Morningstar Quick Update
Added 2023-07-25 22:19:17 +0000 UTCOne of our most frustrating, gear grinding slowdowns in developing this game has been working in Isometric 2D spaces.
While this has given us the look we want, it has introduced almost impossible issues regarding sorting where a character or object is, relative to all the other stuff. And it makes lighting a massive PITA.
To fix this and let us finally catch our breath in this game, we've begun switching from isometric 2D into a 3D scene reusing our sprites on meshes.
This really isn't too huge of an issue -- obviously all of James's coordinates systems need to change, and how he layers weapons around the body change -- but other than that, we're pretty much retargeting our symbol's from spriterenderers to 3d meshes.
This also allows for far, far more accurate Collision Geometry.
This might seem silly, but the ability to target something "in the air" in 2D is a whole load of bullshit.
Getting rid of that means targeting the thing under your mouse no longer needs to do a bunch of math, and it will be much more intuitive for a player o hit what they are trying to aim at, especially with slower weapons.
We still retain the cool 2D sprites we've generated and look good, but they can now accurately cast shadows.
And while our building & cliff sprites are an unfortunate sacrifice, we're gaining a pipeline that is so, so much faster and easier to iterate on as artists.
It's also substantially easier to do this than it was in 2D. Roofs especially, have been our bane.
And we can finally get rid of the VRAM and CPU bottlenecks of using flip-books to turn wheels and windmills.
Because this was also some bullshit in 2D. Don't even get me started.
While the transition won't be instantaneous, it is coming along pretty quickly. After this we'll be solving unexpected issues for some indeterminate amount of time before getting back to the Editor tasks for our next internal build.
Between this big change and the character editor, there's A LOT going on at Radian-Helix.
