Project S-812

[unique hill]

what's happened to that character render you were messing with?

I haven't seen it in a while, I think the thread closed

[timid flume]

It's still there, I haven't done anything to it recently. Kinda don't have time to dig into it.

It was a fun little project to just see how good Godot can render characters.
I only did it to see what I can do with Godot on a long term basis.

Last I messed with it, I was trying to add physics to the hair when moved.
But I kinda lost focus cause I wasn't getting anywhere.

There's 0 resources on that stuff.

[unique hill]

ah alright

detailed specs incase anyones wondering

[timid flume]

Will definitely have to upgrade that RAM though 👀

[unique hill]

definitely but im afraid ill end up breaking something when openign the computer

plus

i'd rather get an entirely new rig than upgrade this one

[timid flume]

Fair enough. Although you have a decent system.

[unique hill]

half life alyx sitting in my steam library because my ram is smol

[timid flume]

Yeah 8 gigs is definitely a bottle neck for modern games.

[unique hill]

definitely, good thing project S only needs 200-300mb max

somehow...

[unborn vale]

so far (ominously)

[unique hill]

nooooooooooooooooooooo

if only triplanar mapping didnt request the textures 3 separate times

[unborn vale]

But tbh even if it approached like 1 or 2 gigs that is not too bad

[unique hill]

forced to use triplanar mapping due to how im making maps

[unique hill]

texture vram is like 400-500mb

really good for a game of the scale im planning

[unborn vale]

Vram is not real ram lol

[unique hill]

i know

its the gpu ram basically

im just saying

[unborn vale]

Vram is fake ram that you don't have to worry about until suddenly it is the bottleneck of the entire game

And talking of vram! I figured out a way to cut my vram usage in half (after much pain) so now its just like 900 mb i think

[unique hill]

how badly do particles impact fps?

[unique hill]

do you know any other optimizating tips?

for some reason process in monitors is always disgustingly high

thats 29ms right there

[unborn vale]

I mean my case was for voxel rendering which idk if it is useful, but what I did is rewrite my meshing algorithm so that it used vertex_indicies instead of only verticies. Since a single vertex is 12 bytes (3 floats for a vec3) it is way more effecient to reference the verticies using vertex indicies since a single vertex index is only 2 bytes (an i32)

I don't think you are creating the meshes like in code or no?

[icy anchor]

CPUParticles caused issues in my case, i had smoke that consists of 500 quads. I replaced it with normal GPU particles and it's fine now. Still overdraw can cause issues

[unique hill]

nope

[unique hill]

hmm, i'm using only GPU particles for the occassional instances of particles

[unborn vale]

But like in general, if you have meshes just get the triangles as low as possible

[icy anchor]

Can you investigate why your profiler doesn't tell you which function is using that much time. In my case it shows that, which is simplifying the analysis

[unborn vale]

also if you have a mesh that is repeated a lot of times I would use the multimesh thing for that, which greatly decreases vram usage

[unique hill]

I was but encountered a roadblock so I cant find out whats happening there

[unique hill]

last time I used multimeshes It took my frames from 120 to 30

[unborn vale]

lol

[unique hill]

that was like message number 526 or something

[unborn vale]

That's actually really weird

Like that shouldn't even be possible...

do you know whether or not its because of vram usage?

[icy anchor]

That's what i meant. Last time we've been talking about it you shown me the menu and it had no similar "script functions" thing

[unique hill]

barely anything

script functions hover around 0.2-0.4ms

[icy anchor]

That's insteresting to see that your process is taking ages yet script functions take up only 0.39 ms

Usually they are the reason why it works so slow

[unique hill]

exactly! thats why im so confused

[icy anchor]

So, you have to investigate not your code, but what does the Godot do on it's own

[unique hill]

I would logically assume _physics_process to take the highest

but theres only one instance of that

and thats in the player script

[unique hill]

all other functions you see besides _process in this image is also the player script

[unique hill]

how do I do that?

[icy anchor]

Basically one of the Godot's node could do something like that, so you can try to duplicate some scene and slowly add things node-by-node to see which one impacts it the most

Like, literally each, including world environment

[unique hill]

ive got to go now, but please do keep updating me on how to fix this

[unique hill]

I already know some bottlenecks, but I cant fix them

one of which being AMD FSR 2.0

with 3ms on the GPU

but _process is on the CPU

plus the GPU max goes up to 12ms for rendering a frame

[icy anchor]

Potentially process might be connected to animations

[unique hill]

also I apologize for talking in multiple messages, its a bad habit

[icy anchor]

That being AnimationPlayer, AnimationTree and AnimationMixer

[unique hill]

it may be, but I manually process the animations myself in the player script. Can't remember why but I know it fixed a bug

i dont remember what the bug was though

[icy anchor]

I had to replace AnimationTree everywhere in my project as it was the main impact on CPU usage. Luckily 2 AnimationPlayers on each NPC did the thing i wanted to do

[icy anchor]

For now i have not much understanding of why does it work this way, really, just assumptions and probably the one and only way to find out through duplicated scene for testing purposes

[unique hill]

weird

[unique hill]

I tested so much

I deleted voxelgi

re-added it

disabled SSR

disabled all reflections

all kinds of stuff, didnt reduce GPU nor CPU usage

particles contribute to 8 frames a second

on the rooftops with air conditioners

I also removed the player mesh to see if my own shader was the issue

[icy anchor]

Not really. Internally AnimationTree had to make many animations (like, 6 animations at the time for just a frame of walking), a lot of blending, etc. Rewriting it with AnimationPlayer allows me to use only 2 animations and allows for similar blending i needed. It works the very same way in Unity where i had the lag because of animations too

[unique hill]

it wasn't

[icy anchor]

At this point the only thing that you may not have checked is totally empty scene with one camera in it

Like, literally, what if it works bad from the start, then it is a subject for report or something like that

[unique hill]

I have but didn't check the process times

I have to go now but will update you on that later, in a few hours

[icy anchor]

See you later! It makes me curious why does it work that strange for you, including that your specs are better than mine

I kinda miss a lot of features of Godot 4, but that also creep me out to think what would happen if i would actually switch

[civic sedge]

Wow!, so cool!

