Raptor Dev Diary #2: Thar Be Dinos Behind That Longwinded Man

[x4000]

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?

• Be a velociraptor.


• Feel like a velociraptor -- lots and lots of design centers specifically around that feeling.


• Procedural levels in different themes.  A pleasing blend of hand-crafted setting and randomization.


• Fight robots!  Tear giant ones limb from limb, pounce on small ones, and try not to die.

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.

[tombik]

When the raptor scratches its head, it made me think of this:



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.

[x4000]

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.

[tombik]

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.

[x4000]

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.

[mrhanman]

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!

[Misery]

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. 

[Mánagarmr]

I've got an interrogation exam coming up right now, but I'll watch this as soon as I can.

[Pumpkin]

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?

[Draco18s]

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

[x4000]

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.

[Draco18s]

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.

[x4000]

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.

[Draco18s]

Yep yep, I got that.
And a very nice system you have, too.

[x4000]

Appreciated.

Anyway, my main point was: yeah, one has to break batching quite a bit more than might be preferred, to be sure.