Delaney King Profile picture
May 6, 2021 19 tweets 5 min read Read on X
"GAME READY"

#gamedev
Kill me.
Okay, so folks, if you have a glass clockface like this, make it flat and one material. Instead of making the mechanisms behind it, use OFFSET MAPPING in the shader to push back the clock handle texture layers. This gives you the effect of glass over the mechanism, but no cost
Boom. If an edge does not contribute to silhouette, deformation, vertex paint or uv seams, you can blast it
These edges contribute to silhouette, but not at a noticeable difference at the distance our game is at.
Spot any difference?
Some details should be normal maps. The game is isometric, so this is edited for that angle. Note you cant see the underside of the lip, and the last panel is me editing the vertex normals to point up where it meets the flat clock top. That smooths out the lighting.
I took off the back of the handles and pushed the whole thing back so it touches the sides. This could really be normal mapped on, but I am in a rush to optimise the purchased assets for a delivery.
Dont do this. the majority of this face is hidden, yet it takes up a chunk of the texture map. It is cheaper to have eight thin triangles as the border than two giant ones that you barely see. Polys are far more cheaper than texture space when you factor in...
...diffuse, roughness, normal, metallic and AO. This square is the same size as the clock face itself in the texture memory.

Also the pattern around the edges is baked in as individual textured faces. It can be a tiling trim texture, like I did here. Again, I am under the gun
Last step- Collision. I will make this cast the shadow as well.
Compare. And, again, this is a quick optimisation because I would actually bake the textures completely differently too.

This asset store pack got the demo across the deadline so props for that. But the moral of the story is beware "Game ready"
Sooo, I hope that helps a lot of you.

I am absolutely going to do some training material on how to do this kind of stuff, going from basics through to advanced optimisation tricks that allow you to squeeze a lot of cool stuff into whatever platform you need. Stay tuned.
Oh, and before you ask- this is how you make a shadow caster in unity. Tis a bit obscured. In unreal it is a checkbox.
ahhh, I can feel the engine breathing a sigh of relief.
I just found a bookcase with 160 books, each modelled down to the spine, all not marked as static, all with their own collision, all casting shadows.

Holy hell batman.
I need to lay down for a bit.

I just looked at the table.
As always, throw money at me like Scott Pilgrim throws his keys at his flatmates head.

ko-fi.com/dellak

Tippers make great lovers.

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More from @delaneykingrox

Nov 6, 2023
A video game that simulates #ADHD. The mission objective changes at random every few minutes and whenever you walk into a new room, your inventory shuffles one item and sometimes it becomes invisible for a few minutes.

You auto steer into table corners.
Whenever you get more than one sidequest there is a chance you go into overwhelm and your controller will pretend it is unplugged.

The corners of the level starts filling up with laundry.

You put down an item and it vanishes when you look away.
You have timed missions but during loading screens that can dramatically shorten by an hour or five.
Read 19 tweets
Oct 28, 2023
A 3d character walks into a bar.

The bartender doesn't say anything.

You realise you haven't put collision or a trigger volume on the bar asset.
A 3d character walks into a bar.

The bar jitters and flies off into the distance.

You need to turn off "use phsyics" on the bar asset.
A 3d character walks into a bar.

The bartender says "why the long face".

You sigh and open your 3d modelling ap. Long thin triangles are bad for quad draw performance.
Read 19 tweets
Oct 18, 2023
In Life Is Strange Before The Storm, one truth Rachel Amber tells Chloe during "two truths and a lie" that she is a Leo.
The brilliant thing is later if you pay attention, her birthday is the day after Leo ends. But her starchart has her on a cusp.

This is brilliant.
The series has a few moments of absolutely brilliant subtle clues in it that add layers of meaning, but you have to be sharp to spot them.
But if you miss those, there are still blatant clues around the place that give some level of depth.
The main mysteries of the game aren't hard at all, probably to a fault, but on replay there are far more little ones.
Read 21 tweets
Oct 13, 2023
A technique I highly recommend to #gamedev artists is to look at actual shipped game assets.

There are various ways to get hold of them, such as programs like Ninja Ripper, Utiny ripper or via archives.

And I must stress this is for learning purposes ONLY. NEVER use them.
Being able to look at models from a wide range of titles, see how they are rigged, how their Uvs are layed out, the triangle count and modularity... it all helps you understand the ACTUAL end result you are aiming for.
I think it is really important that students bridge the gap between where they are at, and what the end products are at.

You may think "oh, the models in X game are super high end, high tech stuff" but when you actually crack it open and examine it in your DCC...
Read 11 tweets
Oct 10, 2023
There is no ethical use of AI art.

There is no future for humanity in a world where all human endeavour is stolen and boiled down to something that replaces humans.

What do humans do in a world where humans are not employed to create?

Is that a world you want to live in?
If you take away the creative process of human artists into pool, the zeitgeist becomes entirely manufactured from an ever decreasing pool of looping cannibalism.

Pop literally eating itself.
Endless product without exploration. Product feeding on product.

No art movements, no re-evaluations of our place and relationship to the world.

Homogenisation and starvation.
Read 12 tweets
Oct 9, 2023
Draw calls are responsible for a good 50 percent of the chugging issues I have helped games with.

A draw call is "okay now draw me an apple, and come back when you are done for the next instruction."
Then you ask for another apple. Then when they return you ask for another...
So the GPU is running back and forth to the CPU when it could just do that once and "draw me a pile of apples".
Rendering an apple, in this example, takes a tiny amount of what a core on the GPU can render. So by welding all the apples into one bigger mesh, it can be done faster in one draw call than all the fucking around to draw them one by one.
Read 15 tweets

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