Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[PompiPompi]

Preparing half mockup screens for the store page.

 

[RPK]

Preparing half mockup screens for the store page.


View attachment 40440

looks good!

 

[PompiPompi]

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

I would make above world daytime as a contrast to always being in a dark dungeon.

 

[Aemar]

Preparing half mockup screens for the store page.


View attachment 40440

Do you make these game assets yourself, or do you buy/commission them?

 

[beardalaxy]

View attachment 40489View attachment 40488

Seeing these outdoor areas of the game makes me more interested! That brings up another point with your trailer, you should definitely have a variation of areas so that people don't think the entire game takes place in dungeons!

 

[PompiPompi]

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Seeing these outdoor areas of the game makes me more interested! That brings up another point with your trailer, you should definitely have a variation of areas so that people don't think the entire game takes place in dungeons!

I could have like a photo montage at the end of it.
I am preparing a half mock up of out doors area, to show more variations.
The screenshots will be in the store page.

There is no actual game yet, it is early in development.
I did plan to make it kind of like Lands of Lore, part of it.
So you could go back and forth areas, not just go down levels.

 

[PompiPompi]

Preparing half mockup screens for the store page.


View attachment 40440

Do you make these game assets yourself, or do you buy/commission them?

I bought the assets myself.
Those are 3rd party assets, with a few tweaks I did myself and help I got from an artist, for things like animations and adjustments.

 

[Twiglard]

I rewrote the lightmap code hoping to make it faster. It isn't faster, but I know how to make it so by reducing the amount of draw calls. Disregard that, the shadow map was too big.



Before working any further on lighting, I'm going to write a batch sprite renderer that uses all texture indexes, rather than rebinding texture unit 0 all the time.

 

[PompiPompi]

Some Village.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

I rewrote the lightmap code hoping to make it faster. It isn't faster, but I know how to make it so by reducing the amount of draw calls.

View attachment 40493

Before working any further on lighting, I'm going to write a batch sprite renderer that uses all texture indexes, rather than rebinding texture unit 0 all the time.

What engine is that?

 

[Twiglard]

What engine is that?

My own.

Apparently lightmap of size 8192x8192 is too big and that was the real cause of the slowness.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

What engine is that?

My own.

Apparently lightmap of size 8192x8192 is too big and that was the real cause of the slowness.

I mean, whats the engine written on, etc?

 

[Twiglard]

I mean, whats the engine written on, etc?

C++20/23, Magnum framework, imgui, nlohmann_json (to be replaced with a Lisp reader), sdl2, fmtlib. Got Github CI for running unit tests under xvfb.

If you want to see the code, send a PM (and don't share my repo or username).

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

I mean, whats the engine written on, etc?

C++20/23, Magnum framework, imgui, nlohmann_json (to be replaced with a Lisp reader), sdl2, fmtlib. Got Github CI for running unit tests under xvfb.

If you want to see the code, send a PM (and don't share my repo or username).

Unit...tests...

 

[Twiglard]

Unit...tests...

Right now it's for things like loading saves and iterating world objects. But I'm going to add real ingame tests with synthetic input once there's any game logic to begin with.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Unit...tests...

Right now it's for things like loading saves and iterating world objects. But I'm going to add real ingame tests with synthetic input once there's any game logic to begin with.

That kind of implies you have the whole thing spec'd out if you can write tests.

 

[RPK]

Preparing half mockup screens for the store page.


View attachment 40440

Do you make these game assets yourself, or do you buy/commission them?

I bought the assets myself.
Those are 3rd party assets, with a few tweaks I did myself and help I got from an artist, for things like animations and adjustments.

if you find yourself wanting to tweak or even make new animations, you should check this out. it's surprisingly easy to use and runs right in the unity editor. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/umotion-pro-animation-editor-95991 even a grognard like me who can barely get Blender to run can use it.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Preparing half mockup screens for the store page.


View attachment 40440

Do you make these game assets yourself, or do you buy/commission them?

I bought the assets myself.
Those are 3rd party assets, with a few tweaks I did myself and help I got from an artist, for things like animations and adjustments.

if you find yourself wanting to tweak or even make new animations, you should check this out. it's surprisingly easy to use and runs right in the unity editor. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/umotion-pro-animation-editor-95991 even a grognard like me who can barely get Blender to run can use it.

Ah now thats useful. I only use Unity for image generation purposes like anim capture. Blender is too difficult for me so far.

 

[RPK]

Preparing half mockup screens for the store page.


View attachment 40440

Do you make these game assets yourself, or do you buy/commission them?

I bought the assets myself.
Those are 3rd party assets, with a few tweaks I did myself and help I got from an artist, for things like animations and adjustments.

if you find yourself wanting to tweak or even make new animations, you should check this out. it's surprisingly easy to use and runs right in the unity editor. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/umotion-pro-animation-editor-95991 even a grognard like me who can barely get Blender to run can use it.

Ah now thats useful. I only use Unity for image generation purposes like anim capture. Blender is too difficult for me so far.

I really like it. you select (or create) a key frame and then use the standard unity manipulation tools like the rotate and move widgets to tell the tool where you want each joint to be at that time in the animation and voila, you're done.
obviously it takes a little time to make the animations not look like crap and your first few attempts WILL look like crap, but it's kind of fun to play around with and you can make acceptable results pretty quickly.

 

[Twiglard]

I really like it. you select (or create) a key frame and then use the standard unity manipulation tools like the rotate and move widgets to tell the tool where you want each joint to be at that time in the animation and voila, you're done.
obviously it takes a little time to make the animations not look like crap and your first few attempts WILL look like crap, but it's kind of fun to play around with and you can make acceptable results pretty quickly.

Can you bake that into sprites or export into Blender for that purpose?

 

[RPK]

I really like it. you select (or create) a key frame and then use the standard unity manipulation tools like the rotate and move widgets to tell the tool where you want each joint to be at that time in the animation and voila, you're done.
obviously it takes a little time to make the animations not look like crap and your first few attempts WILL look like crap, but it's kind of fun to play around with and you can make acceptable results pretty quickly.

Can you bake that into sprites or export into Blender for that purpose?

Honestly, you're asking the wrong guy about sprite animation. I've only ever worked with FBX files - and I'm one of those, try it, fail and try it again until it works with anything that has to do with graphics and animations etc. I'm a coder.

The plug-in exports .anim or .fbx files, and I know blender can import fbx files just fine. After that, you can do your normal workflow, I would think, whatever that is.

 

[Twiglard]

How about modeling in Wings 3D? That program is so simple even I can understand it.

I always learned by doing. If a program requires actually reading a manual, something's wrong with it.

 

[PompiPompi]

Blender is not too hard for simple things.
But yea, it takes a little time to understand the UI, it's very different.
I had a few lessons at work from a guy who worked there.

 

[RPK]

How about modeling in Wings 3D? That program is so simple even I can understand it.

I always learned by doing. If a program requires actually reading a manual, something's wrong with it.

Never heard of it, but it looks cool

Honestly, I have so much to do for my project that I just don't have the capacity to learn any 3d modeling software. There's too much work to do with coding systems, writing story etc. I've been fortunate enough to be able to commission a few 3d models here and there, but mostly I've had to get by with what I can get off of various asset stores and hope that any potential players won't hold that against me down the road when I get my game done in year xyz.