Lacuna Passage - Devlog #30 - The Power of Unity Plugins Round 3

We are making this a semi-regular segment as we continue to use all the great tools available on the Unity Asset Store to complete Lacuna Passage. Check our previous posts for more plugin recommendations:

Round 1 and Round 2

Physics To Animation Tool - by Drunken Lizard Games

We actually experimented with using this for the rebuild of TimeFrame that we are putting together in our free time, but now we are considering using it in Lacuna Passage as well. It's a great way to "capture" a physics event and replay it exactly the same every time. In the past we have had to use complicated animation exports from 3ds Max or just let our physics events react differently every time with Unity's physic simulations. Not only is this a simpler process, it also greatly improves your game's performance since it doesn't require physics calculations.

Mega Scatter - by Chris West

I have been using this plugin in tons of great places. Most notably, for mass-placing rocks around our Mars terrain. This is another very polished plugin from the makers of MegaFiers, the Unity mesh deformation system. The scattering options are extremely customizable and their user support is excellent. The only downside we have found is that large scenes start to present scattering issues including slow down, but this system is perfect for scattering objects around medium and small scenes.

Shader Forge Beta - by Joachim Holmér

We already mentioned this one in a previous post back when it was still in Alpha, but now it is in Beta and available on the Asset Store officially. I can't say enough good things about Shader Forge. The developer is extremely active in improving this visual shader editor and we use it for all the shaders in all of our projects now. This isn't just a tool, it's an investment in the quality of your game's art. If you come up with an awesome shader you could even put it up on the Asset Store yourself!

VPaint: Advanced Vertex Painting - by Valkyrie Entertainment

This plugin is super useful when combined with Shader Forge. We are working on some shaders that utilize vertex colors for texture blending and with this vertex painting tool we can experiment with these blend settings without having to swap back and forth between Unity and our 3D modeling applications. As usual, some of the best plugins are the ones that save you time and VPaint is no exception. 

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #26 - Development Since GDC

After returning from GDC last month we have come back to development with a renewed vigor. I met some great people and attended some great sessions, all of which have inspired the direction we will take from here on out. Today I want to discuss some of our current objectives.

One of our big focuses right now is to polish up our dynamic music system. Over the last several months we have determined that our music solution might be a valuable addition to the Unity Asset Store. The system we have designed solves a unique problem that we think other developers might be able to benefit from (you can see an early version of the system in this devlog video we posted a while back). With the announcement during GDC that FMOD will be free for indie developers with small budgets we were worried that our system might become redundant, but after looking at the pros and cons of using FMOD we are convinced that our system provides a simpler and more streamlined workflow for developers looking to utilize dynamic music stems without the need for an external editor. We will likely charge a small amount for our scripts on the Asset Store to see if we can subsidize part of our development cost with the income.

Some of you may have heard of the game Extrasolar which utilizes a non-real-time photography mechanic. The developers of Extrasolar gave a talk at GDC called “Game Design at 0.0003 FPS” where they detailed some of the specifics of their system and it got me thinking of ways we could benefit from this approach. We obviously still have to maintain a decent frame rate for the exploration elements of Lacuna Passage (which the player can influence by selecting different quality settings), but when the player chooses to take a photo we have some leeway. We can render a higher quality screenshot from a secondary camera with more image effects than the primary game camera at the cost of only an extra half second of rendering time.

These are some examples of non-real-time photos taken from the game Extrasolar. Click to see the full resolution.

For those with high-end gaming rigs, taking a photo will take almost no time at all and the quality will be identical or even slightly better than the quality of their game-view camera. Those with lower-end hardware running on low quality settings will still get the same high-quality photographs just with a slightly longer rendering time (still less than a second). Since we don’t have to worry about rendering multiple frames per second when taking a photo we can create a unified quality for all photos for all players. This is especially useful when we look at our VR implementation. Obviously we can’t take a screenshot of the view straight from the Rift or we get a distorted, double-vision photo. Below you will see what a photo taken from the Rift looks like with our new secondary camera system.

