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SOMIT Episode #01 (11-1979) Developer Log
in Gaming | Thursday, January 19, 2023 | 17:36


From the progress of my VR project "Stone Oakvalley's Moment In Time" I will start to post some updates on the scenes behind developing this VR experience called "Occupation: STARCLEANER", also known as Episode #01.


Episode #01 [11-1979]
"Occupation: STARCLEANER"


28 Dec 2023:

Finally, I had time to continue of prepearing some more objects for this Episode. The 10 months or so since last update was spent on other episodes, but mainly the main player VR full body character system, took about 3-4 months to finally more or less settle down, phew! The updates done for the Episode #01 the past days was working on the space hanger light, logic and 3d model cleanup and optimization. I have added a screenshot of the current state of the space hanger below. The time ahead I will jump-develop more bits and pieces on other episodes, but at least I'll spend 1-2 more days on the space hanger to get some progress going.


05 Feb 2023:

Just needed to add the preliminary UFO object, its flight logic and laser behaviours into this Episode before I'll take a development break from this, to work on another Episode that is set in the Western world. Added 2 screenshots to complete the development this far.


31 Jan 2023:

Just a last quick post that I have found the UFO object to be used in this Episode. Its actually quite funny, because the 3d model was identified as a living room lamp. Well, that's pretty spot on as we have all seen those classic UFO's photo's from the 70's and 80's that pretty much look like a redneck's photo of a saucer, knowing that it was only his living room or garage lamp object he threw in the air claiming it was an UFO. hahah, pathetic, never fooled me though.

From 1st of February 2023 I will start working on EPISODE #05 [01-1984] named "I, Thesaurus Lyncher" which will be set in an Western desert town where the theme of the game/episode is "hangman". Can't wait to immerse myself into some good ol' cowboy stuff. So, for now, updates for this Episode#1 will take a break.


30 Jan 2023:

During the past week I have finalized all the moving axis logic of all Asteroids (Complete, Part and Parts) a total of 715 pieces. In addition have learned and played around coding the Particle effects, explosion via Sprite Sheet, sound effects and more hassle. As I'm always learning new techniques and tricks, I notice that some of the mechanics, physics and code invented in this Episode can very well be re-used in other episodes as well. I have some shooting games in the Moment In Time project.

I was quite amazed that even with many Asteroids, particle dust effects and multitude of explosions along with other post-processing effects and graphics running the framerate was mostly at 72fps (and that even before I have begun to optimize and find bottlenecks this far) on a stock Quest 2 VR Headset.

I have made up some statistics for the entire playable section for this episode and ended up one have to shoot and destory 715 pieces of Asteroids where the points are calculated as:
Large (Complete) = 20points each
Medium (Part) = 50points each
Small (Parts) = 100points each
UFO/Saucer (4 instances) = 800 points each

Which results in a max score of 60600, but damage to your ship, timer and amount of damage of the protective dome will drag this down.

At the moment, I have a fully working game, but of course there are much more work to do, which is:
1: Start on UFO/Saucer object (can't wait!)
2: Start on Space Hanger
3: Start on Space Ship and cockpit
4: Cockpit mechanics of buttons, sticks, radar and stuff.

I must say that the development of this Episode progressed faster than I expected which is a good thing. I still have 5 episodes not even started on prototyping yet and I have to probably lay off this Episode #1 for a while to start on those. Eventually I will circle back to this Episode #1 continue (as with the other announced episodes initiated so far).


22 Jan 2023:

I have managed in the past days to add a functioning movement and collision logic for all asteroids including a crude "attached to hand for now" a laser shooting function that either hits any of the asteroid or exits the gameplay area defined by a huge sphere and its collider. Right now, I have a crude working version of a early start of an actual game.

I did some calculations of how many asteroids there are, which are based on 13 different ones with different design and rotation. Out of these 13, they can be first shot into 2 parts each, forming a total of 26 pieces, then each of the 2 x pieces can be exploded to 8 pieces each, a total of 13x8 = 104 asteroids. In addition these are multiplied 5 times, forming a asteroid belt threat of 520 asteroids which have to be all killed to continue to next Episode after beeing rewarded with a Diamond stone which enables the Time Machine to proceed to next "level" or episode.

