Dinosaursssssss Posted January 8, 2020 Hello! For this, the final Wizard jam, I'll be making a short vignette about visiting a Wizard. You'll arrive outside his tower to find that there's a note on the door, you just missed him; the Wizard has stepped out to buy some milk. He'll probably be back soon, but the door's open, lights are still on, why not stick your head in and see what he's been working on? I think I'm gonna be a little busy during jam time so I wanted to get a bit of a head start; originally I was gonna do an update of an older game, but the other day I was hitting random on the episode list and this classic popped up, and I had a little idea and immediately knew in my bones I just had to take a swing at it. Here's the start of a wizard tower from last night; I hadn't spent any time with Blender 2.8, it seems pretty good so far. I can kinda make a model if I have to, but I never really learned how to texture...that'll be the big challenge here for me I think. I'd also like to write a sorta obra-dinn-y dithered lighting shader...I started writing this earlier today and it ended up a little weird (but did kinda work). I think it needs to be triplanar and I might also be getting the wrong normal but it's not a bad start. I'll also be using fellow reader richardsmall's First Person Exploration Kit to handle some of the gameplay code that I don't feel like writing so I can focus on...writing a triplanar dithered lighting shader, apparently. Seems solid so far! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
brendonsmall Posted January 8, 2020 Love that dithered lighting. And the tower roof wobble is snazzy Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Mythalore Posted January 8, 2020 Lovely idea! Might be worth looking at Lucas' Dev log he goes into quite a lot of detail on how he did the dithering from what I can remember. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/comments/34qogp/return_of_the_obra_dinn_development_blog_updates/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nkornek Posted January 8, 2020 Oh wow, loving the art style so far! I also really like how the wizard tower roof looks like a wizard hat. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted January 8, 2020 Thanks all! I was having trouble with the dithering so for that gif it's using much simpler ramped lighting with 4 steps; my real goal is just to get a little away from the default unity look (which I think largely comes from using the standard shader and lighting system). I might just leave it as is and add more post processing rather than fiddling much more with lighting. It turns out custom lighting isn't nearly as complicated as I thought, it's largely based on the toon lighting example here (just using a math to do the steps rather than a texture map) https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-SurfaceShaderLightingExamples.html Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CEJ Posted January 8, 2020 Wow yes very fitting for the final wizard jam Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted January 8, 2020 Here's a higher resolution still so the lighting is a little more clear. The tower is a cylinder but the lighting really makes it look hexagonal. I'm not sure how I'm gonna handle lighting the interior; the light on the doorway fades when you get close by, I might have do a weird trick like turn off the directional light and switch on some points or bake lights or something to get it to look right. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nkornek Posted January 8, 2020 Based on the art style my brain keeps thinking that this wizard is going to also be a noire-style detective. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
z_bill Posted January 8, 2020 This is gonna be a sad one isn't it? Looks so good so far. It would have been funny if everyone titled their game The Wizard for this final go-around. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RKSanders Posted January 8, 2020 Just make sure you don't touch the Spectral Blade or the Improved Spectral Blade for that matter. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted January 8, 2020 3 hours ago, z_bill said: This is gonna be a sad one isn't it? I'm hoping to use a slow, dark intro to really sell a fun surprise later on, we'll see how that plays out 12 hours ago, Mythalore said: Lovely idea! Might be worth looking at Lucas' Dev log he goes into quite a lot of detail on how he did the dithering from what I can remember. I read a little bit of this stuff when it was on TIG Source; my memory was that he talked about it at a pretty high level but I'll go back and poke around. Thanks! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted January 9, 2020 Little gem from the Obra Dinn TIGSource thread: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted January 12, 2020 Built a tower interior the other day; I wasn't sure what the best approach would be, but it seemed like the easiest thing would be to just make a separate mesh so that I wouldn't run into issues with lighting and cause it's a little easier to work with in Blender. Not too exciting, but it's a good opportunity to look at some weird polygons and judge my very mediocre 3D skills. I fixed all the interior faces up, who cares if there's z fighting and missing faces on the outside. I also did a quick modification to brendonsmall's First Person Exploration kit to allow for UGUI based journals. This probably wasn't worth the time I spent on it; by default it only handles journals with a