Blacklight
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2020
Have all the other games announced at the PS5 reveal already come out? All of those technically impressive games, but the shitty VN is stuck in development hell right now?
Goodbye Volcano High - "The Future of Gaming", The Parody Game of the Beloved Snoot Game Franchise
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- Apr 5, 2019
A handful of them have IIRC, but mostly the games done by larger non indie studios. A lot of the indie games still haven't come out.
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2020
New newsletter is out:
Bokeh Shaders and Dinosaur Extras, Yes Please (A)
Bokeh Shaders and Dinosaur Extras, Yes Please (A)
Marty
Editor in Chief of the Yearbook
It’s all dev update all day baby, with a little more of the spice and detail to really paint a picture of what we’ve been workin’ on over here this past month.
How Many Dinosaur Extras Does It Take to Fill an Auditorium?
Recently we posted a little video highlighting a few of Caldera Bay’s residents we likely won’t be hearing from in the game: our extras! We have a formal workflow for designing extras I can get more into in a video at some point, but I wanted to talk to one of our character artists Max about their specific process, especially since they’re currently filling a whole auditorium with dinosaurs.
First off, they allocate a time budget for themselves, because like I mentioned above: an entire auditorium full of dinosaurs. Can’t stress that enough.
They do a rough sketch for a row at a time (in terms of detail at this stage, we’re talking blobby dino shape) to plan for poses and character interactions. “I like to make the closer rows more fun to look at. As you near the back and they become less visible, the more simple they’ll tend to be.” Max plans silhouettes at this stage and makes sure the sizes and styles of dinosaurs are fairly varied, while still leaving space to iterate. “I don’t usually pick species yet; I just kind of brainstorm “a guy with a crest here” or “a dino with horns there”, vague character shapes, etc.” I myself am a bit of a guy with a crest over here.
Now it’s time for a design pass, where species are picked and the overall looks are finalized! Max will open up their Big Giant Reference Board; “I start by picking a dino species (usually random but loosely based on the attributes from the last pass) and then scroll through my hair and clothing references to get inspiration.”
After the whoooole section of seats is filled, it’s time to turn on all the layers to check out their work! A quick scan confirms whether there’s enough design variety.
“At this point, I move on to clean and colour! For this scene pretty much every character is designed on the fly with usually only one iteration due to time constraints.” ... I’m sorry... ONE iteration?! I cannot handle that. If I had to draw a dinosaur extra I would a) start crying immediately b) work on it off and on for ten years. But that’s why I’m not a character artist, honey.“Sometimes I have colours in mind while I’m drawing a character, but if I need more ideas I’ll look at Pinterest or any palette generating website for colour inspiration! I clean them in sections according to how they’re going to be rigged, with characters closer to the front having more parts for more movement, and characters towards the back as flat images with less overall detail. When picking colours I limit it to one or two body colours for extras and keep the markings simple.”
Almost there!!!
They’re still in progress on the—and I can’t stress this enough—full auditorium of dinosaurs, but you better believe you’ll be hearing from me with the final looks. I for one want to know what everyone is wearing to class?!
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(Gif that I can't upload for some reason)
Bokeh Shader Explainer: If There Is Too Much Math Involved My Eyes WILL Blur
I was in Slack recently and it was all "bokeh" this "bokeh" that, and I thought… boy do I ever not know what bokeh is. Well, like every quality college essay, let’s start this off with a definition. Bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image. Differences in lens and aperture shape cause very different bokeh effects. With that extremely basic primer done (thank you Wikipedia!) let’s get into the nitty and the gritty. We spoke to one of our programmers Hazel about the bokeh she’s been working on and learned a ton in the process. I will be paraphrasing her brilliant mind below.
“Doing a blur is straightforward in theory, but it's the kind of thing that takes dramatically longer to do as the resolution of the image goes up, so on a 4K screen you can't really be cavalier about it.” This is especially true because what we need it for on GVH is doing 'rack focus', where lots of things are all at DIFFERENT amounts of blur, all overlapping each other. Even on a PS5, this can hurt!
