Everything far away in a game engine can feel small, flat, and washed out. That is correct perspective, but it can make for some poor scenery sometimes. Two features I've added to my engine try to fight against that: Spatial Recession magnifies the distance. After a vertex is projected I push its screen position outward from center. Near geometry is untouched. It only moves x and y, never depth, so nothing sorts differently and nothing z-fights. The result is a long lens bolted onto the far half of a wide one: the tower and the ridgeline loom instead of receding, while I keep the wide field of view I actually play in (FOV is identical in both of these examples). Dimensional Falloff is four distance ramps on the surface itself. Lighting contrast flattens so distant hills stop having a hard lit side and a hard dark side, which is what haze does in real life. Color then desaturates toward its own brightness to fake more distance. Then that desaturated color is pushed, and that is the one doing most of the visible work here. Last is texture detail, with a custom MIP value based on distances. All of it keys off real radial distance from the camera rather than depth This is so it stays put when you turn your head. Performance cost is next to nothing. The recession is two lines in the vertex shader. The falloff is a few lerps at the end of the pixel shader, which was already computing that distance for the mip bias anyway. Quite happy with the results, what do you think? #gamedev

Its Friday night. I'm blocking out a new level and loving game dev. Life is good.

The world is peaceful....for now.

Couldn't be in a better mood! Its Friday and I have full controller support working in my custom game engine! 🔥

heroic fantasy adventure -> encounters world's most generic skeleton -> immediately gets rekt (P.S. - I added death to my game)

Hard to record with one hand, but i have a first pass of controller support working in my custom game engine! I can touch mouse or gameplay & they instantly take over & UI updates instantly to give the right input. On of those moments where I am giddy w/ excitement 🔥

Sometimes, in game dev, the small things can have a big impact. Working on input controls, planning controller support, and I decided I'd change the cursor icon in my game. Even as something as simple as an icon can change the feel of a game.

Fall damage for thee, not for me

Just a technical artist with a decade experience, solo-developing a first-person exploration adventure game in an engine I've written from scratch. 🔥 This has been one of the most challenging things I've done in my career as a game dev. But its also reignited what I love about games. What got me excited playing games as a kid, the open adventure ahead. This is the game I'm making, and I'm thankful to each and every one of you who has followed so far. It has made the journey that much more impactful, to connect with so many others with the same passion. If you are seeing this, please like and share this if you believe in the project. Steam page is in progress and I'll be doing a proper announcement soon. Follow for more updates coming soon! As always, thank you. 🙏

The climbing system has fully come online! The part that excites me is linking multiple climbable entities together. No skeletons, anim clips, or IK. Just vertex animated textures + perfect math. Low overhead & should help expand the world vertically a lot! What do you think?

Ended up not being as insane as I thought it might be. I can now link climbable object together! This is gonna be fun! Can only enter climbs logically, no prompt going between objects, I think it works well.

Someone put this bug in my ear, so I'm spending my lunch break seeing if I can link climbable entities together and have seamless climbing between them in my game engine. 👀

Today I'm planning on a last day of polish for the recent traversal work I've been doing, and then I start working on the final levels I'll be using for the steam page. I'll focus on two environments for the initial steam reveal, but which one first: overworld or dungeon?

I've spent almost a year learning how to solo-develop a game from scratch. A custom engine, pushing me the edges of my knowledge and driving me to learn new things. Its been challenging but after almost 11 months, from a first triangle render to this, I think I'm finally ready. Work on the Steam page now begins in earnest for my next game, which I will be announcing soon. I've built out the tests, mechanics have a foundation, I now have the tools and content to build what I want. Even though I feel like I've learned so much, I still have a lot to figure out. Stay tuned, and wish me luck! And follow if you think this looks cool!

Climbing on up

Retro Game Engine Update 🔥 Spent the weekend working on the traversable system, specifically climbing. Was challenging to come up with a pipeline for it, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. Being able to traverse vertically really makes the world feel larger!

This painting resonates with how I often feel as a game dev. Surrounded by tumultuous waves of challenges that could send you astray. Momentary reliefs of solid ground, the sparse moments when you get things stable and euphoria triggers. Unknown adventure on the horizon, both intimidating and obfuscated, but reachable with enough persistence and resolve. Standing before something enormous that persists without you, but offering you the opportunity to pass through. I love making games.

Working on navigation in my custom game engine lately. Here are some door examples. Actually takes a lot get right. Dont want them closing on you. Gating them behind a reveal. Lots to consider. WIP, but coming along nicely. Also working on a climbing system in tandem. 🔥

Sunday morning #gamedev on the ultrawide with a cup of coffee ☕️

Got a real first pass of the climbing system working! 🔥 This was tricky to figure out since I have no "skeleton" driving animations in my engine. My game uses a custom VAT setup instead so it takes a bit of outside the box thinking to make sure the animations feel grounded. CPU doesn't "know" about where bones are or anything like that. So there's no way to do something like IK. Instead, I just apply some math to make the object (ladder) store data about its height and rung spacing on it, which is then manipulated on top of the vertex data. Turned out pretty well I think!

Only one way out