It's a bummer when you're working on a project and your development time is limited. I find myself in that position a lot lately, and one of the best remedies I have is to keep my mind focused, even when I can't actually spend time working.
I usually pick a problem I'm working on and spend time thinking about it while I'm doing other mindless tasks, like cleaning the dishes or taking out the trash. If I have time, making sketches of things can also help.
That way, when I get back to my dev machine, I'm ready to get to work again - rather than spending a bunch of time reorienting myself.
Psychonauts 2 was a bit longer than I thought it was - which is great - but I'm on the last bit now and with that game almost behind me, I had to get a new one started. I mentioned this the other day - that game is Life Is Strange: True Colors.
I'm a pretty big fan of the series now, even though my play-through of the second game is on hiatus for now. They're really the closest thing you can get to a playable show without the entire thing being pre-recorded FMV. I like that they aren't that though, because it's fun to take things in at your own pace, and explore the game's world on your own. It also feels less on-rails, even when it's not.
So anyway, the latest game, True Colors, is pretty good so far. The story is interesting and the characters are believable. I've actually had some pretty good laughs at the humorous bits.
It's a little disappointing that the game runs at only 30 fps on my Xbox Series X, but you stop noticing it after a while (as long as you don't play something at 60+fps just before jumping in). It's a beautiful game, though.
Between this and Psychonauts 2, I've been getting a heaping helping of incredible Unreal Engine games lately.
I'll have more to say about this game later, I'm sure. For now though, being only a couple of hours in, I'm impressed.
I've been digging into the actual game-y parts of this project lately... in my notebook.
In the meantime, I've been working on improving my shader skills, and have employed a few of them in the existing parts of this project, which means - you guessed it - another update to my background imagery.
You can't really tell from the GIF, but I'm employing a shader to blur the entire background, since it's not meant to interfere much with the water, which is where the game takes place.
I've also re-worked the clouds once more, adjusting the way the blending works (which is still a procedural surface, created from a few layers of cloud noise adding/multiplying), so it now relies on a shader to blend the alpha, which gives me more control over the thickness and edge definition.
I'd like to add some more functionality to that later, so I can change the cloud coverage on the fly, and maybe add some sort of fakey depth effect. We'll see.
One final note: the speed changes in the simulation shown in the GIF are being done in-game, and not as a post edit. I added a debug button that, when pressed, speeds up virtually everything in the game (save for a few un-pictured elements). I might leave that in as a feature, if it proves useful (and practical to keep) in the final game.
Join me as I juggle three games - Psychonauts 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Life Is Strange: True Colors - all at once!
To be fair, I'm just about done with Psychonauts 2. Still, I'll probably try to complete it and collect everything once I've beat the story, so... plenty of ground to cover still.
I'm pretty good at creating shaders in Blender, and I've made a few decent things in Unreal Engine as well. In GameMaker, shaders remain elusive. Why?
Well, Blender and Unreal both have intuitive methods for creating shaders. Blender has a node-based system where you connect different pieces of the shader program together and, based on how you do it, different effects are achieved. Unreal is similar, with a system called Blueprint.
GameMaker Studio 2, on the other hand, has none of this. If you want to create shaders in GameMaker, you have to either code them by hand, or find one that someone else has coded, and tailor it to fit your project. This can become especially difficult if you're not very familiar with GLSL, or you're trying to work from an example that was made with a different platform in mind.
I appreciate that it makes me think a bit more about what I'm doing on those other systems, and how to accomplish the things I take for granted elsewhere. I'm not very good at it yet, though!
I'm still working through Mass Effect: Andromeda, which I've been playing in between other games, as a follow-up to finishing the original trilogy remaster.
I've been trying to keep an open mind about this game and so far, it's been better than I remembered it, with just a few annoyances here and there. I've gotten past the point where I quit playing the first time!
But that means I've now met the Angara for the second time and boy, I hate how these guys look. The male Angara look lion-ish and sort of serviceable, but the female Angara - Why do they look like that? Are they... cross-eyed?
It also really bugs me that the Angara are so bow-legged. They look awkward when they walk around, and it's hard to suspend my disbelief through all this.
I think I just expect more from the creators of the original trilogy than this. The Angara look like a first draft for an alien race in a game with a fraction of the budget this game had. They aren't bad, per se - just not up to snuff with what I know BioWare is capable of.
Anyway, I continue on... slightly disturbed, but undeterred.
I've been picking my way through Psychonauts 2 ever since it came out, and aside from gathering all the game's collectibles, I'm finally nearing the end of the game. It's been a fun ride so far, and I feel like the premise of the game - going into people's minds to help them sort out hang-ups - has aged extremely well.
I really like this game. The story is fun, the levels are diverse and interesting, the art and music are top-notch, and the heart of the game is just genuinely sweet. This game is a triumph for Double Fine!
After a couple of days goofing around with this, I think it's in a pretty decent place. It now has dynamic clouds, drawn in 3D, and a moon that has phases!
I might come back and clean things up later, but for now, this is fine. My project doesn't even have anything to do with any of this stuff, it's just for the background!
