Week 25 : Please wait rendering.

The level now is really starting to come together, as a whole new ground system is being put in place.

This ground is made out of dynamic small parts of earth, which are designed to slot together and and make a more interesting  environment than the terrain we had before. It also closer fits to the cartoony design we want for the level, making it more child friendly.

But the obvious issue is that the sharp contrasting shadows make it look really bad! Being designed to look like rock and sediment those little nooks and crannies catch all the shadows and make it look stripy and intense. So I took some time to fix that.

This is the fix, used by changing the default Unreal Engine 4 lighting with Distance Field Ambient Occlusion Rendering. It's something I was toying with beforehand, but works really well with the new ground and assets. 

It's a rendering technique meant for very dynamic games as it processes the shadows tick by tick, mostly for destructible objects or things that move alot. But I really like the kind of softer faded look it gives. 

This is due to the Ray Traced Distance Field rendering it uses, which is rather heavy on the engine but I think will be worth it. We don;t have many high impact parts of the game like high tri models so we may be safe.

Also as you may notice, you can change the colour of this lighting system far more. With this I can make the different levels have their own sense of atmosphere.

Other than just working this out I've been spending my time working on making the levels, putting assets within them and building this ground. It's exciting to really see these worlds come together. The issue is there is lots to still change. The ground needs constant work, and without textures everything may still be up for change.

It's an exciting time! There's lots to do, but the game is starting to come together. Also now begins the planning for our Reflective Writing challenge. This is exciting too me as I've not done any kind of writing since my English Literature days. Maybe i'll completely screw it up, but i'll atleast try and make this writing task fun.