I’ve given the shadow system some much needed love, so I figured I’d throw up a quick demo. It looks considerably better than the previous version. Here’s what changed:
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Removed the horizontal “swing” effect by skewing every vertex in a sprite based on its position relative to each light source, rather than skewing all vertices by a uniform value. This also has the added effect of allowing shadows to appear on both sides of a building when standing in front of it.
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Added a transparency lerp when close to the object’s pivot (vertically). This eliminated the vertical “swing” effect, and corrected issues with large objects (the inn) not being tall enough to properly overlap a large light source.
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Blur added. This also corrected an issue where the tops of fence posts appeared warped.
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Added a configurable vertical shadow offset for each sprite, which makes tree shadows look significantly better.
Web player (requires Unity Web Player)
Standalone
I’ve got a basic demo up and running now, so I’d like to share. There’s a lot of work left to do, but it’s coming along!
Demo
Web player (requires Unity Web Player)
Standalone
Major Completed Tasks
- World builder tool
- Sprite builder tool for generating sprite effects (article coming soon)
- Zone importer wizard in Unity
- Imports all assets generated by world builder into current scene
- Collision detection import from Tiled
- Actor importer
- Automatically slices sprites
- Generates mecanim animations (directional movement, attack, cast, death, etc)
- Basic lighting system
- Time of day color
- Angled shadows (needs revamp)
- Positional shadows
- Multi-direction water flow shader, custom water flow vertex painter tool
- Basic weather system (rain, snow, water ripples)
- Polygon sound source system for large objects (rivers)
Coming soon
- Waterdepth/Transparency shader for all actors
- Shadow blur
- Redone shadow system (no more ‘swinging’, better skew method)
- Consolidated collision detection (article coming soon)
- Free camera mode (zoom, pan)
- UI
- Dialog system (using Articy Draft 2)
For the past few days, I’ve been spending most of my time in Photoshop, designing my first zone, “Tambrook”. Not everything is done yet, but I’m pretty satisfied with what I’ve completed. Sadly, I haven’t even started working on the inn yet, and that will likely be the biggest challenge.
All of these designs were created using graphics from the various versions of the RPGMaker series. Special thanks to Celianna, as I’ve used a lot of her resources as well.
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I’m pretty happy with my shop screens now, so I thought I’d share. The only thing I don’t really like is the “coins” icon in the top-left. I’ll be changing that slightly in the future.
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Ryamar is all about crafting. You won’t receive equipment drops like in most games these days. Instead you’ll receive various crafting materials, either by defeating enemies or harvesting raw materials. As such, I’ve dreamed up a pretty extensive crafting system, involving the concept of elemental infusion.
None of this is really finalized yet, and I’m still working out all of the kinks, but I’ve completed some rough draft interface screens. I’m currently planning on breaking the game up into chapters, so that I can release it in small portions and not all at once. Because of all the possibilities and potential complexity revolving around the crafting system, elemental infusion may or may not be included in the first chapter.
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Although they’re just mockups, I’d like to show off some of my rough drafts for a UI. I’ve decided to wait for Unity 4.6 to start dabbling in UI work, as the new UI system will be available. I can’t wait!
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A few weeks ago, I was doing a little digital housekeeping, and I stumbled across some of my old screenshots and mockups from the original incarnation of Ryamar. I suppose it must have been about four years ago that I first started dreaming up gameplay ideas and tinkering with implementation concepts.
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