Having to hold the mouse button to carry a book and click-drag to open doors is annoying
A throwback to a more extensive, Amnesia inspired interaction system that was scrapped. For the time being, that'll likely stay, albeit with an option to not have to hold the mouse button.
Having some indicator on which doors I can open would be nice
There's a sound prompt at present, but we'll extend the interaction icons to indicate what doors are interactable, as well as indicate the need to drag doors open.
add a gamma slider
Already present, although the implementation needs some work. We'll probably move to a generalized brightness slider that shifts a number of grading parameters between two profiles to try and alleviate some of the washout.
The monster's footstep sounds are a bit much
The animation for the monster needs to change.
Agreed. We have an improved version that'll make it into the next test.
I saw the map but only because you told me where it was.
We'll be adding local lighting fixtures to draw attention to both the objectives board and the map, and a short textual description of the game loop in the menu.
You should really finish your shelf name list.
Shelf placement and category distribution are still in flux. Once finalized, those will be taken care of.
If you gave the player a flashlight, you could kill a lot of the point lights
We had discussed a flashlight and will likely be adding one. Establishing a decent night ambience while maintaining the degree of visibility required by the game loop is proving difficult. I like the idea of recharging though.
Unfortunately, the point lights have to stay. URP's directional lightmaps are... not great. They are providing next to no specular contribution, which effectively removes normal mapping without additional fill lights.
Maybe allow the player to throw a book
Already present to a degree, but limited to distracting the AI. We'll look into stunning.
In closing, thanks for taking the time. The constructive criticism is really helpful.
The more something in a game can be related to the real world, the higher the expectations we have for what it should look like.
Agreed. Small props and set dressing are still to come, and will resolve this to a degree. We just have to balance the relative importance of what we add. 120MB, including engine, for a game utilizing baked lighting and targeting a reasonable texel density doesn't leave a lot of room for variety.
Was it a different level design
Yep. WebGL projects are effectively single-threaded without SIMD. Anything up to API contact is quite expensive (2 - 2.5x slower than desktop, before considering SIMD). A lot of the means of optimizing rendering come with a notable CPU overhead, and where cutting into our frame-time. Compounding this is the fact that URP is a simple forward renderer, so you pretty much incur the cost of geometry for each light in its vicinity. While URP allegedly has directional lightmaps, in practice there is no specular contribution from baked indirect lighting, requiring a number of dynamic fill lights for normal maps to have any contribution.
So, entirely new assets as to allow ~95% of a frame to be drawn with 3 materials, and a layout with shorter sight-lines. Not as pretty, but passable performance. TLDR; I wouldn't recommend WebGL for anything more than the simplest of games. We're pretty much calling this a learning experience, and getting it out of the door before moving onto a more serious desktop project.
maybe you could have one button throw the item and the other to drop it.
That's actually in already. Right clicking while carrying a book throws it, and will distract the enemy if it isn't in a pursuit state. Crouching/sprinting, the effect that has on sound propagation, lights effect on visibility etc; That all needs to be covered in a brief tutorial. We'll be looking into stunning the AI, though.
putting it lower should be all you need
For the next test, we'll see how people fair with a short textual tutorial. If that's not enough, then this, definitely.
do you mean signs within the actual environment
Yeah, colored indicators for the various sections, coupled with illuminated exit signs. A proper map will be included as well, along with local lighting in the start room to make it and the objectives board more noticeable.
Maybe define a limited array of colours in the shader and only generate and store an index value
That's certainly possible for the interactable books, not so much for the static ones though since GPU instancing is significantly more expensive than static batching in WebGL. Unfortunately, the overlay approach would reduce visual quality since you're effectively limited to shifting values, not hue. One could look into multi-channel masks, or curve based albedo reconstruction, but that's pretty time consuming to get right and possibly outside of our performance budget.
We actually have some book variations (both in shape and color), and there is still space in that texture atlas, so we could offer at least 8 design variations. We just forgot to randomize the mesh selection for objective spawns... Would you be happy with that?
First, thanks for taking the time. It really is hugely appreciated.
if you go up close to the windows in the starting room and look up, you can see the default bright daytime Unity skybox above the darkness...
That's just something that still needs work. We scrapped the initial level due to the performance constraints of URP + WebGL, so everything is still rather rough.
I have to echo the complaint about needing to hold the mouse button to do things.
What would you rather have? Simple keypress, added to inventory type of thing, or something similar, just without the holding? Interaction was initially a larger part of the game, think Amnesia, but was scaled back when we discovered how constrained our development would be.
figure out what it means to "return" a book except I'm retarded and blind because there already is one, but high up
You're not the first, friend. Even within the team, not all of us noticed it. Something more prominent, or closer to eye height, as well as a brief rundown of what is expected definitely seems necessary.
I think at the very least, failing to mark the exit(s) is a serious fire code violation
Noted and already discussed. That'll get taken care of with set dressing.
