Arcen Games

General Category => In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor => : x4000 April 28, 2016, 08:15:42 PM

: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 28, 2016, 08:15:42 PM
Original: http://arcengames.com/raptor-dev-diary-2-thar-be-dinos-behind-that-longwinded-man/



First video of any of the parts of the game in action!  Bear in mind this is circa alpha 0.1, a private build.  The video should make that pretty clear, though.  I wound up talking about a TON of stuff with the project in general, and unity development as a whole as well, instead of just covering what Blue and I have been up to in the last two weeks.

So... er... somehow that wound up lasting an hour?  If you just want to see the raptor run around for a brief bit, you only need to watch a couple of minutes out of that.  If you want to see how the layers of certain effects are made, or hear and see a bit of behind the scenes of how my custom occlusion culling system works, then keep watching.

Right -- so how to sum up In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor?

The page for the game goes into more depth into what the game is about, as well as some information on minimum specs.

Click here for raptor dev diary #1.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: tombik April 28, 2016, 08:27:30 PM
When the raptor scratches its head, it made me think of this:

(http://rlv.zcache.ca/blank_philosoraptor_poster-r7dc217f967c3413583b1f142154e04ba_zem0h_8byvr_1024.jpg)

Looks awesome so far. I also enjoy seeing that you chose a more hands on approach in marketing. And crashing is already looking good, I dont know what will happen in the following weeks.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 28, 2016, 08:32:05 PM
Thanks!  And yeah, the scratching is something that is a stock animation that is pretty cartoony.  That's something that will not be in the real idle animation that Blue is doing.  Though hers does have the raptor eventually look straight back behind it like "dude, are we going to do something, or...?"

I'm definitely glad to be more hands-on with the marketing again, too.  Glad to have TIME to do that.  Time definitely isn't infinite, and in fact I'm starting to feel it crunch in again a bit actually, but it's so much better than in past projects.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: tombik April 28, 2016, 09:01:13 PM
Thanks!  And yeah, the scratching is something that is a stock animation that is pretty cartoony.  That's something that will not be in the real idle animation that Blue is doing. 

I hope scratching will still happen time to time, since Philosoraptor is a pretty common meme nowadays.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 28, 2016, 09:22:16 PM
I'm unsure how much I want to intentionally play into memes during gameplay, as I feel like that might undercut the feeling of being a cool raptor predator.  But, perhaps we'll bury that further into an extended idle cycle or something. :)

All of the original animations that came stock with this that you see have to be dumped, though, because of the re-rigging we did.  So we'd have to recreate some variant of that anyhow.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: mrhanman April 28, 2016, 09:30:52 PM
I really appreciate the look behind the curtain.  The dev stuff you guys post is always really interesting.

Also, it looks like the game is coming along nicely.  I can't wait to play it!
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Misery April 28, 2016, 11:13:55 PM
Thanks!  And yeah, the scratching is something that is a stock animation that is pretty cartoony.  That's something that will not be in the real idle animation that Blue is doing.  Though hers does have the raptor eventually look straight back behind it like "dude, are we going to do something, or...?"

I'm definitely glad to be more hands-on with the marketing again, too.  Glad to have TIME to do that.  Time definitely isn't infinite, and in fact I'm starting to feel it crunch in again a bit actually, but it's so much better than in past projects.

I'm glad you have more time available for this one than was had for Starward.  That really was rather infuriating.  That nobody went insane as a result of that is amazing.  I understand now just how anyone involved in development can get frustrated by deadlines.

Anyway, this is looking pretty good so far.  Cant wait to try it out, even if that's awhile off yet.

And that stock level it's taking place in reminds me so much of Viscera Cleanup Detail. 
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Mánagarmr April 29, 2016, 04:25:55 AM
I've got an interrogation exam coming up right now, but I'll watch this as soon as I can.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Pumpkin April 29, 2016, 05:21:09 AM
You talk about darkness. What about a night vision or infrared vision instead of a light carried by the raptor? Does this kind of special vision sounds feasible?
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 29, 2016, 09:48:17 AM
I should note that it is entirely possible to pull off alternate vision modes without having to duplicate game objects and give them new shaders.

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-ShaderReplacement.html
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 29, 2016, 12:04:57 PM
Thanks guys. :)

And yep, I do know about how to do x-ray vision and night vision and all sorts of good stuff in the local areas.  It does break batching, but isn't too big a hit overall.  The main thing is that to me I feel like it would look too technological, to be honest.  I associate that sort of thing with artificial equipment, and not something like a cat's vision at night.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 29, 2016, 12:30:54 PM
Depends on exactly what is called and what it looks like. But yeah, I agree that it has a high potential to look really tech-based.