My VR experiences will never be like those other games out there which constantly spawns "enemies" just because you, the player, didn't appear in a predefined spot or did the "planned scripting" of the game developers. Call of Duty are such a typical game (at least some of the older ones). I always hated that lame approach where the game developers designed the game in a linear fashion, but trying to be free form. In many of those so-called AAA games, you could break that system by walking a different path placing you suddenly behind enemies shooting at "where you should be" and you could just watch them shooting in the wrong direction in which you can kill them from behind. Lame, so lame :-)

What I'm trying to tell you is that if there are 520 asteroids you have to kill to win the level, that is exactly what you have to do, no more no less. Isn't that true to reality, hence what Virtual Reality should be about?

Anyway, I also solved some game logic of why the Asteroids seems to "hunt" you, always trying to get to the center and this is because in order for you to "create" a Diamond Stone, immense power is required causing the metal in the asteroids appear to become drawn by magnetic powers to your little space hanger/station where the Time Machine places you. The space hanger/station will be covered by a shield which can only take that much damage. So, both time and your precise shooting will get you through this episode.



20 Jan 2023:

Have now more or less perfected the stars complete with minor sparkle and emission/hdr glowing/pulsating stars on top of a free skybox (6-sdes) found on the Unity Asset store Starfield Skybox

They claim high quality, but I cannot fully agree.
1: Color banding is visible.
2: Filesizes are way too high (PNG, 16-BIT with Alpha).
3: Colors counted are only between 16-30000 anyway, so 8-bit would suffice, but even at that (16.7million) even 8-bit format PNG is WAY OVERKILL. Do the authors of this asset KNOW anything about pixels are digital colors?
(sure, maybe the Alpha come in handy, but for me, I don't need it and other should watch out for this.)
4: I converted them down to JPG at quality of 90 and saved about 30mb! pr. image. Same graphics anyway!

End conclusion: "High Quality" isn't only about the resolution (which is pretty high at 4k, which are perfect), but it also matters what format its saved in (yes, png are lossless so good there), but finally its about the color count as this severly impacts visual quality in which within "high quality" that term are part of. Oh well.

I also had to manually remove all stars from this 6-sides skybox artwork, which was done quite quick with Adobe Photoshop CS5. I will in the next days focus on creating a motion path and logic system for the Asteroids.



Introduction - 19 Jan 2023:

This episode deals with a universe and space scene that includes a space hanger, a space ship, a bunch of asteroids and some other surprises. It takes its inspiration from the arcade and Atari game "Asteroids".

During the past week or so I specically focused on the background which was a testing between using a regular skybox and some own generated 3d-stars (3-4 polygons) wrapped up into a sphere, then zoomed out into a gigantic 10000 meter around the XR ORIGIN (or player).

I figured I could actually just use some mossy rocks that I had produced for Episode #06 [12-1985] - "Cross-country Scope Challenge" but then morphing them into more asteroid looks, together with just new textures. Then I broke them up into fractures using a okey function available from Newtek's Modeler 2015 software. At the moment, these are just quickly textured as shown below, but the fracture part should be pretty much final.

Next up I started experimenting with Shader Graph and alot of youtube tutorials to learn how to create blinking stars, but this was quite a headache as the final result would look like a hypnotic flicker fest when viewed on the Quest 2. On a PC with UNITY the stars looked pretty convincing. I'm still trying to find the right balance between the size of stars, its blinking effect, coloring but also random glow (emission, HDR) together with light post processing applied.

I have also dug out some preliminary 3d-models that will be heavily modified and merged to form the scene that I'm currently trying to piece together for both the space hanger and the starship fighter.

19 Jan 2023:
A first glance at the very early stages of this Episode and its Unity scene project.

I'm just in the development of producing a believable starry sphere to act as a epic space feeling. The stars have been boosted for effect, they will appear much more less intruding and more or less match the reality out there in space eventually. Anyway, the stars are not the main character of this scene, but it has to look nice at the end.



14 Jan 2023:
Screenshot from Blender 3.12 with DreamTextures (Stable Diffusion v1.5 model) to produce the inner texture of the fractured Asteroids.

AI comes to the rescue!



17 Jan 2023:
The initial space hanger hallway model that will be modifed, perfected and textured.

The player will walk through this hanger from the exit of the TimeMachine, then slide into a ISS based tube into the cockpit of the actual starship fighter and its cockpit.