single image per page, but it really wouldn't be that hard to set up a template in photoshop and crank pages out of that. My thinking was that this'd improve iteration but how many books and how many edits am I gonna do in two weeks? Text is all temp but it tells a very compelling and coherent ~8 sentence story about a vampire cowboy. I may have a writer to help out with some of the text, I need to check in with them but it's someone whose work I have great admiration for who's also just an absolutely lovely person so I hope this tiny collaboration works out. It also occurred to me that I need to decide more clearly how I'm using color and stick with it...the book and UI should probably all be grayscale. There will be some color in the game, it'll come from a secret feature that I don't want to spoil. I started working on that last night and I think it'll be fun and cool! Anyway today I'm going to try and get that Secret Feature a little more solid, I'd also like to spend a little time redoing some sound and UI elements in FPE. Since brendonsmall gave some keys out to other folks as well, I'd like to make sure that The Wizard feels distinct. First I'd like to change some audio, add pitch/volume randomization to footsteps, maybe pitch shift or filter the other SFX (jump, open journal), and redraw the UI elements. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted January 14, 2020 I can't for the life of me compress this to a gif of a remotely reasonable size, so here's a very low res image and an ok res video. Interior lighting test: https://imgur.com/N0GpaX6.mp4 The interior uses the same ramped lighting shader as the outside, but with more steps. It looks pretty rough with two light sources; where they overlap, there's a hard edge, and shadows work really inconsistently (I think they're applying from the directional light, but not the point? not sure why that is, probably I need to add some unity macro into the shader) but I like it. Still needs to be arted up a bit more (the walls in particular feel barren) but I'm gonna try and lock down more mechanics first. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ganz Posted January 14, 2020 I really like the grays you've got going on! The shading in the fire picture looks warm to me, but my computer tells me they're just plain old gray. Weird! Brains. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted January 20, 2020 Trying to spruce up this wizards house a bit, this was my third attempt at a sorta low poly skull...you don't wanna see how bad the others were. Something I hadn't really considered about a low poly art style, especially paired with the lighting I'm using, is my polygon layout is very visible, anyone who plays this game who's remotely knowledgeable about 3D art will immediately recognize how bad I am at it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
brendonsmall Posted January 21, 2020 On 1/19/2020 at 10:46 PM, Dinosaursssssss said: Something I hadn't really considered about a low poly art style, especially paired with the lighting I'm using, is my polygon layout is very visible, anyone who plays this game who's remotely knowledgeable about 3D art will immediately recognize how bad I am at it. If you change the normals from imported to calculated in the model import settings in unity, it should maybe smooth that skull out a little bit (just realized "Smooth that Skull" sounds like a good Idle Thumbs episode title) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted January 21, 2020 2 hours ago, brendonsmall said: If you change the normals from imported to calculated in the model import settings in unity, it should maybe smooth that skull out a little bit (just realized "Smooth that Skull" sounds like a good Idle Thumbs episode title) Ah yeah, good call, I was trying to use Blender's auto-smoothing but it's working really inconsistently. Maybe related to the modifiers I'm using? Not sure. Anyway from some advice on slack I fiddled a bit more, narrowed the upper jaw, flattened the...lips, I guess, gave it a little more forehead, and it feels a little more human now. Could still use some work, the back in particular needs some work, but I think it's shippable now. Blender: In-engine, with ramped lighting material and recalculated normals: edit: ok talking to theschap in chat, I think the issue with auto-smoothing was the faces need to already be shaded smooth for it to apply. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nkornek Posted January 25, 2020 That skull looks like it should be giving me the finger guns Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted January 28, 2020 Alright, I wanted so save some fun surprises so I stopped posting while I was adding text and whatnot, but here it is: https://dinosaursssssss.itch.io/the-wizard Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RKSanders Posted January 30, 2020 Amazing! I did a spit take when Spoiler I saw the underwear pic. Good job! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
brendonsmall Posted January 31, 2020 This was so good and fun! Spoiler The realtime web window (??) was a neat touch. Great idea with putting the items in the pentagram to get them to reveal their magic results. Such a satisfying super-thumbsey wizard jam entry Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sloane Posted February 1, 2020 That was fun! Was the Google Translation page on purpose when placing the note into the pentagram or did Google somehow mess it up for that item? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
