posted in Projects Of Some Degree Of Interest

Last week wasn't concretely visual or anything... It was mainly an integration one.

There was also some graphical updates plus I've also made part of the options menu.

Graphics

First, let's talk about those graphics.

Previously, the skybox was of a solid colour. This was a placeholder skybox.

However, I thought about it and came to the conclusion that it was about time to have a better one.

I've searched on the internet and found this lovely gradient skybox, so I've added it to the game but with a bit of pizzazz.

Basically, I've added a screen-positioned grid pattern and make a big dot in it representing the sun.

I've loved it so much that I've decided to add it to my levels too!

Here's how it looked previously:

And here's how it looks now:

I personally like how this looks.

Also, previously the directional light that lights the scenes weren't following the colour palette, so I've added a bit of script to help with that, hence the different lighting...

Integrations

I've mainly had to link up the menus and the actual first level of the game.

To do this I've used the Scene loading functions of Unity. I've added a nice loading screen with a working loading bar that fills up to the loading process' actual progression.

There is, however, a bit of a hiccup while loading the level. The game window actually freezes and seems like it stopped working...

This might be related to the loading process of the Music Player I've previously made: while the process loads in a different thread, the first load is done on the main process. This makes the game hang up until the first song actually loading...

This is something I'm currently working on.

Options

Secondly, I've also added a bunch of drivers to the options screen. Let's take a look at each tab...

General

This is where general options will be. Right now, there's only a dropdown to switch languages, but eventually, there might be more options if it's needed.

Graphics

This is where the meat is.

Here, the player can set many types of graphical settings, like resolution and quality settings.

There are six quality presets: Very Low, Low, Medium, High, Very High and AESTHETIC (Ultra). There's also a seventh one, called Custom, where the player can set each graphical settings separately.

As of now, this setting doesn't do anything, as it is only a driver.

Audio

This is where the player can set all its audio configs.

Mainly this is where the player can adjust any volume sliders. There's also another section called "Others" where other audio settings can be set. As of right now, there's only a toggle indicating whenever or not the VaporMaker is active. There might be more options in the future.

That's about it for options: the other tabs are still in development.

Minor Updates

Reflection Probes! Now there's a bunch of reflection probes in special rooms. This means that lights will feel more natural and specular materials will look better.

Shader optimizations. I've optimized some shaders and the game builds quicker. (Speaking of build...)

I've created a really dirty private build of the game. While still building, there was a lot of bugs and isn't really presentable. The important thing is that it builds properly and without any hiccups.

I've fixed some bugs with state loading and overall scene progression. Previously the level scene was completely separate from the menu screen, meaning that a lot of states appeared twice between the scenes. Because these are supposed to be singletons, many of the level's controller were removed, breaking everything.



Next week

Next week is going to be the continuation of the integration. I mainly need to fix my loading screen hiccup problems and many other things. Afterwards, I might need to make an actual progression between each level. As of right now, there's only one level with no exits.

Afterwards, it's gonna be boss time!

And then after it's the usual suspects...

I gotta say, with all that integration, I'll be soon ready to actually publish some kind of demo or test build by the end of December.