Valchion Devlog #14 - Better Lighting, Better Writing (notreally)

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SolarLune

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Published on October 24, 2013 4:37:18 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOHo8-z20M

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Vlog

Duration: 9:09

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Long time no see!

A few weeks ago, I was playing another indie game, and thought that the environments were really bare and boring. That got me thinking about how much progress and care I've put into Valchion; what other people who were watching the game felt about it. Like how you guys really seem to like it, whereas I was just thinking of it as "too big". In short, I got to thinking and I decided to step back to it.

I guess I've done a pretty good amount in the time between the last update and now, though I have also been doing other things as well (work getting in the way for a while, for example).

For starters, I've jumped on over to GLSL for shading instead of my old, original lighting style. Kinduva shame to lose that progress,but I REALLY like the way the new shading looks. My original lighting style would have allowed for computers with less powerful, non-GLSL-capable graphics cards to compute the lighting. However, they would still have to have fairly powerful CPUs, so I don't think the trade-off was really worth it. This new lighting should have the advantages of being fully 3D and having shadows, as well as relying on the graphics card instead of the CPU. Note that this means that you'll have to have a GLSL-compatible computer, but the results so far are really great-looking (in my opinion)!

Note that everything's still a WIP, so I know that:

- The fire's not animating all of the time (well, now I know, haha),
- The lights in the underground area aren't really "there" (they're just light shafts - no actual light),
- The outdoor shadow's really blocky, etc., etc.

I'd appreciate feedback, though!

I've also changed the flashlight to a lantern. So.... Whoopee. That allows me to have a more point-light-like shadow set-up, which looks good, I think, and also plays better than a flashlight. The flashlight only illuminates in a single direction, which isn't very useful for an overhead game where you're looking from above the character, not from his viewpoint. I like the lantern, and I'd really like to explore more complex, underground, and otherwise dark and creepy environments.

Anyway, thanks a ton to everyone for your support and feedback. I really appreciate it.

P.S. I'm working a bit on my next SolarToon, mostly spriting and setting up a character rig after a computer mishap caused me to lose a lot of my work. :1

Oh, well.

Thanks for watching, anyway!