I'll have to double check ebay I was working on to see how badly it breaks batching, I was controlling a ton of stuff via scripting (in this case, whether any given entity showed up on the second render pass). But odds are the stuff I was doing was breaking batching for a number of reasons.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 29, 2016, 12:39:20 PM
I've had to design kind of a middle-ground between batching and occlusion culling in order to get it to be flexible enough that I can do what I want in terms of physics and so on, but at the same modular enough that it can be procedurally constructed to a certain extent, but at the same time not die from overdraw.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 29, 2016, 12:46:17 PM
Yep yep, I got that. :)
And a very nice system you have, too.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 29, 2016, 12:50:45 PM
Appreciated. :)

Anyway, my main point was: yeah, one has to break batching quite a bit more than might be preferred, to be sure.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 29, 2016, 01:07:31 PM
It's certainly a concern.  My project is a bit less...detailed in terms of the environment so I probably have the render budget.

Hmm, lets see....dig up some old screenshots (haven't worked on this one in a while, doing a smaller thing right now).

older, explanatory http://s28.postimg.org/mw484ultp/Wall_Hack.png
newer, shinier, http://s28.postimg.org/6wf3ks1pp/edge_highlight.png
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 29, 2016, 01:10:21 PM
Cool stuff!
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 29, 2016, 01:11:37 PM
The outline on the sphere in that second one, by the way, is all shadercode. No post processing (as most games do it).

The stencil buffer is awesome.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Aklyon April 29, 2016, 01:25:21 PM
Right -- so how to sum up In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor (http://arcengames.com/in-case-of-emergency-release-raptor/)?
Be a velociraptor.
You just mentioned in the other post that we aren't being a velociraptor though! :)
We're being a different raptor.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 29, 2016, 01:26:04 PM
The outline on the sphere in that second one, by the way, is all shadercode. No post processing (as most games do it).

The stencil buffer is awesome.

Indeed it is.  Deferred shading in general is awesome, too, for a lot of similar reasons. :)

Right -- so how to sum up In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor (http://arcengames.com/in-case-of-emergency-release-raptor/)?
Be a velociraptor.
You just mentioned in the other post that we aren't being a velociraptor though! :)

I know, right!?  What a hypocrite I am.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 29, 2016, 01:34:00 PM
I had to write the shader too. @_@
Took me something like 3 days figuring out how to modify the geometry as it comes in.  It's still suboptimal in at least one way (it doesn't try to line the new edges up with each other, so it gets all spiky at extreme thickness levels), but it's sufficient.

And free.

http://answers.unity3d.com/answers/1065843/view.html
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 29, 2016, 01:39:05 PM
Nice!
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 29, 2016, 01:45:22 PM
And its posted there because it's the first google result for "unity outline shader"
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: crazyroosterman April 29, 2016, 03:35:03 PM
The outline on the sphere in that second one, by the way, is all shadercode. No post processing (as most games do it).

The stencil buffer is awesome.

Indeed it is.  Deferred shading in general is awesome, too, for a lot of similar reasons. :)

Right -- so how to sum up In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor (http://arcengames.com/in-case-of-emergency-release-raptor/)?
Be a velociraptor.
You just mentioned in the other post that we aren't being a velociraptor though! :)

I know, right!?  What a hypocrite I am.
yea false advertising much? it should instead be called ,in case of emergency release raptor that isn't actually a raptor but is actually a  Achillobator but we called it a raptor because it would sound better for marketing,
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 29, 2016, 03:45:19 PM
Or we should make it a real velociraptor and listen smugly while people go "why is he only up to my knees!?"  THAT would go well. ;)
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Mánagarmr April 29, 2016, 04:02:58 PM
It's early alpha, I know. But I'm just going to assume those robotic animations are not final?

That said it was a very interesting look into the behind the scenes stuff as well as design ideas. Thanks!
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 29, 2016, 04:07:24 PM
It's early alpha, I know. But I'm just going to assume those robotic animations are not final?

