Hey Everyone,
Glad I can post something here again! I have been making a fuckton of progress on the game and am thinking this title may be a 2023 release! WOW! Now, I wanna go over the three biggest things I have made huge progress on and then we can get into the bad news or the "oh well, tough luck" news.
Firstly, I wanted to discuss the transition of this game from Unity's Built-In Render Pipeline to Unity's Universal Render Pipeline. The reason it has taken this long to do so is the asset package I bought for the portal mechanic was built exclusively for the Built-In Pipeline and why that can't be ported to URP because Built-In only supports CG shader code while URP only supports HLSL shader code. There are probably some details I'm missing but converting this code is extremely tedious for a shader beginner. However, throughout the past 3 months, I've been slowly learning how to translate the code over to HLSL. It's quite simple but easy to get very lost. I will leave some blog posts about converting if anyone else needs help:
- https://developer.arm.com/documentation/102487/0100/Migrating-built-in-shaders-to-the-Universal-Render-Pipeline
- https://www.cyanilux.com/tutorials/urp-shader-code/
Then, after all that work, I realised that the shaders were built with Amplify Shader Editor - a Unity package on the Unity asset store. I forked the cash for it and I'm glad I did. It's like Unity Shader Graph but with more customizability. ASE easily converted it without any errors. And then I just ported the rest of the materials into URP. Took a while but we got there. Now the project is running a tad bit better with a fuck ton better lighting and graphics.
Secondly, The player controller has been finalised! It is snappy but smooth. All functionality wanted like sliding, jumping and sprinting have been fleshed out and been well made! The camera controller is quite snappy with barely any input delay (there's a frame-worth input delay due to tiny smoothing).
Thirdly, The URP upgrade is been surprisingly great for Steam Deck Compatibility. Now yes, I know it isn't the biggest concern. However, looking at the performance of the game on a handheld gives me a great idea of the FPS range of the game, on a mid-range PC rig. As for the actual FPS results, The game runs amazingly well at 60FPS stable throughout the game. This may be because I had V-sync on (I May have to check that tomorrow). There is a noticeable dip to 20 FPS when using one of No Momentum's main mechanics. I won't spoil but the good thing is that this mechanic isn't meant to be used for short periods. So that the 20 FPS output is only there for a few seconds at a time. And this also may sound weird but the 20 FPS aesthetic goes sorta well with the mechanic. Again, Won't spoil too much but yeah, I might try to fix the dip but then again, isn't a massive deal.
And Finally, I HAVE FIXED THE LIGHTING. Baking lightmaps in Unity is one of the most frustrating and error-inducing things ever brought to Earth. I had multiple issues. Including random triangle-shaped shadows appearing, lights just never baking**, Unity using my CPU for GPU baking etc. However, After one Unity Forum post, some sketchy workarounds, and realising that I am a fuckin idiot (**mainly for this one) and finding out a custom shader was sending trillions of light rays everywhere, the lighting is looking very nice!
Now for the bad,
The main one is that the lighting is very nice... for the first level. The rest of the levels are nowhere near done. Not even the first level is fully done with the main objective of the level not even being present yet. But, this is mainly due to my brain being swarmed with so many ideas that I've been trying to cram in so many of them that it all falls apart. That being said, now I have a basic idea of every mechanic, the level design, objectives etc. The game will be based in an Ikea-looking building where every room and level are connected either normally or by using portals! Then I wanna have the player grab an item from each level to upgrade their portal device to further the story. I won't spoil everything but that's about the jist. And I feel like once I'm done with the first level, the rest should come easy. I hope...
But that is the only one MASSIVE bad thing at the moment, I think that No Momentum has its charm and I feel at least many of you will feel entertained once it has been released. Released with multiplayer and VR that being said. That may be released separately but who knows yet?
Anyway, thanks for reading,
Much Love,
Very tired Evan.
P.s. it's fucking midnight when I'm writing this up. I needed to share this though.
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