What will that game be about?

[icy anchor]

Well, it's secret!

[unique hill]

hehe

rate my lighting skills so far

I focus on the details too much, so im just making a general level what I want

so itll be mostly empty

with some nice lighting

then ill come back and tidy up everything

[unique hill]

unknown fun fact: the game was originally meant to have environments based off of this very movie

[icy anchor]

I love it

[unique hill]

its much less influenced by it now, but there are some things still there

[unique hill]

this movie was great

love it

there are also streets

using a tile map i made that i position around the buildings

i make the buildings first then the streets

there arent any cars or traffic lights though

[icy anchor]

Looks promising

[unique hill]

oh just realized the shadow came out in that shot

[icy anchor]

I can't really recognize much from it

And, woah, shadow of the character

[unique hill]

definitely did not purposefully do that

[unique hill]

very nice

i believe ive made the final iteration of the model

its around 8K tris

[icy anchor]

Nice polycount for a character model

[unique hill]

yee

with clothes its probably around 9K

big step up from the previously 12K clothes model

[gray spade]

compared to me personally this is around twenty out of one

i literally can't even lit a tunnel

[unique hill]

yay, also dont be so hard on urself

[unique hill]

do random shit until it looks good and have references

also make sure to contemplate while in the bathroom, my best ideas come from there 💀

[gray spade]

i tried doing exactly that

it, uh, didn't quite work

e.g. i placed a spatial light (don't remember the exact node name) at my character's head pointing forward and expected it to light up everything in front

it did, but only those objects that were right at character's nose

then i tried changing light power or something like that to astronomic values (expecting to end up in heaven), but virtually nothing happened

[unique hill]

tiny details

[unique hill]

oh that must be the range

if the range is small, no matter the light energy, the light will not perform as intended

the size of a light doesnt affect its actual light

transforming its size does nothing

u must use range and the other things

there is a gizmo you can use as well

[gray spade]

hm i think i tried dragging forward and backward something like this, but i'll remember to try again next time i get my hands on my game

ty!

[unique hill]

no problem!

[icy anchor]

Making nice lighting actually isn't that hard. What is actually hard is keeping it optimized and good-looking at the same time

[unique hill]

directly after taking the above screenshot I slipped off

I managed to get this before i hit the ground lmao

[unique hill]

thats true unfortunately

[icy anchor]

Cowca Cola my beloved

[unique hill]

cowca cola!

[unique hill]

map is coming along well

if I have enough time, I can finish it by today

society if @iron shore made the controls menu

[iron shore]

society if @unique hill made the controls menu

[unique hill]

society if @iron shore fixed the scuffed menu he had made within 10 minutes

[iron shore]

society without controls menus

[unique hill]

No

simply

[unique hill]

quick poll, how would everyone here respond to HCS having a discord server

I know we dont show any gameplay, so that's why ive asked

respond with a bread reaction for "id join" or u can just respond to this message

[icy anchor]

I'd join it

[unique hill]

🔥

[iron shore]

man

SHC already has a discord server

[unique hill]

an old one thats dedicated to minecraft

we dont use that one

[iron shore]

okay

and

[unique hill]

also tf is SHC

i know HSC

Fuck

we both misspelt it god damn

HCS

[iron shore]

SHC is SHC

[unique hill]

https://imgur.com/a/MhmEhNM

jumped off a building

(disabled player mesh visibility)

[icy anchor]

A lot like Catalyst

[unique hill]

huh?

[icy anchor]

She's falling down on a head in there too

When in first game she is landing on legs always

[unique hill]

its a good falling animation

[icy anchor]

It's good

[unique hill]

so im keeping it

[unique hill]

didnt know that

tbh I dont really know much about catalyst

[icy anchor]

As much as i've seen this city, it sounds like that for me

[unique hill]

it sounds like a place familiar yet so vastly different

[gray spade]

bread

[timid flume]

Looks good, personally I would put up a subtle screenshake on top of that, also maybe the tilt might be a bit too extreme.

[unique hill]

there is but maybe the speed you're falling and the rate of rotating might be hiding the screenshake

so ill have to make it a bit more intense

and lower the rotation intensity

[unique hill]

https://imgur.com/a/RtUQdyQ

made it better

and it shows the death screen now

look its

foggy? i forgot the word

i think foggy

[timid flume]

Yeah that looks pretty good!

[unique hill]

!

yay

hows the death screen as well?

[timid flume]

Definitely good, hard to envision it without sound, but I imagine the sounds just lerp to 0 with another added death sound effect on top of it.

Maybe the low pass frequency should also drop down as soon as you die to really sell the effect.

[unique hill]

imagine a loud smash onto the ground

basically

the game is going to have amazing sound design to compliment gameplay & visuals

[sturdy void]

real im a composer owo

[unique hill]

true

but you gotta work on ur drum skills

[sturdy void]

drums suck and are overrated asf

[unique hill]

i take offense to this

considering all my soundtracks for this game have drums

[sturdy void]

reverb grand piano sucks and is overrated asf

[sturdy void]

you wanted me to make menu music and an ambient track. neither of those are gonna be drum heavy

[unique hill]

ye but what about the other track

when ur running

also we should continue this in the gc

[icy anchor]

Like that?

