Feb - Diagnostics
This month I focus more on the visual side of the 3D Game Engine, I experiment with the engine, doing my best to figure out what it needs by recreating the ambiance of Silent Hill.
Feb 1st - Art In 3D
Art is important, the visual look of any game is key to it’s identity. I’ve been diving deep into exploring ways of making the real time rendering feel a bit more alive by giving more direct feedback to the player.
This involves shakes, particle effects, sounds and more, the exact formula is different from each situation as you want to invoke a specific feeling each time. It could be silly and playful, or serious and scary, all using the same basic triggers - mouse hover, click, etc. - the only difference is the effect. That is the art in video games to me, beyond just the visual looks and artistic design, the handcrafted feel good moments, made from a handful of ingredients.
Feb 5th - Shadows & Flash Lights
When I first started this project, I could visualize in my head the end result of what I wanted to display on screen. So I was able to design all of the components in a way where I knew how they should be utilized. Part of this is due to my game development background, using game engines like Unity & Unreal. I think the real secret is leveraging the fact that I know exactly how the scene should play out start to finish.
For me, it meant the lighting system had to always be real time, and be controlled in the 3D environment - draggable like as if it was just resting in the scene along side everything else. So when I designed the lighting system, I knew this constraint, and ensured it worked with no issues real-time.
Ever since I first had that image in my head, I’ve been waiting for this moment - I knew that with a handful of changes, I could turn a Spotlight Light Source into a Flashlight.
Now that Lua has been rigged up into the game engine, all I have to do is make the light source point towards where I’m looking at.
After an hour of messing around, I had a fully functional flash light system. There are a few issues I need to work out, but the concept works so much better than I thought it would.
Feb 13th - Operating System Outside The Shell
One of the ideas I had, was having some kind of frame surrounding the operating system, like a monitor frame. The bezels would be visible, and the idea is it could be styled like a grey CRT.
The idea sounds amazing on paper, and it was really easy to implement - the results though…
Losing such huge amount of screen real-estate just felt like the biggest gimmick, paired with the CRT filter, I can imagine those would be the two things users turned off first. Which sucks, because I love those kind of ideas, but the practicality of trying to use an operating system, while you are purposefully making it harder to use, for the sake of aesthetics get a bit much at a certain point.
Maybe I’ll include it as an easter egg that users can opt-in - maybe that can act as a compromise for everyone? Either way, you be the judge and tell me if this approach is a good idea or not.
A month after writing this post, I decided to slightly rewrite this post, and included in those two images to help show exactly what I was referring to
Feb 17th - 3DGE - Animation System
I’ve started the animation system for the 3D game engine, I’m basically just loading everything from GLTF format. My work flow is pretty basic - I use Blender to edit the models, adjust the rigging, etc. And I use Mixamo for the animation base.
Nothing fancy here, I’m finally at the stage where I can collaborate with artists, so I’ll be posting some collaborative work in the future when that’s all ready to be shown. For now, here are some prototypes I made while testing the system out.
This animation demo contains assets not representative of the final game.
Feb 22nd - 3DGE - Game Feels
It might be a little early for this, but I’ve decided to start implementing the actual “game-feels” portion of the game, working on the websites last month made me realize how impactful animations are - even if it’s as simple as a wiggle.
The term for this is game feel, normally done in the polishing stage. I like to experiment and create though, so I decided I would take a stab at some basic effects.
PS1 Wobble Effect
First up is the PS1 Wobble Effect from Crash Bandicoot - this works by morphing the vertices of a model to make them look visually distinctive by snapping the vertices to specific positions, to mimic the effect Crash Bandicoot had on the PS1. The original effect was due to the limitations the PS1 had at the time, but for Crash Bandicoot, this was a purpose artistic choice, as it’s iconic to the series. (That’s is my opinion anyways!)
Animation Stagger
Animation stagger involves desyncing certain parts of the animated model, so the animations feel more organic and less robotic. It’s meant to give a little bit of life by allowing another layer of randomization to mask the fact it’s an animation loop.
Object Wobble
Object Wobble is exactly as it sounds, it will allow an object to wobble, but it will be done in a way where it morphs the vertices during animation, so it tends exaggerate animations heavily.
Bone Lag
I saved the best for last - bone lag. If you have two animated models that share the same idle animation in the same room, it will be very obvious they have the same animation. Bone lag helps keep the illusion up by ensuring each time the animation loops, it’s different in some slight way - and that’s more than enough for most games.
Final Result
When used in moderation, they are pretty great for introducing subtle variance in animation - instead of showing you that, I decided to have fun, I turned all of the effects on to their maximum just to see what would happen.
In this video, I slowly ramp up the effects, while I toggle the X,Y,Z lock on the object wobble
PS1 Fog
Maybe fog shouldn’t count, but it’s core to the vision I have in my head for the 3D game, so I decided to tackle it anyways. Fog has a special place in my heart for two reasons -
- As a game developer, it allows me to hide a low render distance, objects can be out of sight and pop up without disruption.
- As a gamer, especially when I was younger, I never gave a second thought about it being for performance, or anything of the sort. It always added to the ambiance of the scene, and in titles like Silent Hill - I knew it was there to keep me on my toes.
Good fog is a true science, calling it an art wouldn’t do it justice. The scope for my project, is not to create the best fog possible, but rather something that feels like it belongs in the era I’m trying to recreate. In my mind, I thought the PS1 fog from Silent Hill would be good enough.
Photo taken from https://silenthill.fandom.com/wiki/Fog_World
I think part of what makes the fog in Silent Hill so powerful, is the fact the world is completely unviewable outside of a certain point. This helps to creates the claustrophobic feeling you experience while playing the game, but I found it to be a bit too jarring for a modern game.
I don’t think I need a crazy render distance, but I definitely think it should be larger than what was required to make it run on the PS1 hardware. Here’s my take on that effect so far:
Still very early in development, but I think it’s a good start.
Feb 28th - Gallery
This month I decided to embrace the 3DGE a lot more, I’ve captured some really cool photos that I think highlight the dynamic expressiveness of the engine. It has a clear feeling to it, which reminds me of a style reminiscent of early 2000s game engines.
Videos
I decided to include two demo videos that I thought looked cool, I would post them on YouTube but I think it makes more sense being embedded directly into the blog. Like all videos I post - I’ve compressed them so it’s suitable for a website