Greetings, Respondrs!
Matt took some time out of his busy day to tell us all about the history of Embr - specifically the way water looks!
A bit over 2 years ago I started on a journey to make this co-op firefighting game, game jamming while stuck in 6 hr traffic back from MAGFest.
At the heart of the game are fire & water, two of the harder elements to tackle in game development. While the game is still a work in progress to be more polished, varied, and zany, I thought it’d be interesting to share how water in the game has evolved so far - from graybox cubes to the splatters of today.
When I first started, all I needed to start testing was rotating some square particles to get the feeling of water across. Water and fire were really just different colored squares.
After learning about and creating particle systems for 1 week, I thought I was prepared to take on water. I was wrong. I spent the next two weeks, 14 hours a day, researching and testing solutions for water without making much headway. In the end, I just settled on a very similar solution to the first sample, using circles with a secondary particle fx. Sometimes, spending a lot of time doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of progress...
Circling back to water last month, I added extra particle feedback. The white foam at the end indicates whether the water is hitting or not, and where it is hitting. Hopefully this helps from the lack of depth perception that came with the blue cartoony shader.
I also added a bit of liquid smear to make the water more believable. The world now has a reflection tint to understand how moist the area is.
When I have more time, I definitely want to poke at improving the body of the water stream itself. So little time and so much to do!
- Matt
If you have any questions or comments, let us know! Thanks for reading!