@nehon said:
I'd like to add some kind of animated distortion to the image so that it feels more underwater, but since your using it intensively, i don't want to interfere.
I think as long as you made it an optional effect. I assume you mean a texture displacement effect of some kind to make it a little wavy. Real life "under water" doesn't distort that way really and it's more of an effect cartoons use to show "we're underwater now". So I think a lot of people would want to leave it off.
Wave-like refractive distortion requires a wavy surface. And underwater we generally don't have that as the water surface is a smooth lens.
@pspeed said:
I think as long as you made it an optional effect. I assume you mean a texture displacement effect of some kind to make it a little wavy. Real life "under water" doesn't distort that way really and it's more of an effect cartoons use to show "we're underwater now". So I think a lot of people would want to leave it off.
Wave-like refractive distortion requires a wavy surface. And underwater we generally don't have that as the water surface is a smooth lens.
sure did @ancalagon, better look out soon I might be calling you son
Underwater is great, IMO it already goes far beyond expectaions of what a water effect can do out of the box. I was looking at the Frostbite 2 (360) water the otherday thinking, where is the foam? why do these waves look like balls close up? and the Unreal3 water was off also.
time permitting I had always planned to try and contribute some addtions:
distance based distortion (like what I think you are talking about), like DOF with the addtion sine wave disotrtion.
enter / exit water screen distortion, like water on a camera.
more dynamic fog - specifically depth based.
some of the underwater bubble sprites I created
light direction based caustic projection and remove it from the backside/underside… and depth based blur to get rid of it in deep water.
(I put no thought into the logistics of these additions yet)
@pspeed does make a good point, but I still feel it for sure has its place as an artistic tool.
There are some issues when look up at the underside of surface, might try and fix it, but will probably jam it in the too hard basket for you to look at… can talk about this later.
Water in general : I think it would be great to see this adapted to work on geom rather than a plane… yeah I know, but still
Competition wise I could care less either way to be honest, perhaps just leave it for a month to avoid any conflict of interest.
My conservative estimates put ‘the Cove’ 2.5x-3x bigger than Minecraft by Easter, so soon everyone will be trying to rip it off… I guess it couldn’t hurt to beef up our water offering Seriously though, I feel the water is already more than enough, and time could be better spent on other parts of the shader injection, sorry I mean engine.
basic starfish - so quick and colourful to create, more to come for sure.
improvements to the AI behaviours
complete overhaul of progression director: It’s now very flexible (Class based while I figure it all out, will become script based soon), stages can be defined very quickly, re-ordered and tweaked with ease, this is key to ballancing the gameplay.
built a bunch of new stage mechanics to enable different progression type (eg danger based, proximity, keypresses, distance based, time based, consumption based, evasion based)
built a placeholder leveling up screen with details and hints.
contributed completed solution for injection into shaders.
sequential loader - so the app doesnt sit there on a blank screen for 30 seconds as soon as it’s started while loading assets, filling pools ect. This also gives the user loading feedback. It was so so easy to impliment, should have done it from the start! will be rolling it into my other projects for sure.
more optimisations: FPS gained another significant boost and far more importantly, is becoming increasing more consistent.
Pooling for fish - created a much more stable memory load, also wont crash when I accidently create 300 reefs insead of 3 This took a pretty long time as it highlighed a few other floors in how I was dealing with the NPCs.
tweaking terrain and textures : will need to rescale this soon, I won’t have time to use all the available space, would be a shame to not explore the lagoon, river or deep trench.
720 as always! Video shows from boot up through some early stages & gameplay
The sequential loader (blue screen at start of video) is normally running for around 30 seconds while the game laods up, it’s super fast in the video because it excutes over about 20 frames.
The leveling or stages in the video are way out of order, and XP is gained super fast, making the stages very short do help speed up dev. A lot of ballancing is in order, but that will come much later in the dev cycle.
I’m struggling a bit with motivation at the moment, I ripped out the prototype so quickly I don’t feel like I’m achieving as much these days, I guess its all just part of the cycle. A few cut corners (eg no pooling) in the beginning is slowing me down now.
@thetoucher said:
There are some issues when look up at the underside of surface, might try and fix it, but will probably jam it in the too hard basket for you to look at... can talk about this later.
Yeah i know what you mean under water objects are displayed on the refraction part of the map, and appear deformed on the surface of the water.
The thing is I don't render a refraction map with clipping at the level of the water likes with classic water rendering, i just use the back buffer as refraction map. So underwater objects appear.
@iamcreasy said:
Dude, when you will be releasing a playable version! :D
now!
http://thecove.afterhoursgamestudio.com/:: mac, pc and linux @ 26mb each. I turned off (most of) the levelling, you can just swim around and explore. I'm after compatibility and performance feedback at this stage.
thanks @tutuk and @mcbeth , just the info I was after.
Cheers @iamcreasy - I have invert Y as an option, and the I don’t want the bubbles blurred since I’m trialling them as a navigation device, but your spot on, they do look a bit sharp.
Now I’ve tested on my notebook Turion II Dual-core P560 2.5GHz 2gB RAM with ATI Randeon HD 4200 and got avarage 50 fps.
One observation. I wasn’t able to run your .sh script as you’ve written. As the Cove.jar had an space, it couldn’t find it. So I’ve added ‘’ and it worked. Like that:
These files were generated directly from jMP, perhaps a minor bug for the team to look at… Or perhaps I should have known better than to use spaces (although I only recall entering the ‘the Cove’ in the properties > application > title, which surely should allow spaces)
Seriously though, I feel the water is already more than enough, and time could be better spent on other parts of the shader injection, sorry I mean engine.