[unique hill]

na

sounds good tho

[sturdy void]

what software did you use for that

sounds like vrchat loading screen crossed with skyrim i love it

[unique hill]

I shouldpost some of the tracks I made for the game here

[icy anchor]

FL Studio, to be more precise, FL Studio's Edison to blur the samples

[sturdy void]

oh cool

[unique hill]

I dont know what to do with this little melody

but I made it with intent to put it somewhere in the game

tho i dont know where because its not like a main character dies

[icy anchor]

First 4 notes remind me of Prototype 2 first cutscene music, but it is progressing to something different

[unique hill]

hmm

[icy anchor]

I love this game, i have achievement showcase specifically for it, so count it as a compliment

[unique hill]

huh

oh

very fancy

was bored so I made this

[icy anchor]

Reminds of pursuit track

[sturdy void]

would send some of mine but i cba to find the files lmao

[unique hill]

I got them

and in my dms have some

[sturdy void]

probably but like i said

cbs

and ngl i feel theyre kinda low level

[unique hill]

ehhh kinda some of the early ones

I did modify the ambient theme slightly

and added a slight reverb to it

u gotta dive in with reverbs and other effects

[sturdy void]

you just have a crippling reverb addiction

also i dont because i don't think im allowed to do anything like that for exams

[unique hill]

tf

thats crazy considering how good reverb sounds in certain situations

[sturdy void]

yeah but its supposed.to be raw so youbsre forced to use instruments to achieve your intention instead of digital effects

[icy anchor]

Are you a student of certain music uni/college?

[sturdy void]

no but I'm assuming the board would get pissy

they get annoyed if i do something too complicated for their brains to comprehend nonetheless a digital effect

also its music notation so uh

[icy anchor]

I think i understand what do you mean

So, you guys are 2 totally different musicians as i understand

TNP being an electronic musician obsessed with reverb and you are using natural instruments (not sure which genre though!)

Looks interesting

[unique hill]

yeee except im not doing music in school

kamino is though

[icy anchor]

Neither am i!

[unique hill]

"Random shit, GO!"

[icy anchor]

Music in school/college is a damn hell to work with

That'd ruin music for me, really

[unique hill]

I didnt get around to trying trackiton by the way, I dont wanna put my full first and last name n shit to download it

[icy anchor]

But what i wanted to say is that you both guys have 2 completely different perspectives which makes me wonder how would you work together

[unique hill]

I used to really like drawing and art

then I had a shit art teacher and dont like it that much anymore

I wouldnt put all the blame on her, I did lose interest on my own

but ehh

[icy anchor]

I think you can put fake info in there, as well as "temp mail" if you really wish. But i think i've got to try it out on my own as i'm not limited by Windows 7 anymore

[unique hill]

hmm

honestly I dont need much fancy things, I just need to be able to copy and paste melodies easily

god that'd save me so much time

[icy anchor]

By the way, you may be surprised but many music-related website are doing that even for free products. I'm not sure why, but it is pointless in my opinion

[unique hill]

I can copy and paste

but its not in a neat little box

yk

like an instance of music

similar to godot

its like pasting a node instead of saving it as an instance

[unique hill]

weird

[unique hill]

kamino makes some really good atmospheric music with just strings and mild electronicness

hes much better at that than I am

miles ahead

[icy anchor]

Patterns? Many DAWs have them. Tracktion should too. But i didn't check it! You may need to take a look on videos with it, there are plenty of them

[unique hill]

Alrighty

[icy anchor]

I'd listen

[unique hill]

do you have any general game advice?

like should I do some of the weird data saving you do, or keep my game just the way it is

[unique hill]

with @sturdy void 's approval, I can send the main menu track

[icy anchor]

Do not overestimate your own possibilities and remember that good tools do not guarantee your own possibility to make actually great stuff

I violated both

[sturdy void]

sure

[unique hill]

alright

@icy anchor

[sturdy void]

you say natural instruments, but then that was made in ableton with completely artificial instruments lmfao

[icy anchor]

Just because i thought so according to context of conversation

[icy anchor]

Sounds amazing, especially knowing it was made with Ableton

[unique hill]

💀

[unique hill]

factss

[unique hill]

It fits well considering how the menu and background looks

although the background is just a placeholder

oh that reminds me i gotta update it to use the remade player mesh

[sturdy void]

i would use fl but i already have an ableton licence and it's just easier

and i already know it because of my launchpad phase 6 years ago

[icy anchor]

Ableton is great too

DAW is just DAW, it is just a place where you can work with sounds and VSTs

[sturdy void]

true

but like audacity can be classified as a daw

doesnt mean its any good for this kind of thing

[icy anchor]

I didn't use it so i can't tell anything

Except i've seen videos where it is used for music production and it's kinda interesting how they work with effects

[iron shore]

what

@unique hill "you have been eliminated"?

[unique hill]

I changed it for the recording to not reveal the actual text it says

don't worry, its normal in-game

[unique hill]

have I ever sent the pause menu ehre before?

[icy anchor]

Never as i remember this thread

[unique hill]

hm

I guess ill send it now

https://imgur.com/a/KIvxT4s

I just spent the past 30 minutes fancying the pause menu

unfortunately, @iron shore still has not made the controls menu

[icy anchor]

Fancy! Also, i see you are also using 0% master volume just like me

[icy anchor]

Not the easiest thing to do, really

[unique hill]

lmao I have other music on so thats why

[unique hill]

they made it already, they just didnt make it user friendly at all

[icy anchor]

Same here man

[unique hill]

discord compression moment

but there is a slight glitch effect overlay

[icy anchor]

Not user friendly? I wonder how, but alright

[unique hill]

and also a pixel-effect

you can see it better by opening it in browser

[unique hill]

they made it a drop down menu with no descriptions or feedback if you even change the keybind 😭

(they rushed it before going on vacation)

[icy anchor]

Discord loves to deal with this stuff

[unique hill]

lol

[icy anchor]

Damn, that sounds sad

[unique hill]

very but oh well

[unique hill]

yikes!

thats alot of draw calls

[unique hill]

ohh

the stupid gridmap for the roads is doing weirdass shit

[unborn vale]

stupid builtin optimized types!

[unique hill]

!

deleted my messages bc i was a dumbass

[unique hill]

turns out, the separate layer for the player model contributed a decent portion of fps loss

ive reverted it and fixed animations

[unique hill]

whuh?

yeah

unless its something extremely important you're going to get random commit names and descriptions

if I do something complex then i'd explain a bit more

[iron shore]

how hard is it to type two words

[unique hill]

word of warning

dont bake lightmaps unless your pc is beefy

godot has frozen

and has been frozen

for the past few minutes

help :(

[icy anchor]

You may have similar issue as i had when i firstly used the Godot 3.x lightmap baking

Are you familiar with tool scripts?

