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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsVoxel Tactics - A tactics RPG inspired by FFT and Tactics Ogre
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Author Topic: Voxel Tactics - A tactics RPG inspired by FFT and Tactics Ogre  (Read 4752 times)
AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #20 on: September 01, 2020, 03:15:41 AM »

Hehehe yeah that is so true JobLeonard, agoodGUI and user experience should go totally unnoticed by the player if done well enough.
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #21 on: September 10, 2020, 11:57:05 AM »

Lots of work to add the weapon and armor stats and modifications to character details when you have different items equipped.

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JobLeonard
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« Reply #22 on: September 10, 2020, 01:46:55 PM »

The mundane stuff that nobody likes to do but that is very important
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #23 on: December 02, 2020, 12:53:29 PM »

New gameplay video:



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JobLeonard
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« Reply #24 on: December 03, 2020, 02:34:05 AM »

Nice!

By the way, it's a small thing but wouldn't it be more appropriate if the hand-drawn pixel art would stay "pixelly" instead of use linear interpolation to upscale it? I mean given that we're in a voxel world and all that Wink
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #25 on: December 04, 2020, 01:05:41 PM »

Hi JobLeonard,

That is a great comment. A lot of the 2d art in the game (GUI, HUD, character portraits, etc) will be redone and a new style will be chosen and improved upon the current theme, once a proper and full time artist is working on the project. But you are right a more pixel style would probably work much better, I agree with you Smiley
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #26 on: December 05, 2020, 08:25:37 AM »

I'm not actually talking about the style of the art actually! Although yeah, it does not quite sync up now.

I'm talking about the upscaling used by your engine! Smiley

Basically, from the looks of it it is using linear interpolation, but nearest neighbor would fit much better.
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #27 on: December 05, 2020, 10:14:56 AM »

As yeah I get your point, the portraits are not to scale so yes they get upscaled and are the most noticable.

Eventually I want proper full sized pixel art the same scale as what it will be drawn in the current GUI, so no upscaling will be needed.

Also you are right, I will experiement with "nearest neighbor" scaling and see what difference that makes to the current look.
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #28 on: December 21, 2020, 01:23:08 PM »

Working on shaders and graphical effects.

Added Screen Space Reflections:



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JobLeonard
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« Reply #29 on: December 22, 2020, 02:42:35 AM »

You mean the reflections in the water, right? It looks very nice!

I also notice a boost in the brightness and contrast, it pops a lot more now! Kiss

Now, you should know that I have built multiple cameras and lenses from scratch and played around a lot with using the Scheimpflug principle with those cameras, so please keep in mind that the next bit of feedback is overly nitpicky on the optics of the blur effect by definition :p

The blurriness feels like it tries to be both hybrid of a lense edge-blur and a macro-depth of field blur, but that just makes it kinda unrealistic for both.

A depth of field blur has a specific depth plane where everything is in focus, and outside of that plane it starts to blur. In reality, how fast that happens depends on focal length of the lens, the aperture size, and the angle between the plane of focus and image plane. Given that this is an isometric game we can ignore all of that and simply define a "zone" where everything is in focus, a zone where it is not, and a transition between the two.

In this image, the focal point seems to be the characters in the middle, except that it isn't a plane, it's a circle. That doesn't make much optical sense, if interpreted as a depth-of-field effect.

However, there is also another optical effect that can introduce that kind of blurring: vignetting. This is normally caused by the edges of the lens being used, and a mixture of reduced sharpness and brightness at the edges of the photo.

However, this image misses that light fall-off effect, plus the transition from blur to sharp is very harsh: the grass tile on the left of the image goes from sharp to blurry in one pixel, making it really easy to see the "edge" of the shader and breaking immersion.

Also, it does seem to take depth into account somehow because the head of the barbarian (?) unit in the top-left is in focus, but the background behind him isn't. Same with the tiles in front of the skeleton on the bottom-right. So that results in an optical contradiction.

Again, I'm being overly nitpicky here because at no point did anyone here claim to be going for optical realism. But I do want to point out what people might "expect" based on their experience with seeing lots of photographs in real life, even when they don't know the underlying mechanisms.

