Grzegorz Bednorz (the composer for Taiji) just released an in-depth video essay covering much of what we did for the soundtrack in Taiji, as well as similar musical techniques in other games. This was originally supposed to go out as part of the 3rd Anniversary celebrations, but
Grzegorz Bednorz (the composer for Taiji) just released an in-depth video essay covering much of what we did for the soundtrack in Taiji, as well as similar musical techniques in other games. This was originally supposed to go out as part of the 3rd Anniversary celebrations, but it was delayed for additional polish.
Hey, it's Matthew, the creator of Taiji, It’s hard to believe that it’s already been three whole years since Taiji originally released. I feel infinitely old just thinking about it. But in order to celebrate this doomed occasion, Gregory and I recorded a podcast in which we answe
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been three whole yearssince Taiji originally released. I feel infinitely old just thinking about it. But in order to celebrate this doomed occasion, Gregory and I recorded a podcast in which we answered many audience questions about the game, as well as some of our own! This is a MASSIVE chonker of a podcast, weighing in at nearly 4 hours. Think of it as making up for that we didn’t do any of these the prior two years!
I recommend making it a routine to listen a bit each day. And hey, I won’t criticize you if your finger slips and you press the 2x speed button. But do be sure to watch, as some of it is quite a bit more visual! If you still refuse to watch the whole thing (despite all the pain I went through to edit it :sad_emoji.png:), the visual part is clearly labeled with an audio indicator, so you can just watch that part.
Also look forward to later this week, when Gregory will be releasing a lengthy video essay about Music and Game Design, which includes many interesting details about what we did with the music composition and design in Taiji, as well as similar approaches in other games. I have seen an early cut of it, and I highly recommend it if you’re interested in Taiji or Game Design in general. I’ll make a new post here when that’s up, but it also wouldn’t hurt to subscribe to Gregory’s YouTube for more timely updates on that!
-Changed the stick tutorial icons (unified with Switch) -Slowed tutorial animations to prevent the idea of hammering on the buttons -Fixed the fading behavior of a lantern in the Mine -Added some missing music layers in the Mine area
-Changed the stick tutorial icons (unified with Switch) -Slowed tutorial animations to prevent the idea of hammering on the buttons -Fixed the fading behavior of a lantern in the Mine -Added some missing music layers in the Mine area
-Optimizations to marking particles, floor puzzles now use a simpler marking particle system (since it is easy to have many of them in that case) -Fixed marking particles on floor puzzles sometimes being rendered even though the puzzle was faded out -Fixed a temporal discontinuit
-Optimizations to marking particles, floor puzzles now use a simpler marking particle system (since it is easy to have many of them in that case) -Fixed marking particles on floor puzzles sometimes being rendered even though the puzzle was faded out -Fixed a temporal discontinuity in the tile marking pulse that happened every 1000 seconds -Fixed being able to click on floor puzzles even if the player character was not standing on them -Fixed potential graphics bugs at edge of screen when camera is very zoomed out and moving -Fixed map station puzzles sometimes being active for one frame when they come on screen -Fixed non-floor puzzles remaining active offscreen if the player was standing at them when they loaded an other save -Tweaked some camera zones in the Bonus area to avoid jerky camera motions -Tweaked the solve color on a few bonus area puzzles to not be the same as the white symbols -Tweaked the camera zoom intensity at the hub area so that cutscene there would be more aesthetic -Fixed small graphics error in the bottom right corner of the screen during 100% ending cutscene
-Fixed zoom mode being broken on easternmost Mill area puzzle (which used panel.id #0, which we were erroneously treating as no panel) -Fixed fog particles sometimes being scaled down or missing when camera zooms in very close -Controls Listing widget no longer creates new materi
-Fixed zoom mode being broken on easternmost Mill area puzzle (which used panel.id #0, which we were erroneously treating as no panel) -Fixed fog particles sometimes being scaled down or missing when camera zooms in very close -Controls Listing widget no longer creates new material instances on language change
-Zoom mode now triggers for unpowered floor puzzles, as this seems better than previous behavior -Fixed a null reference that could happen if the player toggled zoom while in the grace zone around a floor puzzle -Fixed ending graphics hiding prematurely under some circumstances a
-Zoom mode now triggers for unpowered floor puzzles, as this seems better than previous behavior -Fixed a null reference that could happen if the player toggled zoom while in the grace zone around a floor puzzle -Fixed ending graphics hiding prematurely under some circumstances as credits appear -Fixed a situation where reset tutorial wouldn't show when another solved floor puzzle was on screen -Tweaked zoom mode behavior slightly on eastern side of Gardens area
-Fixed bug that would skip the first map unlock animation in each play session -Fixed spark particles in Ruins permanently disabling when the area is culled -Fixed smoke particles in Mine permanently disabling when the area is culled -Fixed area complete torch particles obviously
-Fixed bug that would skip the first map unlock animation in each play session -Fixed spark particles in Ruins permanently disabling when the area is culled -Fixed smoke particles in Mine permanently disabling when the area is culled -Fixed area complete torch particles obviously starting their animation when coming on screen (Still seems to happen sometimes, but I can't determine why) -Map was still rendering when inactive, if the player had not looked at the map yet this session -Orbiting bridges in Endgame area no longer updated when they are off-screen -Optimizations to rendering and CPU for the black ending -Fix a bit of flickering architecture in the Plateaus area -Fixed some collision in the dry river bed
-Finalized Korean language translation (including storefront page and achievements) -Added a grace zone around pressure plates where zoom stays enabled to reduce weird camera movement between puzzles -Fix some small visual bugs in Orchard with sorting and incorrect puzzle scaling