[unique hill]

yeah, I use them often for changing materials in some things

like buildings, its one instance with a tool script that changes the window material only if its changed from what it was set last

i do the same for holograms, except holograms run in _ready

the buildings run in _process only for the editor

otherwise its _ready

[icy anchor]

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_arraymesh.html#class-arraymesh-method-lightmap-unwrap

I highly recommend to not trust UV2 unwrapper of import settings and, instead, just do it yourself with a tool script

This way you can easily control the actual resolution (that is set with UV2's lightmap hint and not by BakedLightmap) and it should work better

Does it mean i use lightmaps actively on my own? Sadly, i'd wish, but i don't like how it is using CPU for everything. Godot 4.x uses GPU and has entirely different lightmapper, so i guess you definitely should try it

[icy anchor]

"What is ArrayMesh"
All MeshInstance3D use it by default if it comes to models, because it is storing triangle data, but that may not be the case for primitives.

[unique hill]

interesting

I might just need to stick with voxelgi

until lightmapgi gets an update

[unique hill]

Man

i am so good at environmental design

it is a true shame I cannot send a screenshot because it contains story elements

[icy anchor]

Would you wish to hide the story elements?

[vast citrus]

Scribble it off with crayon

[icy anchor]

^^^

[unique hill]

maybe maybe not

I mean its not very obvious

tucked hidden away but its there

[icy anchor]

Come dude, show your masterpiece

[unique hill]

alright alright

lemme just add some antennas

lemme jsut touch it up a bit

[iron shore]

..!

[unique hill]

Welcome

[unique hill]

here ya go :)

[icy anchor]

Looks nice!

[unique hill]

environmental story telling to its finest

yk for being my first actual game, this is coming along quite well

!?! body confirmed??

shadow res really low so it looks boxy af for some reason

giving yall a shit ton of screenshots

and I leave you all with this, final image

[sturdy void]

i want that cereala

we should mka ehtat

[unborn vale]

Is it supposed to be like a post-'some kind of bad thing happened' world?

[unique hill]

maybe or maybe not

however, a connection appeared to have been lost

i wonder what happened

[unique hill]

theres an advertisement for cereal right there!

just buy it

im sure its cheap

probably only 4 pounds

(I dont know how much cereal costs)

[sturdy void]

FOUR QUID

FOR A BIT OF CEREAL

[iron shore]

very subtle

[unique hill]

thanks

hey @iron shore

can you make

the

controls

menu

please

[sturdy void]

and dont make it gdmn dropdown

[unique hill]

FR

[unique hill]

also

i should dm u this actually

check dms kam

[iron shore]

i dont want to though

[unique hill]

but you ahve too

[sturdy void]

he doesnt ahve to do anything

[unique hill]

WHAT

SINCE WHEN WAS THIS A THING

THIS COULDVE SAVED ME HOURS OF WORK

WBRO

[icy anchor]

Takes place in 3.x!

[unique hill]

EH?

how have I missed this

[icy anchor]

Godot has quite a huge size despite being lightweight

Like, you can run a game, change a scene in editor, reload that scene in game (without relauching the game) and scene will change

It's a deep rabbit hole that barely takes up a gigabyte (except export templates)

[unique hill]

I was always wondering

"It'd be so easy if I could just modify bloom levels"

fs

[unique hill]

yeah, but instanced scenes dont work too well

theres a pull request that got accepted that fixed that bug in 4.3

[icy anchor]

Weirdly enough it works blessingly fine in my game. The only reason i didn't use it earlier is because i didn't had enough RAM, but that is not true now. And, after optimizing loading screens and other stuff, i can even use it actively... unless i need to edit code, but i guess it's not related to level design

[icy anchor]

That's great to know!

[unique hill]

odd

I honestly just want to sit here and vibe

but no I gotta finish the map :((

[icy anchor]

I'm glad you have similar vibe. I remember making first maps in Godot and had that feeling... I hope to get it back some day

[unique hill]

i hope to never lose it

its truely a vibe

truly*

[icy anchor]

Mainly my main mistake is that i didn't do that much of "flood with location props" thing as i did in first map. It's complicated, but i love shooting my leg! Keep that workflow and try to fit ideas for this workflow and not the workflow itself for ideas

[unique hill]

im trying to keep it relatively simple, to save time but not too simple

[icy anchor]

Index: Purger is capable of making almost any kind of environment, while it could've been more effective just getting a good tool for one specific case (similar to your case) and just abuse the shit out of it

[unique hill]

lmao

Im actually going off of no references

except one screenshot

this

[icy anchor]

It looks similar to what you did, but there is still something unique in your work

Great job!

[unique hill]

:D

I want to invoke a feeling of you being just a small piece in a bigger world

but also mild concern, as something appears to be wrong

godot's lightmap issue is severely preventing that tho

highway wip

I still havent made traffic lights

then again why use highways

if u can fly

[unique hill]

occlusion culling works perfectly

fixed it

Max settings, framerate at top

screenshot without debug info

do you see the difference between default settings and max?

almost nothing!

is that good? Probably!

[unique hill]

by this I mean how it look

not how it performs 💀

[icy anchor]

Probably a good thing with Godot, but, at the same time, it makes me wonder what would happen if they allowed us to get more control over "downgrading" the game's graphics with no trickery. I'm about things like texture quality and etc

[unique hill]

true

Project S has disgustingly simple textures

almost none of them go above being 512x512

hell the window textures are 32x32

all of them

[unique hill]

only things like holograms or stars go above this

[icy anchor]

Honestly, sometimes i want to try replicate the textures you make, but in Quixel Mixer, somewhat i want to experiment in this thing a lot

[unique hill]

I use very

and I mean

VERY

basic textures

[icy anchor]

Paint.NET, yeah

[unique hill]

all the PBR stuff come using the normal map generator

[unique hill]

I cant remember if ive said this before so now I think you're a mindreader

[unique hill]

what is quixel mixer

is it like substance painter?