Top image is the view from the Rift cameras. Bottom image is the photo taken from that view. Click to see full resolution.

We have also been working to improve our asset pipeline so our artists can produce content faster and more efficiently. An important part of this process is our Asset Previewer. Our Asset Previewer is actually a small separate Unity project that contains all of our shaders from the game and some tools for viewing assets that help to ensure that when they are put in the game they will fit with the scale and style of all the other existing assets. This is extremely useful for us since we cannot afford to purchase Unity Pro licenses for all of our artists. They can preview assets with this project in the free version of Unity and I can import them into the main project later.

Recently we added a feature that lets us export animated gifs straight from the Asset Previewer to create seamless turntables of our assets. Between these gifs and other screenshots we can get a great idea of what an asset will look like before we ever need to place it in the game. Here are some examples.

The weeks since GDC have been extremely productive for us and we hope to keep up this pace. If there is anything else you’d like to see about our development just let us know in the comments!

Lacuna Passage - Devlog #9 - The Power of Unity Plugins

One of the things I love about Unity is the immense amount of community support it has garnered. There really is a wealth of resources at your fingertips. The Asset Store is an excellent place to find some of these resources and we have utilized several packages quite extensively while creating Lacuna Passage. This week I thought we might share some of our favorites.

Ultimate FPS Camera - by VisionPunk

I can’t recommend this script package highly enough. If you are creating any first-person game at all then you owe it to yourself to at least check it out. This package adds some incredible dynamic camera movement that makes everything feel much more organic. And if you are making a shooter then you will have some excellent customizations available for any kind of gun-play you can imagine.

Unistorm - by Black Horizon Studios

I’ve had to make some fairly significant changes to the Unistorm scripts to get exactly what I was looking for, but they were an excellent starting point and still serve as the backbone for the day/night cycle in the game. There is decent documentation to help you along also.

GlareFX Dirt Lens Effect - by Red Dot Games

You might argue that these effects are a bit cliche now after seeing them in games like Battlefield 3, but they fit perfectly in a game like Lacuna Passage. We always want the player to feel somewhat trapped and enclosed in their stuffy space helmet and these glare effects go a long ways towards achieving that. They have some great customization options that allow you to make the effects as bombastic or as subtle as you desire.

Hard Surface Shaders Free - by Bruno Rime

If you don’t want to bother with writing your own shaders for metal or plastic, then no worries. This shader pack has you covered. I originally considered using them as a placeholder until we completed our own, but there really isn’t anything else I need. If you want even more out of your shaders there is a Pro version on the asset store as well.

ats Colormap ULTRA Terrain Shader - by forst

This shader is absolutely instrumental to the look and feel of Lacuna Passage. The terrain in the game is one of the most important visual elements and this shader makes a world of difference. With the improved terrain materials system in Unity 4.0 the shader is easier to use than ever before. I described more about our terrain creation methods in a previous devlog.

Probuilder 2.0 - by SixBySeven Studio

Most of my level design experience was gained in Hammer Editor and the Unreal Editor so Brushes and BSPs were a huge part of my prototyping workflow. With Probuilder I’m able to get some of that familiarity back and quickly generate graybox test environments directly inside of Unity. Probuilder is honestly flexible enough that I can see how some projects might utilize it for their actual game geometry and not just for testing.

Playmaker - by Hutong Games

Last but certainly not least is Playmaker. I don’t think Lacuna Passage would be possible without it. I’ve never been a strong programmer, but Playmaker allows me to create game logic quickly and easily. Almost 90% of the game will be done entirely in Playmaker and the other 10% is mostly just hooking it up to our other plugins and miscellaneous scripts. For example, we wanted to have the colors of our dust particle effects managed by the Unistorm day/night cycle so I simply inserted Playmaker global variables into the Unistorm scripts with very little effort. This visual scripting system is incredibly powerful and I think it would be a mistake for even master programmers to overlook it.