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[oahda]

Tiny unnumbered update in between to keep things going. Did a game jam last weekend so haven't had a lot of time.



Something small I've wanted to get in for a while is being able to visually place named "waypoints" in the editor that can be referenced from NPC scripts to have them navigate there, instead of using hard-coded positions like I'd been doing up until now.

Unfortunately looks like some scripting oversights are finally catching up with me so I think I need to fix those before I get any further.

EDIT: Luckily this ^ wasn’t so bad after all and I think I’ve fixed it already! Back on track.

[oahda]

23

Working the workflow

Darn it, I just want to make a game, so I've been blasting through some of the necessary editor fixes today.

Permanent navmesh setup

Now there's a component I can put on stuff that marks it as a navmesh area that gets considered for navmesh generation and saved with the scene so I don't have to redo it every time I want to rebuild the navmesh like before.



In this example I added this circular thing to the town square and wanted to make that part of it non-navigable. Easy now!

Timeline switch

It's the little things. Since the shader hides stuff in the inactive timeline, stuff in the past was just always invisible in the editor up until now. Threw in a quick editor script with a toggle button!



Hotloading to the rescue!

This isn't new functionality, but a nice example of the improved workflow thanks to getting the hotloading in place a while ago: after putting this structure in the game and seeing it in the context of the character I felt it was too tall, so I was able to just modify it in Blender and save over it and see the difference while the game was running. c:



Rebuilding the town

As you can see in these new GIF's I've also gotten rid of the old town blockout and have started moving things in from the new, proper one from Blender, with the cable cars and all that good stuff~

[ProgramGamer]

I've got to figure out how to do hot reloading stuff in C++, that looks sooooo useful lol

I'm also looking forward to seeing more of the town's nooks and crannies!

[oahda]

Yay, I’m excited to see it in the game and run around in it too!

Using efsw for the file watching, if you’re looking for a good lib. Tried simplefilewatcher first but the macOS implementation wasn't very good, and efsw is a fork of it that has fixed that, so it was an easy almost drop-in change to make.

[oahda]

24

Snowflow

Enjoying making tiny updates more frequently!

Not much time today but I figured out a little workflow for making sure models have geometry that works with the snow shader.




There's something really satisfying about the shadow from that fence too.

Blender setup

For one thing the mesh needs smooth shading. Then the edges between snow-covered and non-covered surfaces need to be bevelled.

I wanted to use the bevel modifier to do it non-destructively but wasn't getting the results I wanted until I found out online that I can set the bevel weight of the edges that I would select if I were to do it destructively, and then select weight as the modifier's limit method. Perfect!



Editor setup

Brought some of the snow settings I had in a debug window in the game itself earlier over into the editor as well. Was able to fine-tune it to look right on the fountain here:



Also I know I said the town blockout in Blender was intended as a 3D sketch and not as actual geometry to use in the game, but with some cleanup those models still make for good greyboxes for now~

[oahda]

25

Circling the square

Had an artsy idea so I went and tried it out: decorative cobblestone pattern!



I don't feel completely done, do want some more details in the outer ring, and I'm not sure what colours to use yet, but it does a lot to add to the look and feel I have in mind!

I want the rest of the square to have cobblestones too but in a simpler checkerboard pattern so that it blends in but keeps the attention on this ring.

Normal map

The sun/moon are weird in the GIF and the light spins wildly at some points. This was so that I could test and show off the lighting on the cobblestones, which is accomplished through a normal map. I modelled the pattern fully in 3D and then baked it into a texture that's put on a much simpler model.




Looks a little wonky right now, especially around the edges, because I haven't actually implemented normal maps properly into the engine yet, but I just threw a quick hack in to sort of see it in action. Think my next task will be to fix that up.

Stills

[ProgramGamer]

That looks really cool!!!!

[ChrisLSound]

Oh, that looks fantastic!

[oahda]

Thank you both so much!

Think I got the normal maps working for real now, looks correct if you compare to the direction of the shadow from the fence, right?



Here showing the normals in the editor while rotating things to see them changing:

[Guntha]

Hey, this is The Independent Gaming Source, not The Solo-Made Triple-A Gaming Source. Too much quality going on here.

[oahda]

My gosh, I don't even know what to say to that haha, thank you so much!!

[oahda]

26

Watercolour

I think I might actually have it now???

I got inspired to make the shader look like actual watercolour once and for all, and since the old methods I had tried didn't really work, this time I started over from scratch and also tried to search for some existing shaders other people had done to see how they did it. In particular this shader for Blender helped a lot.





Almost by accident by changing a number I also managed to make it look like the sort of line sketch that I want to have before the bubble gets filled in, so all in all this was super productive couple of days!



No GIF for now since I did it without considering 3D space first just to make it easier to work with, so it looks wonky in motion ATM, but I'm pretty sure the same trick that I used before will work fine this time too, so I'll add that back the next time I'm working on this. c:

[Ishi]

Gorgeous!

[JobLeonard]

Oh those moments when after long, frustrating struggles and hitting seemingly insurmountable walls it all clicks and you suddenly have a few days of extreme productivity... Make sure you ride that programmer's high for as long as you can before it all comes crashing down again!

Results look amazing, can't wait to see it in motion!

(you can share the wonky results too, you know we like to visually debug along, right?)

[ProgramGamer]

[...]
Almost by accident by changing a number I also managed to make it look like the sort of line sketch that I want to have before the bubble gets filled in, so all in all this was super productive couple of days!


[...]

Taaaaake ooooon meeeee
Take on me
Taaaaake meeeee ooooon
Take on me
I'll beeeee goooone
In a day or
Twooooooooo

</unoriginal joke>

[JobLeonard]

Norway, Sweden, it's all Scandinavian to me 

[oahda]

Hah, I didn't even think about that! I do live in Norway. And thanks!! I'll put some wonky results alongside proper results later then.

[TwistingYarn]

that watercolor effect is amazing. excited to see it in motion!

[oahda]

Thank you!! I do hope it'll look good in motion too, taking a little break before I get back on that.

[andos]

That watercolor shader looks great! Is the wobbliness of the edges done in the shader, or is it a combination of the shader and modelling? Excited to see more as well!