[icy anchor]

You said it :P
And, yeah, can't say if i have a good memory

[icy anchor]

It's nice, reminds me of old good days when i didn't even had GT1030, that was fun to fool around with Crazybump

[icy anchor]

It is like Substance Painter combined with... I don't know, it's so easy to make seamless PBR materials in there

Basically it is a program where you can either texture your models, or just use multiple PBR materials and mix them in very unique ways

In the end, it doesn't really limit you on "realism" and has quite a good bunch of settings for getting more stylized look

That's probably the reason i want to try it out

[unique hill]

ooh interesting

though I dont really need realism

[unique hill]

i might give it a try

[icy anchor]

Remember it's kinda tricky and tutorials may have differences in UI, but, overall, it's kinda... really simple? The program itself weighs 400 MB and you can download a bunch of materials from AmbientCG or PolyHaven, but, honestly, you may not need that

I honestly want to experiment and see if i can get textures like you do without usage of materials

Like, just the program itself as much as possible

[unique hill]

yk, during normal gameplay I dont really look closely into the materials I made

its beautiful but in a way that doesnt make you stare at it

but when you do, you can truly appreciate it

[unique hill]

ooh

is it FOSS like godot?

[icy anchor]

Sadly it's not, but it's totally free, being royalty-free too, with those smart materials that you can download additionally, but i don't really use them

[unique hill]

ooh very interesting

[unique hill]

framerate low because I had it set to supersampled x2 by the way

[icy anchor]

First attempt, that one main roof material

[unique hill]

oh damn really close ngl

just its rectangular

[unique hill]

are the lines procedural?

[icy anchor]

Solar panel

[unique hill]

fun fact, there are thicker lines and thinner lines in this material

this is because i fucked up the repeating texture

but it looks good so I didnt fix it

[unique hill]

damnnnnnnnn

[icy anchor]

Literally everything you see is procedural, including lines, i didn't use any external PBR materials, just this program that weighs 400 MB

[unique hill]

this is fancy

[icy anchor]

Gonna try to replicate

[unique hill]

fun fact, this is an incredibly pixelated texture for the vents

[iron shore]

god damn this is beautiful

[unique hill]

I honestly think that because of the limitations I have, as well as my relatively medium skill level that I end up producing much better looking things than if I had no limits

[unique hill]

thats true

wanna know whats even better?

a controls menu

btw sending a push out incase ur going to do something illogical

[icy anchor]

Not very similar, but i guess it's all just about configuring it

[unique hill]

i like it!

it looks very concretey

I dont think quixel mixer is doing it much justice with the lighting

[icy anchor]

That's 256x256

[icy anchor]

There are different HDRIs, modes, etc to check it

[unique hill]

wow I disabled the env

it looks so

odd yet still good

[unique hill]

ahhh alr

project S does use some heavy post processing though, would them be available in quixel mixer

stuff like edge detection, glow, lens flare just to name a few

[icy anchor]

Edge detection? Probably that's possible if use "curvature" mask stack. About others: You can easily import custom images as whatever you wish. You can import it as albedo, as normals, as "opacity" if that's some kind of mask, etc

I can't tell if it is ultimate tool for all possible cases, but still kinda fancy

[unique hill]

by edge detection I mean outlines

[unique hill]

ooh alrighty

one thing that actually changes the look of materials is that edge detection

as it also takes normal maps into account

so I need to tweak materials very carefully to ensure no unwanted outlines appear

[icy anchor]

PBR materials can be handy if you want to use them to get some kind of nice normal map details

Like, you can lower/disable their influence on albedo/roughness/metalness, and it'll just leave it affecting the displacement/normals

[unique hill]

holy shit i just remembered something

[unique hill]

very

[icy anchor]

By the way, i know it's not really a thing that i should care about as i am not a member of the team, but why wouldn't you make it yourself? You seem to be pretty experienced user

[unique hill]

i cant be bothered lol

• im working on other aspects of the game

I think at some point I will just end up making it

illogical did do a significant amount of refactoring

[icy anchor]

Yeah, can relate on it, my game had no main menu for several months, just a placeholder saying "break the shit out of this game"

[unique hill]

lmao funnily enough the first thing I did when I made this project was the main menu

[iron shore]

victory !!

[unique hill]

NOOOOOOOOOO

just for that i wont ever make it

u will

mwahahaha

[iron shore]

yo @unique hill tell me the music's bpm

[unique hill]

whatthe ambient track?

[iron shore]

ya

[unique hill]

I didnt make it, kamino did

ask him

[iron shore]

okay

i will just do the tappy

thing

[icy anchor]

I don't think Audacity has BPM? At least i don't remember one

[unique hill]

kamino uses Ableton

[icy anchor]

Are you about that one ambient track that i listened to?

If not, then alright

[unique hill]

no, that's the Main Menu soundtrack

[iron shore]

okay it's 15 bpm

[unique hill]

theres a different more lofi-style track for ambience

[unique hill]

how the fuck is it 15 bpm

[iron shore]

??

[unique hill]

ngl that makes sense

[iron shore]

i'm counting the big strum things

[unique hill]

i thought 15 bpm is just really low

[iron shore]

like it's 60bpm

[unique hill]

what the pan flute thing?

[iron shore]

but i just need the 15bpm strobe thingies

or whatever

[iron shore]

i'm confused

i'm trying to make the cameras do a silly bop to the music when you go fast (for the memes)

idk where the music crap is

[unique hill]

audio/ost/ambience/

The ambience music is controlled by dedicated ambient music nodes

[iron shore]

i saw

[unique hill]

which control each individual layer

[iron shore]

where

[unique hill]

player.tscn

[iron shore]

o

[iron shore]

i will do the thing later

[icy anchor]

Hey... I know nobody asked, but here is 16 CC0 PBR materials that i made while being inspired by art direction of this project. I don't care if you will or will not use it as i just found it fun to make. Made in 30 minutes, may not fit the game, but still gonna send here as i have no use for these

[unique hill]

noice

[unique hill]

honestly you are very capable and experienced

[unique hill]

smoke

[unique hill]

this is horrific

[unique hill]

been at this for hours now

highest i got the fps to is 72

im going to end up having to compromise on visuals for a slight performance gain

it may be 1 or 2 fps on my pc but might 10 or 20 on someone elses

[gray spade]

im sure this was asked before and sorry for that, but any clue why does it lag so badly?

sorry i mean "lag" compared to what could've been achieved

[unique hill]

I honestly have no idea, and no need to be sorry for asking

I ideally want like a solid 80 fps rather than 70

what did I just do? I just made it drop to 56??

