I'm going to do a mirror thread here about my little RPG project.
The previous step was this: https://twitter.com/Froyok/status/1518266804807815169
Like I mentionned before I have the following map which is exported as an "unprocessed" json.
This time I added a second layer (rocks and flowers).
The idea next is to build a texture with the indexes of the map for each layer.
I'm not sure yet how exactly I'm going to encode the data into the RGBA texture (currently using 16bit pngs) because of how well I will be able to decode them on the shader size. 🤔
Since I'm planning to only store the indexes, the texture will be small.
This map of 10x10 square can fit in a 16x16 pixel texture for example. So I can easily have 2 or 4 layers side by side (so 64x16 texture).
I could also split the map in more clever ways horizontally as well to stay around the 4K limit.
Only downside is that I want an uncompressed texture in memory, to ensure indexes are preserved.
Took the time to fiddle a bit during lunch, and got the basics to have two layers side by side. :D
Numpy arrays seem to be put sideways, so I had to swap cooridnates.
Decided to do a little break from the map system and instead add a new postprocess pass (circular blur), because I never have enough of them, all while watching one of my guilty pleasure movie: The Core. :D
Adjusted the vignette mask for the blur and its radius, now I have something a bit more subtle.
Of course, I had to put some Chromatic Aberration in the blur pass. ;D
That blur pass is now the heaviest part of the post-process system, more than the bloom itself !
Alright, I always struggle with math but I'm finally making progress here. I'm finally able to draw my tiles index image in a single screenspace pass now, at the right size ! :)
Finally made it work !
I'm walking on my map, yeay !
I made only the base layer work for now, next are the other layers. Then it will be collisions.
Technically I ditched the idea of using a screenspace shader pass and went back to using dedicated polygons.
The nuance is that I precompute the mesh for each map, instead of using a generic mesh.
My python toolset parse the Tiled json file, build the mesh in a lua file, which I simply load at startup. And voilà !
UVs are directly set properly and I can use vertex color to get additional data.
For example I store in Red and Green the center of each tile so that I can scale it up/down to hide the tiles seam because of the texture sampling.
Texture are simple enough that I don't need padding in them at all.
The advantage of using Substance Designer for building textures: using the height-map as a blending mask to make terrain/tiles transition for free.
Each time I want to build a new transition I just need to plug two materials together in a filter. :D
It's starting to come together nicely. Loving it ! 🥰
Before moving on to collisions (which I have prepped the data for it already, now I need to translate it into the game) I want to play a bit with water surfaces.
Right now I built a new set of tiles with transparency. The goal is to render the map as a black and white mask and then generated a distance field from the hole.
From there I should be able to generated dynamic shorelines. :)
Took a few tries, but I got the Jump Flood working an now have a Distance Field texture working ! :D
Just need to cleanup the pipeline now and integrate it in-game ! \0/
A "few" tweaks later, I have animated water ! :D
Okay, added some noise and little waves, I'm really liking that result !
Got the base collisions in.
I ended-up building them in Tiled too by hand.
I suppose this could become be tedious in the long run, but I like the idea of freedom from the tileset itself that it gives.
Plus is as easy to parse as the tilesets themselves when exporting to the game.
Progress of the last few days:
- I finished the cliff textures, pretty happy about those ! :)
- I did a pass to adjust the contrast of the textures, things pop out a little better now
- I did a quick hack to implement my layering system, so now the player can pass behind elements, like the cliff edges.
- I improved the clouds shadows pattern and it looks much more natural now.
So the "background" stuff I'm working on is LUT based color grading. I made good progress yesterday, but I'm still struggling with the handling of HDR colors... as you can see here.
Finally got it working ! I have color grading now, and it editable directly in-game. :)
I had to learn quite a bit of stuff about HDR rendering for it, so I think my next blog article will be about my render pipeline.
Today I built a new little tool to preview my charsets.
The goal is to see the walking animation while editing the source file (even psd files).
It's gonna be handy to author content.
(Don't mind the example here, it's the only good placeholder I could find on Internet.)
I'm really liking Love(2D) more and more.
That tool roughly took 400 lines of Lua in total, and two shaders and was built in less than 24 hours.
@froyok this looks fantastic!
It has been a while since I posted an update.
While still working on background stuff, I continued iterating on content. I needed a snowy version of the environment, so I adjusted the tile style and added falling snowflakes. 😊
#gamedev #2d #snow