observablehq.com/@jobleonard/ordered-error-diffusion-dithering

[propapanda]

Wow, that's a fantastic write-up, @JobLeonard, very insightful. And the results look promising, indeed combining some of the positive characteristics of error diffusion and ordered dithering.

Though in this context I suspect the problem with the hybrid approach would be the same as with the regular error diffusion: The technique just doesn't lend itself well to real-time shaders. At least I don't think I've ever come across a shader implementation with acceptable performance of, say, Floyd-Steinberg or Atkinson.

[JobLeonard]

Yeah, the error diffusion technique seems fundamentally at odds with how shaders work. A quick search finds this PR for MPV though that apparently makes it work with compute shaders? It's a fairly demanding shader though, presumably due to how it accesses memory:

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/pull/6564

[propapanda]

Busy fleshing out the story and refactoring parts of the engine, but managed to squeeze in a few more spooky shots over the holidays:

[JobLeonard]

The mood is sooooooo gooood in these shots!

[eri0o]

This looks amazing ! Brains exploded!

[Alain]

I just have to chime in: I love those shots!

[propapanda]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate the kind words!

Trying out something a little different here: Going for a kind of "found footage" look, except of course it's found photos.






And in case you were wondering what it looks like in-game:

[Alain]

I love every single image. The "found photos" look works perfectly!

[JobLeonard]

Yeah, they look amazing! Curious to see how you'll use them in the "narrative" context

[propapanda]

Curious to see how you'll use them in the "narrative" context

Primarily I'm using the effect to distinguish between different eras: The main story takes place in the mid 90s, but there are flashbacks to the early 70s. The older ones will look more damaged than those in the main timeline.

I'm a real sucker for some solid, old-fashioned hardware! Had a blast kitbashing this control panel together:

[JobLeonard]

Cool, sounds like a good way to use it!


And yeah, toggle switches are sooo nice

[propapanda]

Managed to get a few more shots done over the holidays.

To be honest, I'm still not entirely convinced I want to go the high-resolution route. Just takes so much extra effort to get the assets right and takes time away from other areas. And the lower res artwork just has that certain je-ne-sais-quoi.
Thankfully it's comparatively easy to go from high res to low res , so I can still take some time to make up my mind.

Introducing a new character here: Bagel, the family dog.

[JobLeonard]

I don't know how Bagel is growling against, but they probably deserved it

[propapanda]

Oh, she's got good reason to growl alright. The boys just don't know it yet...

[Alain]

Bagel is such a good boy!

[propapanda]

I really need to push myself to work more on the game part of the well, game... somehow I always find myself getting hooked on the renders.

[JobLeonard]

Eh, worst case you have a very atmospheric walking simulator

[propapanda]

Eh, worst case you have a very atmospheric walking simulator

Guess so! Been playing Famicom Detective Club lately, and while the style is obviously quite different from what I'm doing, it gives me confidence that, if done right, a story-heavy game with mostly static backgrounds and lots of text can be a lot of fun.

Oh, and here's a look at a villain I'm experimenting with. Any thoughts?