[gray spade]

game dev experience 😔

[unique hill]

honestly I dont mind having lower than 70 fps

but I really want this to work on almost all recent-ish hardware

so im kinda overoptimizing

[gray spade]

are you "playing" on "max settings"? because if so, having your specs as the "recommended" would be already a feat compared to most recent games

[unique hill]

not at all

im playing on the default settings I set the game to

Ill send two screenshots in a moment

comparing default to max settings

[gray spade]

let's hope discord won't ruin quality

[unique hill]

I will be honest

I cannot tell a difference

besides the FPS

discord is messing it over though

im sure it would look insane ona 4K monitor

but i have a 1366 monitor

I think 860p or something

[gray spade]

hm reflections are a bit better, which is especially noticeable on that block in the right bottom corner

but i don't have a high res screen either so /shrug

these borders in front of the white-orange wall are also a bit more detailed on max settings

but nothing game-changing tbh

[unique hill]

thats the downscaling doing its thing :D

its rendered x2 resolution

then downscaled on max settings

normally it'd be rendered at a lower res and upscaled

but you can supersample it on max settings

for the insane people who want to do that

[vast citrus]

Set the lowest res as the default

[unique hill]

thats bad tho

its set to the medium res

x0.59 of the base resolution

which is 1920x1080

I just realized past nether was a dumbass when creating holograms

so I just optimized them real quick and a solid 5 frames extra is now here!

[vast citrus]

what specs

[unique hill]

low end or medium end gaming laptop

idk which it is

1s

sending screenshot of specs

[vast citrus]

ah makes sense

wondered why you're only pulling 60fps at that

[unique hill]

lol

[gray spade]

mm i dont think gtx 1650 is that bad

[vast citrus]

laptop

[unique hill]

my drivers got fucked yesterdya

and I had to reinstall almost everything nvidia related

💀

[gray spade]

in general for me "laptop" does not equal to "sucks at gaming"

[unique hill]

it can game

I just never expected to go into game dev nor 3D art when I got it

why when I say that this happens?

[gray spade]

exactly.

[gray spade]

god's listening

[unique hill]

💀💀😭

these TREES

are probably the reason my fps is so fucked

also I took damage so ignore the red vignette

that is crazy

trees gon and my fps rises by so much

but still not 80 fps

also, if I get a new pc should I go amd or nvidia for gpu?

[gray spade]

depends on your budget mostly

but if you want ray tracing, amd is unfortunately still seriously behind nvidia (at least that's what i heard. never owned an rtx-capable amd gpu)

[unique hill]

very small budget

HOLY SHIT

I DID IT

I DID IT I DID IT

I DID ITTTTTTTTTTT

turns out mipmaps work wonders!

I NEVER knew that

you learn something new everyday!

[unique hill]

im happy at that framerate

no more optimization! the game already looks a tad bit worse

screenshot on max settings

[unique hill]

beautiful car texture came in from one of my artists, and ive done this with it

[iron shore]

@unique hill

game is not without glitches

the hell

[unique hill]

oh what the fuck

how did you get there

tell me in dms

ffs

[iron shore]

get in call

[unique hill]

https://imgur.com/a/mqqLLDb

timelapse

bobs left and right bc of idle animation

[icy anchor]

Fooling around for a long time :P

Thanks

[icy anchor]

I love the sky

[unique hill]

ty tu

*ty

[unborn vale]

How you got 3 graphic cards...?

[unique hill]

thats by technicality

I only have 1

the GTX

the second one is the CPU if it was to do graphics calculations

and the third one is Virtual Desktop, a software I use to mirror my monitor in VR sometimes

[unborn vale]

Just to make sure; You are using the gtx card right?

I remember minecraft defaulting to my cpu-gpu thing like a lot of times

I think you can change it in nvidia controlpanel under 3d settings

[unique hill]

yep

[unborn vale]

oki

otherwise it would be a welcome suprise

[unique hill]

mipmaps gave a huge performance boost

[unborn vale]

What are mipmaps?

[unique hill]

from my understanding, it takes your texture and generates alternate versions of them for specific viewing angles. It may seem stupid but its actually an improvement. If you have a very angled perspective, you wouldn't see most details anyway, so why bother rendering all those pixels? Instead it renders a different version of it specific to that angle. So from 512x512, it might go to being 512x128 if you're at a steep angle

it does takes more ram but does give a significant performance boost which is a welcome trade

personally, Project S saw a improvement from 60-71 frames to 85-95 instantly when enabled

[unborn vale]

damn nice

Interesting concept actually

Recently I've actually been looking a lot into like optimizations (mostly for voxel games) and man is it a crazy world

Also I have learnt that minecraft is even more terribly optimized than I thought

[unique hill]

horrificly so, but at least they use mipmaps

even though all textures at 16x16

[unborn vale]

that is true... but they use them for 16*16 textures...

[unique hill]

I honestly dont see an improvement with mipmaps in minecraft but it works good everywhere else

[unborn vale]

Also learnt about greedy meshing which is very interesting

And I don't understand why minecraft doesn't use it

Like they have so many employees

it would take a max of a week to implemet :(

[icy anchor]

Godot 4 has that too? Mipmaps in Godot 3 are kinda disabled by default, as well as anisotropic filtering. I was wondering why are my textures so blurry on angles, until i realized that. Damn, that's totally no handholding

[unique hill]

yeah it does! It's very useful for performance but bad for RAM. Anisotropic filtering is the one that does the angle thing, my bad. Mipmaps just is like LODs for textures.

