https://youtu.be/r_PIVvLP-wQ
People often ask me if I am a programmer. Definitely not! (That’s why I brought Tommi aboard.) But I do like to make things, and games are extremely fun and interesting to make. Fortunately, using the Unity game engine, there’s a lot I can do even without coding skills. Even better, in recent years other developers have released a huge variety of tools that make Unity more powerful — and more fun for a non-programmer like me. (Still, if anyone had given my younger self a glimpse of how technical my work would become, I would have laughed and returned to writing my novel).
Today’s video shows how we use a tool called World Creator to refine the terrain, making it more rugged and realistic. World Creator is one of over a dozen tools that we use to debug code, animate graphical interfaces, create terrain, and much more. But even though (or perhaps because) we’re so dependent upon these tools, we have something of a love/hate relationship with them. Each one comes with a promise: a better or faster way of doing something. But each one also comes with a price, and it’s not just monetary. First, we have to spend some time evaluating the tool to see if it meets our needs. Occasionally it will conflict with other tools we’re already using, so we have to resolve that conflict. And every tool has its own quirks and learning curve, which hopefully isn’t too long or steep. As games get more ambitious and complex, so do these tools, and in the past few months I’ve spent far more time than I ever imagined testing and integrating new tools that will help us push WolfQuest to the next level. Lately I’ve been reviewing tools for vegetation — there are several new ones which promise much denser grass and bushes at low performance cost, but each one has its own particular setup and configuration procedures, and it’s difficult to compare them until you’ve learned them. I’m closing in on that choice, but it’s taken quite a few hours to get to that point. But I’m sure the results will be worth it.
So, for the truly, madly, geekily curious out there, here are the main tools that we’re using so far in WolfQuest 3.
* Beautify: Post-processing effect with bloom and other enhancements
* Bone Controller: Dynamic movement of wolf head and limbs
* Combu: User account system
* ConsolePro: More detailed console for debugging
* DoozyUI: Spiffier interface animations
* Enviro: Dynamic time-of-day and lighting effects
* Garageband: Tim Buzza’s tool of choice for recording music
* Imperial Fur: Fur shader
* i2: Language localization (yes, we plan to add other languages at some point)
* MAD Compile Time Optimizer: Faster runtime code compiling during development
* MicroSplat: Terrain shader to reduce tiling artifacts, add normal maps, tessellation, and more visual wow.
* Photon Networking: Our multiplayer solution
* Rewired: Much better input mapping for keyboards and controllers
* River Auto Material: Very realistic flowing water
* SSAO Pro: Screen-space ambient occlusion
* Terrain Composer 2: Powerful tool for applying textures and vegetation to terrains
* World Composer: Generating terrains from satellite and elevation data.
* World Creator: Refining and improving terrains.
Speaking of tools, I need to try the latest version of MicroSplat to see if it fixes a strange problem with mipmaps… Back to work!