17 Jan 2023:
This tube is an actual module part from ISS - The International Space Station. I will re-use parts of this, possibly merge 2-3 together.

The player will enter this tube from the hallway above and slide into the cockpit seat of the starship fighter.



13 Jan 2023:
Just a quick preview of the fractured asteroid model. The plan is to shoot once to fracture into two pieces, then 2 more shots to fracture 2 more for each, in total 8 pieces of asteroid pieces that have to be destroyed.

Naturally the scene will be randomly filled with these asteroids and this is just 1 of the 13 fully asteroids already modelled.

So, if you have 13 different asteroids in the scene, blasting that set will result in 104 different variations of 3d objects. Of course I intend to have probably 500 of these small pieces in this episode.



13 Jan 2023:
An attempt made to create random stars (polygons as 3,4 or 5 sides) in randomized position.

The code was based on Lightwave's script "LScript" and was done similar to such a code:

countx = 1;
countz = 1;
while(countz <= 300)
{
while(countx <= 300)
{
makedisc(random(0.1,0.6), 0, 0, Y, random(2,3), 0, );
countx=countx+1;
}
countx=1;
countz=countz+1;
}




13 Jan 2023:
When zoomed up, you can see the details of the star objects.
There where about 60000 polygons.



13 Jan 2023.
Then I wrapped all the flat stars polygon object with a script called "SHM_Plane_To_Sphere_v2.0.ls" in Newtek modeler, and made sure the polygon faces to center (where you as player would be).

During a couple of days trial and error, these tiny little objects became a flickering mess inside the Quest 2 headset. It look spectacular while developing in unity on PC though.

Anyway, I believe the object was either too large for Quest 2 rendering, or the lack of anti-aliasing caused this to be a failed attempt of trying to generate physical stars in the background.

I later ended up scrapping this idea and tackled the problem inside various Shader Graphs instead. Eventually I will manage to get it right, but its a fine balance between the amount of stars, balance of coloring, bloom and scaling of both noise generators and the amount of blinking effect applied.

I don't want to give people a flickering nightmare of 10000 stars blinking at you in a structured pattern or flowing pattern!



20 Jan 2023:
The original skybox images had a lot of stars in them. Since I create my own stars I have to remove these somehow.



20 Jan 2023:
Voila! With Adobe Photoshop CS5 and its Spot Healing tool they are easily removed for all 6 sides of the skybox.

Note: I use CS5 of the Adobe package because I do not concur with their recent removal of "MASTER" and other so-called racist, sexist or just plain dumb fuck WOKE word changes.

Master, black, white. A spade is a spade.



20 Jan 2023:
It seems that the asset found on Unity asset store (free one) have issues with color banding. They are barely visible, but are more easy to spot once in the headset.

They claim its "high quality", but they have either done this on purpose or they have no idea of what computer graphics is at all.

To me, this is either saved as 8-bit color, then changed to 16-bit to appear "quality", or the crappy software they render this is they saved in the wrong format.

The asset was
"Starfield Skybox" by Pulsar Bytes.

Otherwise I chose this because it was very nice skybox when viewed as a whole, but the color banding was quite irritating.

I might try to upscale it with AI tools, then downscale to see if I can get more colors added in the process. Either that, or maybe Stable Diffusion can help!



20 Jan 2023:
My quick attempt to show you where the subtle color banding error occurs.



30 Jan 2023:
A WIP view of a multitude of Asteroids during some testing with light, mechanics, particles, effects and code.



31 Jan 2023:
This is the original lamp object, shaped as a pretty classic saucer/UFO type from the 70's, 80's era. I will naturally make this into a proper looking metallic object.



05 Feb 2023:
I used some textures I created in Stable Diffusion AI text-to-image generator and it turned out great, here's some of the in-progress texturing of that said lamp UFO object above.



05 Feb 2023:
Implemented a flight logic and shooting pattern for 4 x UFO's that will occur during gameplay, here together with already finished Asteroids.



28 Dec 2023:
A work-in-progress playing with light and mooding for the space hanger station, along with some ceaned up single-color 3d objects for now to placeholder the look of the interior of this space hanger station.






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Posted by: GameDeveloper, Stone Oakvalley | Publisher: Website Designer, Stone Oakvalley
Last revised: December 28, 2023 - 16:35 | Page views: 171


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