[unique hill]

INFACT! This reminded me something that I need to tell you, i'll tell you in your own thread

[gray spade]

do you have approximate numbers?

for ram, specifically

[icy anchor]

As i understand, instead of taking up 500 KB for a texture, it may take up like ~800 KB, almost twice more than original size, that's all for mipmaps as i understand

Unless your textures are really huge and there is a lot of them, that shouldn't be that problematic

[gray spade]

hmm yeah doesn't sound as bad

thanks

[winter jolt]

I love the cyberpunk vibes ❤️

[iron shore]

i soft landed onto a car

lookin kinda flat

[unique hill]

bhruh?

[unique hill]

ty

[gray spade]

is it just me or

[unique hill]

just u lol

wait

oh no my one is longer

just us i guess 💀

[sturdy void]

mine literally just has this and progress dump lmao

i dont interact with anything here

[unique hill]

💀

ay kamino did u make the thingies

the advertisementts

[sturdy void]

no

ive not been home all weeken

[unique hill]

aw

oh ye

forgor

[sturdy void]

nob

[unique hill]

isnt it knob

not nob

[sturdy void]

knob = bulb that works as a handle

nob = male reproductive organ

[unique hill]

oh

[gray spade]

what an interesting read

[spark sparrow]

knob backwards is bonk

[unique hill]

true

gorgeous advertisement by @spark sparrow

yall we're so close to 100 bread reactions!

spread the word!!

[iron shore]

i added a funky light thing

(it's funky)

[unique hill]

a 93rd bread reaction

!

[remote hare]

🍞

[unique hill]

🍞

[unique hill]

lick ronald 💀

[iron shore]

i made fhat

[unique hill]

u made fhat

[iron shore]

mhm

[sturdy void]

bulb backwards is blub

[unique hill]

blub blub

[iron shore]

nether fix ya game

[unique hill]

how the fuck did you get here man

what the hell

[icy anchor]

Imagine if Nether intentionally added bugs to make it more fun

[iron shore]

the death animation really makes me feel like i bonked my conk

[spark sparrow]

if we get to 100 bread reactions i'm removing mine to make it go back down to 99 😈

[unique hill]

I did actually

at one point there was a bug that made you do a thing

i fixed it but it was fun so I re-added it

[unique hill]

bonked

[unique hill]

oh nevermind I did it too

https://hotcocoastudios.discowd.com/xf66dybBK9.mp4

video showcasing sound design in the game so far

[gray spade]

awesome

although jumps sounds a bit too heavy

[sturdy void]

can we let the main character turn into a feesh

[unique hill]

what...?

i mean kind of?

[iron shore]

sweet lil button called unfollow

[iron shore]

i can sense you contemplating jumping off

don't do it

you have people who lojve you maybe

[unique hill]

I really wanted to

but I wouldve had to change the death screen to not reveal information

[iron shore]

and the sfx

[unique hill]

yeah

now u got them theorizing

[unique hill]

can u also pls fix some of the jank

idrk where to start

[iron shore]

nah

it is sleepy time 😴😴😴

[thin turret]

is the content shown final

[gray spade]

nah

i want to follow all of those

[sturdy void]

yes

[unique hill]

its time to do what Ive been putting off for so long

the story

but first

something entirely different and technical

mwahahaha

in all seriousness im going to work on a way to have large open maps load and unload in real-time

[sturdy void]

cant you just preload the spawn areas and have the rest load in as you move around

[unique hill]

what im going to do is stupid but I had a dream it worked

essentially I have nodes right

the entire map is loaded

or a large section

but the large section is split into smaller section

which get added or removed from the scene tree depending on the player distance to it's centre

[iron shore]

sounds problematic

you would need to add lots of fog

[gray spade]

did you try LODs?

[unique hill]

im just doin an experiment

it may not or may be actually good

[gray spade]

good

[unique hill]

what why?

itll only load the props

the buildings would be there

just low detailed

[gray spade]

oh

[iron shore]

oh

[unique hill]

if this even works

[iron shore]

the props have collisions

[gray spade]

if it would work then it'll be great

[iron shore]

looks like you're inviting bugs in

[unique hill]

yeah no I dont think this is going to work

ive realized a grave error

[iron shore]

bro used the word grave

[unique hill]

that i can fix but takes too long

ill do something else

[iron shore]

as an adjective

[unique hill]

so?

[iron shore]

🤓🤓🤓

[unique hill]

ideally I want to have a large, open world map

of the city

[gray spade]

im not sure i or others understand what a "grave" error means

[unique hill]

in 2 big sections

separated by a massive highway

[gray spade]

that's my nit at least

[gray spade]

i read cyberpunk in this

[gray spade]

thanks i guess

[unique hill]

ive never seen much images of cyberpunk tbh

[gray spade]

im mostly joking, cyberpunk just happens to have a river that separates some parts of the city and they are obviously connected with a bridge

a large one, but still a bridge

[unique hill]

@iron shore modifying player.gd

im going to fix bugs

[unique hill]

ooh

i wanted to have a river in the project S city

[gray spade]

*im going to introduce merge conflicts

[iron shore]

I'm going to school 🤓🤓🎒🤓🎒🤓🤓👍

[unique hill]

ive done that often tbh

[unique hill]

!

[sturdy void]

idk how godot works so you do you

gonna learn c# out of spite

[unique hill]

godot uses C#

as an alternative to GDSCript

[sturdy void]

you dont thi

tho

[unique hill]

yeah so?

ur point

[sturdy void]

so if i learn it its not benefitial to you

[unique hill]

it is

cause that means you can code in godot

I just wouldnt be able to understand it until I learn C++ or C#

[sturdy void]

i mean for project s

[unique hill]

ya

[icy anchor]

That'll optimize the node count and potentially the physics time. By the way, kind of reminds of what was done in Mirror's Edge as they are also loading/unloading parts of the chapter to avoid loading screens. In my case, i had LocationZone trigger that would keep certain part of the level loaded while unloading other LocationZone, until you enter them. That optimized the game quite much and gave possibility to make a huge level with no loading screens, except i had "teleport doors." What you are about to implement sounds plausible, just make sure not to get too ambitious about it, remember about GDScript's possibilities and use more of distance_squared_to instead of distance_to to get performance boost

[unique hill]

ooh alright, I didn't know mirrors edge did that! I did want to replicate more of what Spiderman does

why does distance_squared_to give a performance boost though?