Optics aside, what is the intended effect of blurring the scene? Because I'm discussing real-world optics, but what really matters is artistic intent and whether or not that comes out. For me this kind of blurring tends to make a scene feel more like a set of miniatures. Is that what you are going for?
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #30 on: December 22, 2020, 08:33:50 AM »

JobLeonard - You are completely right! And firstly thank you for the detailed analysis and response.

If I can give you some context, the blur shading is a bit unfinished at this stage, but you are right it is mostly a combination of 2 different concepts (probably implemented wrong). I think the blurring can be used as a way to bring focus and the players point of vision to interesting and important things happening in the game, and also used to give a certain visual aesthetic.

I am going for a depth of field blur that tries to give a tilt-shift effect and gives everything a toybox (or miniature) look as you mentioned.

Some good references of what I would be aiming are as follows:


Now, onto the implementation, currently my shader picks a focal point (currently always the center of the screen, where the cursor usually is location, but this needs to be dynamic as the camera focus moves on the screen sometimes in different gameplay moments) and also it blurs stuff away from the focal point, based on a depth filtering... I think currently my depth filtering is not implemented well, or some of my values and config settings might be off for the depth of my scene or the distance of characters, world, etc...

Essentially I want stuff outside of the focal point to gradually blur away based on the depth difference.

So now, I would actually ask your advice and guidance, since you seem to be a good expert and have vast knowledge on lenses and camera focus etc... (do you have any shader experience btw?) How would you improve what I have currently implemented? do you spot any obvious issues with what I am describing, or even in general how would you achieve a tilt-shift, toybox, miniature look.

Personally I feel in some situations my implementation works better than others (I guess based on my un-dynamic focal point, and some mis-configured values) For example my first screenshot shows off a better example of tilt-shift look, but as you mentioned there are some errors and strange parts, like the grass focus cutoff.

Thanks again!

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JobLeonard
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« Reply #31 on: December 22, 2020, 04:18:10 PM »

I'm sorry to say that I have almost zero shader experience, but wouldn't it be relatively easy to calculate the focal pane for an isometric game like this? I mean, you got three coordinates (x, y and z), the height (z) is irrelevant, and when you pick a given (x0,y0) "tile" as the focal point, then the focal plane is basically all tiles for which which the formula xi+yi = x0+y0 should hold, no? From there you can extend the depth you want to focus with to x0+y0 - N < xi+yi + M, where N and M are the number of tiles you want to be in focus in front/back of the "focal plane"

(I'm describing it as if you want focus to exist per tile, but you probably want something with a bit more gradual and smooth transition)
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #32 on: December 24, 2020, 04:48:19 PM »

Thanks for the advice JobLeonard! You are being very helpful :D
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #33 on: February 09, 2021, 08:31:29 AM »

New GUI and HUD for Voxel Tactics:








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JobLeonard
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« Reply #34 on: February 09, 2021, 08:53:09 AM »

Nice! Is it just me or is there also some more anti-aliasing and cell-shading in the voxel graphic department?
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #35 on: February 09, 2021, 12:11:40 PM »

Nice! Is it just me or is there also some more anti-aliasing and cell-shading in the voxel graphic department?

Yep you are spot on, I worked on this aspect of the rendering and shading and also added FXAA. Thanks!
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Foolish Mortals
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« Reply #36 on: February 10, 2021, 12:40:53 PM »

More progress on GUI and interface and menus... really is a lot of interface work that is required for RPG games, it never occurred to me the amount of GUI and menus that we use when playing RPG and similar games; stuff to set equipment, skills, magic, etc. This is hard work to make it feeling nice and playing fun, without being a burden on the player with lots of menu navigation.

Equipment change during battle:


Setting the skills for characters in the party roster screen:




Yeah I feel ya - RPG's have an inordinate amount of UI windows, and I find it incredibly hard to make UI look good. Your UI is looking great though! Really getting the FFT vibes. Keep it up!
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AlwaysGeeky
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« Reply #37 on: February 14, 2021, 09:29:21 AM »

Yep that is so true... I never realized how important good UI is to a tactics game and RPG. If the player interface and HUD is not friendly and easy to use, the whole game falls apart!
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #38 on: February 14, 2021, 11:11:59 AM »

Yeah, it's why I had a really hard time finishing the Tactics Ogre games actually. So.. many.. menus.
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