One feature people really like is being able to play with shaders and some inter-frame blending. That could be on a list of mod support.
That could be interesting, we intended to add a post-processing pipeline through https://github.com/manuelbua/libgdx-contribs/tree/master/postprocessing
Although, that library is 1. For GLES2 (No big deal) and 2. For LWJGL2 (Probably not a big deal to port). If it fails to port we may implement our own post-pipeline. As for shading entities, that could be defined in the entity class (via plugins) then extended from (via mods). In fact, this will most-likely be in the official release, it’s fairly simple.
I always thought the game would look better with a simple bloom shader, but I haven’t tried making one for it yet, since we’ve been busy with the new main menu, mod framework, and a few others.
I never thought bloom shaders to look good. I always disable.
One of the biggest reasons Roblox Studio is so bad is because you can create games, but the amount of oomph to run it is a main concern. Having low-level editing possibilities is great (you can’t edit pixel-level things :/). They revolve around the community creating games for them. People have to be super creative because in order to have a wall you need to draw a cube, and they don’t allow shaders, which the community needs badly.
Bloom works now, and it looks great!
in your face hydroque
I never said it would be a failed attempt. I don’t like the look of it is all. Thats why devs have the option to disable (that and performance reasons).
It definitely looks better now than before if you compare it, but the bloom makes the image a tad bit to blurry.
It looks great where the trees meet the sand, but the round/smooth plants on the lower left look as if somebody ran gaussian blur over it, it could also be because these plant-sprites have lower contrast than the trees and the other plants in the scene…
:persecutioncomplex:
Some parts look blurry because I set the the original image’s multiplier to something ridiculous like 0.6, I’ll see if I can improve it. All of this can be set in the graphics properties in the config file, and we might put a ‘bloom slider’ settings.
Nick and I have been talking about the settings system for plugins, where we’re going to allow plugins to specify which settings will be available to set in the .properties file, in-game or main menu. We may due some sort of [icode]@SettingsTarget(…)[/icode] for each variable, then use reflection to set / view the variables in each setting screen. Or we may just take a class and reflect on it’s variables, then group the settings like that.
Nick was too lazy to post the new video in the thread, so I guess I’ll reap the fake internet medals
Ka2g9tV9C-4
Alright, it’s been quite a while since I updated the devlog, so I’m just going to do a quick run-down of what’s been going on over the past few months.
First bit of exciting news is our artist, Cody, moved in to the apartment with me so we can work on the game together, which is a great help.
I have been working on a new and improved editor for the game and mods that should be super accessible and easy to use (I have already posted about this but it’s gone through many improvements). I added some new data types to help with particle editing, such as:
http://www.questica.net/Images/DevLogs/8-24-16/floattimelines2.gif
Also after a bunch of banging my head on a table I have live previews of various things in the editor:
http://www.questica.net/Images/DevLogs/8-24-16/particlepreview.gif
Many of the things I’ve worked on this year have been things I really should have done from the beginning. But I was a much less experienced programmer back then. Now I know better for the future! One of the things I should have done from the beginning is 16x16 tiles, which I implemented the other day. It makes the game look much more varied and alive:
http://www.questica.net/Images/DevLogs/8-24-16/smalltiles.gif
Last piece of news I will share today (I’ve been working on a lot of other things of course, but I will share those in separate posts) is the new inventory system. We already modified it so items could be different sizes, but I recently implemented a feature where items don’t have to take up all their slot spaces, and item images can overflow over the slot spaces they occupy. Hopefully it will make the inventory look more full and allow for better management of items.
http://www.questica.net/Images/DevLogs/8-24-16/sloteditting.gif
http://www.questica.net/Images/DevLogs/8-24-16/newinventory.gif
And, like always, all of these tools will be available to modders!
I like that inventory system! 
I’ve been super hard at work on the game even though school has started up! Lots of new features and improvements. I decided to start trying out straight-up video updates for the things I’ve been programming so here’s my first test video on the new features for the Content Editor:
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It’s been a little while since I’ve posted, but I’ve been hard at work on the new 3d stuff (We decided to just go ahead and make the game 3d! xD)
So let’s get right to it:
By default, all object rotate to face the camera wherever it may be, acting as billboards essentially. However, this doesn’t work for a lot of objects in the game, such as walls that need to appear flat, so I made a new resource loader that can load in different formats of boxes. Here is what the main castle wall image looks like and how it looks in the game:
[tr][td]resource file
http://questica.net/Images/DevLogs/10-26-16/box.png
[/td][td]in-game
http://questica.net/Images/DevLogs/10-26-16/ingamebox.png
[/td][/tr]
There is also an improved entity visualization system in the editor to better visualize 3d objects!
http://questica.net/Images/DevLogs/10-26-16/entityPreview.gif
you might have already noticed I implemented a new shadow system that works just like the big boys do it, now things like this are possible:
[tr][td]
http://questica.net/Images/DevLogs/10-26-16/3dworld.gif
[/td][td]
http://questica.net/Images/DevLogs/10-26-16/prettyscreenshot.png
[/td][/tr]
And last big update is I got reflections working in the new 3d environment. Only things left to get working again are mouse-picking, UI elements, and lighting.
These look absolutely stunning! (as always heheh)
About the 3D thing… it seems like a strange decision so late in dev :
Please be careful about 3D though, we don’t want that to come ruin the rest of the game! For example, my opinion is that your walls look totally out of place in that first screenshot (I think this is due to the fact that they seem oriented differently than the rest of the image; the trees and character are nearly seen from the side, whilst the walls are seen from higher, nearly in a top-down view fashion)…
J0
That screenshot at the bottom, awesome :o
The camera rotation is headache inducing tho, the nearest texture filter is making the texels fight 
and the framerate of the gif is contributing too.
Still awesome that the shadows are always correct while rotating the cam!
Looks awesome, is it a 3D world with sprites instead of models?
I love the look of it.
Wow I just found this thread. This is the most impressive 2D game i’ve ever seen
@J0:
It is a little strange this late, but this has always been a highly experimental project for me while I teach my self how to make a game essentially. Throughout the process I’ve learned how to do so many new things that I never would have learned if I kept using GameMaker to make small little platformers/tower-defense. I’ve spent way longer than I planned on this but I wouldn’t trade it for everything that I’ve learned in the process. I’ve always wanted to learn how to make 3d games and this seemed like a natural stepping stone after I decided to switch the game over to 3d rendering logic (to help with lighting, depth, and height effects). I started out by rotating the camera just a little bit to make sure the rendering was working, and after that I desperately wanted to go ahead and make the whole thing 3d!
@VaTTeRGeR:
The camera should only rotate pretty quickly and in 45 degree angles or so, I figure that won’t be too annoying. I think the main reason is because of the gif framerate xD
@SuperMario:
yeah pretty much most of the sprites will just rotate to always face the camera, but box shaped ones will stay the same orientation
@Archive:
Thanks man! I’m kinda surprised that I posted it just about a year ago now! ;D
And here’s a new video if you want to see how we came around to making the game more 3d 8)
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