I have no idea how complex this would be, so it might be a hell of a lot of work for little gain, but have you looked into the possibility of giving those books random names and rendering the names on the spines?
Another discussion we've had. Unfortunately, the problem is the performance overhead. The best we could hope for, relying heavily on static batching, is an additional UV channel and say maybe 20 or so titles. The other option is to move away from conventional/readable names. We're leaning towards the latter. Thoughts?
There is a quite interesting video by the same name.
But, why worry. The resemblance is striking - she's the obvious casting choice for a Norwegian king from the 900's.
local search engines do not return results for the Washington Post and the New York Times
Not without its perks, though.
On a side note, part of that is how it is being played. The WebGL release is a little lighter than the editor preview. Running it fullscreen, without the lighter Unity UI and white windows titlebar to interfere with lower contrast areas, improves visibility as well.
reason why they don’t “gatekeep” harder anymore...
In a nutshell. They're fair-weather friends. This kind of catch-all affiliation lasts up until the group gets what it wants. Then the gatekeeping begins as they squabble over which of them actually gets it.
obviously something that 19th-century eugenicists and literal Nazis could only have dreamt of
Tribalism is tribalism. Look to Africa. With little to no intellectual basis for eugenics, they have spent millennia visiting inhumanities which would make the Nazi's blush upon whichever group drew the short straw that time around.
is even more extensive than it is for “Blacks”, elsewhere
I wouldn't say extensive, just more lenient in what passes for "indigenous". And I'd wager that is largely as a result of the policy being dictated by hand-wringing leftists, afraid of being called racist. If the abo's had legitimate political power, it would devolve into full blown tribalism and gatekeeping soon enough.
"There can only be one" sounds about right.
Yeah. Differences in demographics... Like Africa being riddled with AIDS and Tuberculosis? That'll improve your prognosis.
Fire in the hole
Pleasure.
If there's a particular domain you're especially skilled in, or one that you have a particular interest in, I'd have a look around and see if there are any smaller companies catering to it first. Certain industries are more likely to require bespoke solutions.
From there, maybe join an open source project or two. In many cases, "impressive" projects are beyond a single developer, or a realistic time frame. Collaboration is also great motivation, and if the project is successful, it's good exposure.
Networking, I'm afraid.
Long story short, I emigrated just before the pandemic hit to take care of a parent. Decided to hang around, with the pandemic and all, and needed employment so I reached out to some folks I knew. Got lucky.
Now, despite not being fond of where I'm living, I'm actually reluctant to leave as I haven't enjoyed work this much since... shit, the honeymoon period of my gamedev career.
Boutique software shops tend to specialize, and be picky about who they hire given the small team size. Regardless of networking, proof of work/ability in the domain you'll be working in is a must.
This. I quit working for a large multi-national company and took a position in a small boutique software development company. Pays well, work hours are flexible being largely performance based, office culture is really relaxed. There isn't an HR department. All employees asides from admin are male.
All the best to you and yours.
the propaganda itself can't be blamed completely
This, coupled with your sequence of events that reads as sympathetic, is what I take issue with.
Just like the BLM/CRT folk who are so convinced that institutional racism is to blame for everything, you're wittingly or unwittingly framing a lifetime violent criminal, who committed mass murder, as a victim just to satisfy your own confirmation bias.
It is a romantic comedy.
Lol.
Sure there is. Old games still sell well. "Retro" games sell well. Apolitical AAA titles sell well. Fan-service laden eastern titles sell well. Shit, cosmetic DLC for characters that don't resemble degenerates sells well. Folks not arguing with normies on a normie platform is not proof to the contrary. Assuming you don't outright fail with marketing, good games sell.
The biggest issue is funding. Outside of retro and low-poly style games, where product differentiation is a problem, asset creation costs a lot. More often than not, that means external stakeholders, and all of the influence that comes with them.
While I agree with some of what you're saying, I'd rather not absolve the piece of shit who ran over children during a Christmas parade of guilt/accountability. I certainly wouldn't paint him as a victim, further normalizing such behavior.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Why did I think this was about Sarah Jessica Parker.
Right?
According to the documentation, directional lightmapping is supported. I haven't tried HDRP, but in practice, the contribution in URP is negligible in scenes with a lot of soft indirect lighting on desktop was well. The built in lightmapping is quite poor in general. We considered a 3rd party plugin that resolves these issues, but given the overall project constraints, such investments are arguably a matter of diminishing returns.
To clarify, if you don't have to hold LMB to carry a book, tapping the bottom right corner wouldn't be a problem, right?
We discussed this at some point, but the concern was people missing the tutorial. I personally really like that kind of immersive, in world explanation. It's just a bit of a gamble. We could include a tutorial both in the menu, and on the desk.
We can extend those variations to both since it's just a matter of UV coords, although the actual arrangement of the books on the shelves may need to remain constant (as they current are)