I mentioned in the video a couple of times that those are just stock ones and Blue's been doing vastly better ones.  I think I even mocked the kick animation at one point, IIRC. ;)

But yeah, those are both stiff as well as cartoony.  She vastly improved the rig of the raptor, and made it possible for it to have things like breathing motions in its chest, flanks motion, etc, etc.  Proper IK for the legs, etc.  I'm actually in the process of integrating her walk/run/idle/jump animations at this very moment.  Holy smokes what a difference. :)
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: wwwhhattt April 29, 2016, 08:28:45 PM
Or we should make it a real velociraptor and listen smugly while people go "why is he only up to my knees!?"  THAT would go well. ;)

You're fighting robots, right? Just make them really small robots!

(I love the idea of having a war between tiny raptors and robots, while human or bigger sized things are going about their business paying no attention whatsoever - just raptors doing what they do)
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 April 29, 2016, 08:33:23 PM
I have thought about having an actual to-scale velociraptor as one option for playing.  Kind of a character select situation, you know.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 30, 2016, 01:51:25 AM
Should have a t-rex option too.  And then it can't fit through the doors and just makes a plaintive whining sound as it keeps trying anyway.

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5l6ssKAYO1qmyzdao1_500.gif)
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: crazyroosterman April 30, 2016, 04:36:44 AM
Should have a t-rex option too.  And then it can't fit through the doors and just makes a plaintive whining sound as it keeps trying anyway.

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5l6ssKAYO1qmyzdao1_500.gif)
that should be an enemy instead then you can run back through the nearest door and laugh at it.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Pumpkin April 30, 2016, 06:03:26 AM
On the night vision topic, I quickly googled things and got the main (artistic, not technical) difference between night vision and infrared vision. And I never talked about

https://www.google.ae/search?q=infrared+vision&tbm=isch (https://www.google.ae/search?q=infrared+vision&tbm=isch)
https://www.google.ae/search?q=night+vision&tbm=isch (https://www.google.ae/search?q=night+vision&tbm=isch)

The night vision is green and gives a very military/technology feeling. The infrared vision makes colored gradations that, IMO, are much more organic and convey more a "predator vision". I think it could serve game's readability in dark places and also be used to spot enemies. Maybe the robots have an embedded reactor that emit heat and clearly stands out in the infrared vision. Of course it would be a toggle, maybe with a key/button that change the vision while pressed and revert to normal when released.

What do you think?
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: chemical_art April 30, 2016, 10:22:06 AM

I hope scratching will still happen time to time, since Philosoraptor is a pretty common meme nowadays.

I will throw in support for this. You could make it an easter egg of sorts: Either it only happens in a specific room and/or you can do what was popular in the 90's which is alternative cosmetic displays a la big/small head mode etc that you can unlock. Some unlockable things like that are pretty cosmetic can be neat treasures to find.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: eRe4s3r April 30, 2016, 12:22:54 PM
When looking at the animations I have some things I wanna throw out there ;p

Animation seams, neck, tail-body connection are a big issue and need fixing imo ;P This is a mesh/bone weight issue more or less, but still needs mention.
When running / jumping, there is no kinetic movement or dynamic IK whatsoever (it looks very fake and "stock" because of that) when jumping there should be an obvious physical compression of the knee joints on impact with the tail acting as balancer. And when running, the tail should follow the kinetic motion of the body and not just "drag behind" with no animation. (hard to explain ,p)

Feathers though are whole different topic... since you can't do them with shaders you need to do them with polygons which complicates animations a thousandfold.

It would be nice if the tail IK were dynamic, so that collisions when turning can bend the tail (generally speaking, the tail should not act like a giant static mesh attached to a dinosaur ,p)

And finally, that bloom.. is too strong imo. But this is hopefully a configurable setting... more importantly, if you are using a proper HDR color grading shader then how exactly is there bloom to begin with? The color gradient control should allow you to limit overglow very effectively. Finally, rim light shader element could severely improve visual quality in certain areas.

Well, aside that it looks pretty good... I am not sold on using stock dinosaur mesh though, not just because of the feathers and the unrealism, but because I could have sworn I have seen that dino mesh before in some game...
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 30, 2016, 01:00:03 PM
When looking at the animations I have some things I wanna throw out there ;p

All of those animations are stock and Blue's redone pretty much all of them as I understand it.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: eRe4s3r April 30, 2016, 02:29:42 PM
When looking at the animations I have some things I wanna throw out there ;p

All of those animations are stock and Blue's redone pretty much all of them as I understand it.

obligatory "don't show outdated assets in videos" comment then. Since you know, those videos stick around forever and are the first thing a google video search pops up (since it's usually the most commented on)

Geeze, I wonder why my comments sounded so snarky? It wasn't meant like that at all ~.~ Must be the coffee
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Draco18s April 30, 2016, 02:35:33 PM
The video mentions several times that the animations are going to get replaced. :P
They just weren't done and hadn't been imported yet.
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: Mánagarmr April 30, 2016, 03:26:12 PM
It's early alpha, I know. But I'm just going to assume those robotic animations are not final?

