#sharping dojo

Upgrading the visuals of the Submersible Base Realm. The circly things on the glass both make your brain process the glass walls and the length of the hallways better, as well as invoking octopus suction cups and bathtub glass decorations. Problem is, when multiplied to cover all glass of all corridors, these circly things add 70,000 triangles to the scene, which is almost my performance budget of a whole realm (I’m building my PC VR game assuming mobile specs, for now at least). But they look so fun, so I’ll have to find a way to keep them.

I drafted the Broncere Moment Realm, and I learned how to use Unity’s Directional Specular Lightmaps, which means the shiny part of light that reflects off of walls, moves in 3d space like in real life. I was just about to ask Unity to add “Baked Specular-Only Lights” but this feature already exists and works great smoothly in VR. Now if we can just get planar reflections like Unreal has, Image quality will be perfect -- assuming the level is made well. I am low-key excited that my interactive VR scenes can now look as good as my shitty cgi artwork from 2004.

Working on the clockwork village people animations. The next challenge is getting them to “mount” objects like chairs, beds, and bathtubs. And setting up jobs with waypoints. then throwing in the dialogue system, the  query system (dealing with foci and aptitudes), the favorites and values system, then the facial emotion system.

I added some facial features including a Zelda 64 style nose and blinking eyes, and a talk bubble. I also made it so they walk normally rather than skating across the ground. Next I may add ears and hair, but I try to remember this is all temporary art, to be replaced by actual character models with unique eyes and faces. The final characters style will be something like realistic with a slight tinge of anime/stylization.

I worked on the submersible realm, turning the distant fake structures and hallways into real ones you can use and starting on better lighting and textures. The submersible bobs up and down, the water appears to ripple somewhat. To progress each realm, I need to create the spaces, add template characters, fill out their response documents, model the real character models, add voices.

Got the query bubble system up and running. eventually I want some way to snap and show images inside the bubbles, but for now text will do. You will be able to hand these to characters to ask about any object you’ve queried with your detector lens. The dream goal of game design for me, would be to write a novel, feed it into the engine, and have it make the game for you. The query system allows me to write a giant database of categorized descriptions that are automatically displayed when requested. And you ‘request’ descriptions by actually ASKING people about things, anything, in the world. That also serves as any needed hint or tutorial system, all in a super natural, non-overwhelming, and non-intrusive way.

I began working on the Clockwork Villagery System, which got a lot easier when I realized I can develop some systems without using VR to do so, though some pics here give an idea of what it may be like in VR. All models and textures are temporary, of course, and there will be many building varieties. The goal is to be able to paint communities that are as cool as those in Ultima VI, which involve unique characters with schedules and everything. The Navmesh even works with this. Eventually it would be great to allow players to sculpt communities this way, but for now it is  a tool for me. Also I learned how to use Arrays, the (add this event) command, and the (make new variable) commands, which save a lot of time.

I replaced the lame bridge realm with the shop realm I've needed to make to develop the buying and selling system. I fixed some bugs, and I added ships floating by outside the library. I finally got light probes to work correctly, so moveable objects can have changes in lighting, like the vase I'm holding in two of these screens.