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[nova++]

Oh, I just found this in the procgen thread in the technical subforum, is this it?

Yeah, that's it. That example actually looks better than the ones I remember seeing. Still, I really really like the look of yours. You did a good job.

[oahda]

Thank you! To some extent I suppose it is, since it's not really a meticulously calculated thing where I knew exactly what I was doing down to every detail, but more of a process of discovery by playing with the numbers after getting the basic effect down.

Almost sounds like you are designing a synth when you describe it like that I guess it's very similar except instead of sound it's imagery.

Not familiar with that, I'm afraid! Like designing samples, finding the sound of the synth?

Oh, I just found this in the procgen thread in the technical subforum, is this it?

Yeah, that's it. That example actually looks better than the ones I remember seeing. Still, I really really like the look of yours. You did a good job.

Thank you! Just posted this in said thread as another example without machine learning was just posted too:

So weird that these style transfer things are suddenly moving so fast when I'd never heard of them before until it was brought to my attention in my devlog yesterday. Scary! Looks pretty cool!

Sticking to my own shader tho.

[oahda]

8

Light and shadow

Was going to get a bit further on this before posting but I'm feeling overworked and I need a bit of a break, so here's a midway update!

Since the response to the graphics prototype was so (positively) overwhelming, I thought I might as well spend a bit of time porting it all over to the custom engine as well. I haven't gotten to the actual shader yet because I had to work on a prerequisite first, previously missing from the engine: lights and shadows!



It's not quite done yet. Only shadows in a small area around the character right now, and the quality of the shadows needs quite a bit of work, but it's a solid base! It's a deferred system where all the lights and shadows are added in one step using a couple of different buffers:



Hopefully should look all painterly and nice soon!

Bonus

ProgramGamer drew me fanart!! Thanks so much again! Super flattered, and I love the style!!

[qMopey]

Aw that's pretty cool fan art. You already have fan art! 

[Ordnas]

Cool! The color banding I see is caused by the gif compression?

[oahda]

Aw that's pretty cool fan art. You already have fan art! 

Makes me want to make the hair pointier in the model too cos I really liked it!

Cool! The color banding I see is caused by the gif compression?

Yep! You can see what it actually looks like in the bottom-right corner of the picture below with the different buffers.

[oahda]

9

Painterly shader

It doesn't quite look like watercolour specifically yet, but I still think it's neat! Maybe I'll give up on that specific look and just keep it hereabouts, but we'll see what a bit of texturework can do too. I did try a bunch of triplanar mapping with a tiling texture but I couldn't get it to look good. For now, at least.



So this is just for the broad strokes of the backgrounds. Moving/foreground objects will have a less intense shader like in the old version, but I haven't gotten there yet.

This is more or less redone from scratch because I wanted to play around some more and there were certain issues with the old shader that are fixed now.

[dozd]

I really like the unique feel of your shader, very well done!
I'm pretty good in a lot languages but writing own shaders (that looks somehow interesting) is something I'm still not able (and I am not near to that level).

Do you have any recommendation for quality tutorials? Or how did you learn that?

[oahda]

Thank you! c':

If you just want to focus on the shader programming itself, it's probably best to play around in something like Unity or Shadertoy so you don't have to mess with all the surrounding setup. The languages differ a bit but overall the principles are the same. There's a tutorial series by Jasper Flick in the technical subforum for Unity, and if you're going down that path you might want to check out Unity's own basic tutorials too. There is this neat YouTube channel, and this Twitter account as well! This website is good too. Once you have the basics down, play around! c:

[qMopey]

Wow very impressive! In a short time you've really gotten down a unique feel with just a few fundamental pieces.

I suppose I have a long time to wait until you finally release this game... Usually I try not to get hyped for in development games until they are closer to release, but I can't help it 

[oahda]

Aahhh, thank you so much!!

[ProgramGamer]

Sorry for not posting this earlier, but thanks for including my fanart in your devlog entry! And congrats on making such good progress!

[Shephf]

Painterly shader sure looks interesting, good job!

[JobLeonard]

It doesn't quite look like watercolour specifically yet

It's not that far off from becoming a thick acrylic look though. I think. Maybe embrace it and go full Willem De Kooning on us

[oahda]

We'll see! Thanks, everyone!!

[amasinton]

Dug up a screenshot of a more involved example scene from the Unity graphics prototype that I had forgotten about!

Still, this is just a test with a hastily modelled house and ground and I'm not entirely happy with it (and it'll end up looking different with the proper assets and a fully decorated town), especially not with the textures, but this is the general gist of it anyhow!

That's pretty spectacular!

How expensive is it to render?  Could you combine this with other kinds of effects, for, say, UI or screen overlays?  Are you drawing the screen many, many times per frame to get the edge detection, the blurring, the noise, etc?

Truly fascinating!  Well done!

[oahda]

Thank you!!

The edge detection is all in one pass but it does require multiple texture samples. The effect is taking place in 2D space as an image filter basically, so it could be done with UI too but that might get messy.

Not too expensive so far!

[oahda]

10

Sun and water

Messing with the sun and the sea...



And the canals...



Some things to bear in mind that affect the graphics negatively ATM:

• Character is rendered as part of background so is too distorted
• Shadow map very low res and too small, so some jittery or missing shadows
• GIF compression

But I'm liking the colours I'm getting in place! These small additions help set the mood a lot!

[ChrisLSound]

Very very good! This might be a silly question, but will the game be taking place mostly at sunset?

[oahda]

Thanks! Yep!