I mentioned in the video a couple of times that those are just stock ones and Blue's been doing vastly better ones.  I think I even mocked the kick animation at one point, IIRC. ;)

But yeah, those are both stiff as well as cartoony.  She vastly improved the rig of the raptor, and made it possible for it to have things like breathing motions in its chest, flanks motion, etc, etc.  Proper IK for the legs, etc.  I'm actually in the process of integrating her walk/run/idle/jump animations at this very moment.  Holy smokes what a difference. :)
Amazing. I must've missed every instance of that XD I heard you talk a lot about sound effects and stuff not being final. But welp. Here goes to show one should not play Dwarf Fortress while listening to stuff xD
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: eRe4s3r April 30, 2016, 09:44:55 PM
Same applies to me.. 1 hour is a lot to expect someone to pay attention to though, so there is that at least ;P
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: crazyroosterman May 01, 2016, 05:19:37 AM
I still haven't got round to listening to it mainly because theres so much other stuff I need to watch/listen to but I will get round to it I promise you that even if it is by the time the next videos been put up.  :(
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 May 02, 2016, 10:17:21 AM
Cheers guys. :)

1. "Don't show videos with outdated assets" is how we wind up with "we never talked about this until the game came out, now marketing fail."  So I'm going the other way with this one.  It worked well for Valley 1, overall.

2. Noted on the various things with the raptor seams at the tail, etc.  That was just an artifact of the original rigging.

3. With the tail being something that uses an IK chain, I spent a good week trying to get that to work via both IK chains and puppet master, and the results were generally unintentionally hilarious in a bad way.  There are some things that I'd like to improve there, but a lot of that is just coming down to how Blue has animated it now, which is superior to what it used to be anyhow.  The tail is probably the trickiest part -- her other animations are freaking amazing in terms of what they add.

4. The bloom is configurable, and is something that is on top of the HDR effect for dramatic purposes.  It can be configured, although I'm not sure it's directly what was bothering you the most.  Most likely that was actually the color saturation artifacts (which were blurry and could easily be mistaken for bloom) from the Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion in use.  I've made a lot of adjustments to the HBAO, and it looks much better, too.  Things are crisper, particularly with shadows, etc.

5. Rim lighting is a good point, but rather expensive on the GPU to my knowledge.  I'm not sure if the main shaders support rim lighting, either.  I'd have to look into that more.  Where specifically are you thinking those would be most useful, though?

6. I'll have another video today showing various updated stuff, and in a much briefer fashion.  So hopefully that will be something people enjoy, and with videos coming out more regularly that ought to combat the "outdated assets are the first thing you see" issue.  Some, at least.

7. I have thought about having a t-rex option, and that could be quite fun.  We shall see if it's ever possible just for cost reasons on our end.  If this is a big hit, it sure would be fun to add.  And +100 karma for the Meet The Robinsons reference.  That movie is so good (and the soundtrack).
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 May 02, 2016, 07:29:04 PM
Next video will be tomorrow morning, not tonight.  I've gotten a bit more done than anticipated, though, which is pleasing. :)
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: eRe4s3r May 03, 2016, 12:18:10 AM
Well yeah ;) You are right with showing stuff, just not 1 hour long monologues since (apparently) many people overhear stuff... as I have to admit I did ;P

As for rim light shader... it usually is just a tool to make things stand out more. But it depends hugely on the mesh/level/engine how exactly that's gonna look. Generally speaking if it's an light source based shader it will look extremely neat.... but it could also look horrible in other scenes ;p Only thought of that because I saw the follower light, which isn't an optimal solution to make the dino appear rooted in the world (graphics wise) usually what happens is what I like to call the Dark Souls problem, when you have a character that glows in the dark that you can see from behind, it appears as if he is never actually standing on the ground due to how normal maps interact with this light ;p
: Re: Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man
: x4000 May 03, 2016, 09:50:00 AM
Ah, interesting.

True enough on a number of those things, for sure.  I can see what you mean about a rim light for the raptor and so forth in particular, that could look pretty slick.  Before I wasn't really thinking of what I could use that sort of light for.

Anyhow, yeah, hour-long monologues are not the general plan. ;)