-Finalized Korean language translation (including storefront page and achievements) -Added a grace zone around pressure plates where zoom stays enabled to reduce weird camera movement between puzzles -Fix some small visual bugs in Orchard with sorting and incorrect puzzle scaling -Fix potential jittering graphics issues (only seen on Switch, so far) due to scaled or oddly aligned sprites
-Machine Translated Korean language support (Proper translation is still WIP, didn't want to ship yet, but many other bugs needed fixing and it's easier to just ship it than cut it out) -Moving platform puzzles were _still_ interactable (been broken since June, my most embarrassi
-Machine Translated Korean language support (Proper translation is still WIP, didn't want to ship yet, but many other bugs needed fixing and it's easier to just ship it than cut it out) -Moving platform puzzles were _still_ interactable (been broken since June, my most embarrassing bug lifetime to date) -Fixed pre endgame ripple effects which had been broken by recent optimizations -Fixed culling being too slow in white ending (fixing the latching fast cull bug caused this one) -Fixed issue where camera could zoom out so far that the edges of the screen would be garbled -Fixed tutorial hints sometimes being cut off by the edge of the screen if in zoom mode -Fixed deculling issues in Ruins and Gardens -Fixed issue where floor puzzles could be culled when they were still slightly on the bottom edge of the screen (wasn't accounting for raised tiles in the bounds)
-Fixed race conditions sometimes causing areas (notably Shrine) to fail to decull in ending cutscene -Some optimizations to culling behavior in the ending cutscene -Fixed 60 fps limit from the loading screen persisting into gameplay on first startup -Fixed fast cull state persist
-Fixed race conditions sometimes causing areas (notably Shrine) to fail to decull in ending cutscene -Some optimizations to culling behavior in the ending cutscene -Fixed 60 fps limit from the loading screen persisting into gameplay on first startup -Fixed fast cull state persisting after camera warps
I somehow failed to post the build notes for the prior build (12.04.2024.2), so they are reproduced below:
-Fix framerate limit not being applied at startup -Disable map completely when not visible (previously was still being submitted for rendering with 0 alpha)
-Updated from Unity 2021.3.8 to Unity 2021.3.39 (most recent version that didn't run into a stuttering bug with the loading screen) Shouldn't have any particular effect, but was needed for Switch development -Optimizations to rendering of black ending effects -Fixed small visual
-Updated from Unity 2021.3.8 to Unity 2021.3.39 (most recent version that didn't run into a stuttering bug with the loading screen) Shouldn't have any particular effect, but was needed for Switch development -Optimizations to rendering of black ending effects -Fixed small visual deculling bug near Ruins -Fixed an issue that could cause the camera to move strangely when launching the game for the first time
-Fixed issue where gamepad auto-aim was broken for endgame puzzles (sorry I missed this one since the puzzle panel optimizations in June T_T) -Fixed bug where some endgame effects were framerate dependent and would break at high framerates
-Fixed issue where gamepad auto-aim was broken for endgame puzzles (sorry I missed this one since the puzzle panel optimizations in June T_T) -Fixed bug where some endgame effects were framerate dependent and would break at high framerates
-Added indicator to load game menu showing endings the player has achieved (this will show nothing on old saves) -Fixed load times causing session playtime metric to go negative, which could also cause the pause menu to be inaccessible for many seconds. -Fixed a visual deculling
-Added indicator to load game menu showing endings the player has achieved (this will show nothing on old saves) -Fixed load times causing session playtime metric to go negative, which could also cause the pause menu to be inaccessible for many seconds. -Fixed a visual deculling bug between the Ruins and Hub areas -Fixed "<<" option being default selected the first time the load game menu is initialized
-Fixed bugs where the ending music and sound effects were tied the opposite volume setting -Most sound effects now duck gradually in volume when pausing (previously this happened instantly) -Fixed bug where locale would get incorrectly set to USA on new game, causing auto-select
-Fixed bugs where the ending music and sound effects were tied the opposite volume setting -Most sound effects now duck gradually in volume when pausing (previously this happened instantly) -Fixed bug where locale would get incorrectly set to USA on new game, causing auto-select language to fail -Added a persistent Error.log, which will log any error messages permanently -Fixed some small bugs that were caused if the player opened the menu very shortly after starting a new game -Fixed a small click in some endgame audio -Fixed where I had accidentally enabled the cheap Z fade transition (meant for Switch only)
-Removed the Unity splash, which due to unfortunate interactions with the loading screen, was delaying loading the main scene -Fixed a gate in Mine which didn't close when unpowered -Various performance and rendering optimizations for the pause menu -Compressed some textures in t
-Removed the Unity splash, which due to unfortunate interactions with the loading screen, was delaying loading the main scene -Fixed a gate in Mine which didn't close when unpowered -Various performance and rendering optimizations for the pause menu -Compressed some textures in the game, which might reduce startup time on slower hardware, but probably does nothing -Fixed a bug where the load game option was sometimes drawn in the incorrect location -Fixed an issue where 16:9 aspect ratio was not enforced after starting a new game -Fixed an issue where loading a game might skip the fade in animation on slower hardware -Fixed a small rendering bug in the black ending
-Added a loading screen on startup or new game. Could be helpful for slower machines, and I had to make it for the Switch port anyway, so hey! -Improved readability of transition between the upper Mill area and the roof of the Production building -The death of version.txt! Build
-Added a loading screen on startup or new game. Could be helpful for slower machines, and I had to make it for the Switch port anyway, so hey! -Improved readability of transition between the upper Mill area and the roof of the Production building -The death of version.txt! Build version information is now embedded in a ScriptableObject