[icy anchor]

Calculation of squared root is utterly slow, especially when you do that each frame

[unique hill]

knowing this is now plausible, I feel i might complete implementation of it and add it in m_rooftops_0

[icy anchor]

m_?

What the fuck

[unique hill]

yeah, took some inspiration from ya

[icy anchor]

You and my friend are both now using it

[gray spade]

Honest reaction lmao

By the way what an m_ prefix means

[icy anchor]

Glad to know, btw

[unique hill]

"map", basically

[gray spade]

hm, okay

[unique hill]

im going to implement a new graphics option, Shader Quality

using a new script that switches between 2 materials depending on that value

low and high

high would have fancy things, like waving leaves

[icy anchor]

In my project it takes quite a story. At first, when the game was nothing but "funky mall shooting game where you kill baddies", the name of it was "Mall Purger" and, as it follows, "m" meant a shortened "mall." Now, as this game gone through a lengthy development cycle, now it means either "main"/"mission". So, if i'll make secret levels, they are going to be "s_" and etc

[icy anchor]

God bless file sorting

[unique hill]

true except mine is severely inconsistent

for now, knowing that the loader thing is plausible, ill experiment with a better implementation

[gray spade]

by the way, do y'all use self. notation?

i have some pretty weird rules in my projects that tell when to use it and when to not based on semantic meaning

[unique hill]

I personally only use it for tweens

[icy anchor]

Sometimes, i can't live without it

var thing: TheThing
func initialize(thing: TheThing): 
  self.thing = thing

Of course i'm trying to avoid it mostly

[icy anchor]

Damn, i hope nobody will get into my project, i'm going to hell after that

[gray spade]

why i wonder?

just less to type?

[icy anchor]

Idk, i'm writing that thing automatically, and, when i realize it, i don't want to rewrite the argument and just use self.

So it is nothing but subjective nonsense that i have

[gray spade]

understandable haha

[unique hill]

GIZMOSSSSS

YOOOOOOOOOOOO

[icy anchor]

Yay!

[unique hill]

oh sorry for interrupting

[icy anchor]

That's your thread ;)

[gray spade]

for context/reference, the rules are basically:

• does not change during runtime (@exports, consts, (pre)loads) => use var name directly
• everything else (mutable stuff like state variables and generally instance-specific data) => use self.

[icy anchor]

That sounds amazing

[icy anchor]

I think there is something i have for the consts and preloads

const CONSTANT_VAR = 10
const NICE_AUDIO_SAMPLE = preload("res://path/to/sample.mp3")

I love yelling at myself

[gray spade]

hmm isn't that the official style guide

[icy anchor]

It also reminds of what GTA 3/VC/SA games are doing, i feel like on distance, they may disable all the collisions, use LODs and etc. Also they seem to be using similar LOD system that i've been working on, except i think they have more advanced one that is using an actual baking to make it possible to bake onto very low-poly meshes... or maybe i'm overcomplicating it

[gray spade]

i genuinely wonder if that was a negative or positive "amazing"

[icy anchor]

Really?

[icy anchor]

Nah, these rules are clean, really

So it is genuinely positive

[gray spade]

it is in python at least, and iirc gdscript style guide is derived from python's pep8 soo

[icy anchor]

Honestly, there was only one time i looked into official guide and i forgot entirety of it

[unique hill]

interesting

im sorry if I say "interesting" too often, but it is interesting

I've always wanted to replicate unreal engine's loading system

the distinctive pop you can see when a level loads

all the low detailed models

slowly go to higher detail as the level loads

[icy anchor]

Infectious word that i love to use too!

[icy anchor]

It sounds like their "streaming" technology, except... Hmm, damn, not even sure it really works, but from what i read from you, you can make something similar to it in Godot 4, but not sure how automized... Which may be a good thing, in your case you may be able to load into level and actually see all details from the start, but it is theory for now

[unique hill]

https://hotcocoastudios.discowd.com/3zUEFenea4.mp4

its doing a thing

[gray spade]

yep, so in general constants are SCREMING_SNAKE_CASE, but there is an exception for preloaded scenes, these should be PascalCase (same as the name of the scene being loaded)

[icy anchor]

Like, by automation i mean, no way people in UE4/5 are doing that

[unique hill]

what is their streaming technology?

it looks as if it loads much faster

[icy anchor]

My scenes are snake_case.tscn as well as any other resource/file in the game, so i locally decided to treat preloaded resources as constants as i don't really need to change them later

So, finally, i broke the official guideline, yahoo, i can go to hell while listening to "highway to hell"

[unique hill]

I fixed this by the way

sending a video now

[gray spade]

you did it correctly :)

[unique hill]

_distance > distance

woop

https://hotcocoastudios.discowd.com/RFVGprCDSz.mp4

[icy anchor]

I'm not very certain as i just heard of it and never used UE that much, but they do have automized LODs and streaming of assets such as texture streaming and etc

[unique hill]

ignore the exposure change in the beginning

exposure is synced to the music slightly

but wasnt tested in daylight

u can see it was unexpected bc I flinged my mouse about

[icy anchor]

const Weapon = preload("res://weapon.gd")
Ah, wait, that's the stuff for script types. I'm trying to use more of class_name for these cases and yeah, classes are PascalCase...
Alright, years of writing text for computer actually are paying off for me

[unique hill]

Ill add a raycast check so that its also unloaded if hidden

[icy anchor]

It reminds me of bug with my LOD system that actually made all blockout meshes to flicker and only properly show up the LOD variations