So what’s the solution? “One of the main things that you can do to speed up a blur is to calculate it as a 'separable blur', which means you just blur it horizontally, then just blur that vertically. This is faster because, instead of reading in a 10px square around the pixel (which would mean reading 10x10=100 pixels) you read the 10 pixels horizontally and then 10 pixels vertically on the result, which is 10+10=20 pixels!” Ok did run away for a second because the numbers intimidated me for a second but 10+10 being less to deal with than 10x10, got it. “For certain types of blurs, like an ordinary gaussian blur, this actually gives completely identical results to doing it the 'square' way, so it's a free speedup.” My brain is doing that thing where the fan is going at full speed and it’s getting super hot? I know you dev-curious dinos will appreciate the detail.
With that sorted out, what was next? “When it came time to make a bokeh blur... the thing about them as you usually see them is that they're shapes like hexagons—you can't really unfold that information from the first step of a separable blur if you've already squashed the point out into a line. Apparently, there are clever ways to do it involving Complex Numbers, but the time that it might have taken me to learn that approach didn't seem worth it when we've got so much to get done...” I was almost out the door again, but thank you for keeping those complex numbers out of this.
Steven Universe
“Then, I had a brainstorm about the version where it gets squashed out into a line. If you try to just treat a bokeh blur like as though it’s separable, like a gaussian blur, what you wind up with is highlights that all look like they're squares—a dot stretched into a line, a line stretched into a square. And that didn't look great, it just looked like a bug. But then I thought about Steven Universe, and the way they draw twinkling lights in their landscapes—the only difference between a square and a diamond is the directions and distances that you're looking at the information from...”
I can tell Hazel’s on her way to one of her Eureka moments here. “I checked with the art director about whether we'd want something like that, and she reminded me that that's actually already how we draw things like the highlights in the characters' eyes and hair! So a compromise that I almost threw out as not working, wound up fitting perfectly with our existing art style once I (literally) put a spin on it.” Y’all in this house we live for teamwork and communication.(Let me be cheesy or I’ll block you.)
“Because of the way the bokeh filter gathers light, it doesn't work quite as well for some of the ordinary subtle blurs we use in most shots, but for big dramatic twinkling backgrounds, it looks great, and in some situations is actually even faster than the gaussian can be.”
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And Other Stuff We Can’t Get Into Details on Necessarily but Here, Have Some Hands!
What else can I tell you about in this, my monthly love letter to you and our team? Well, our character artists have been working on Fang and Trish’s grade 11 flashback outfits and let me just say... the senior year glow-up is very real. I’m not being rude! They would agree!!! And finally, our audio director’s music is getting added to the in-game recordings!! We will update you on this as soon as we can, shotty dibs on the headphones
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Black History Month Spotlight!
It’s February so I wanted to highlight just a few of our favourite Black creators and organizations in the games world, and some (local to Tiohtià:ke/Montreal) spots to follow and give $$ to! And don't forget: follow, support, and celebrate Black history and Black futures every month, not just February.
Devs and Writers!
Sweet Baby (what, you thought we weren’t gonna start with iconic friend and collaborator Kim Belair’s company?!)
ValiDate Game
she dreams elsewhere
KindFolx
Xalavier Nelson Jr.
Content Creators!
tee_spoonie
CalamityDarling
blerdyotomegames
zombaekillz
Abelle Hayford
Streamers are being showcased all month on Twitch's Black Brilliance page, check their page for more!
Organizations!
Black Card Members
Black Girl Gamers
the noir network
Non-Games Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) Organizations!
Black Healing Fund
Black Healing Centre
Black Queers On Wheels
Desta Black Youth Network
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In Non Dinosaur-Related KO_OP News!
We’re participating in the Games From Quebec Steam Sale organized by GamePlaySpace, so you can grab Depanneur Nocturne and GNOG at a discount! (Psst: you can also do that right now, because we’re also in the Lunar New Year Sale!) and I’ll be doing my first live streams for KO_OP, with Depanneur Nocturne! I’ll be rating snacks and I barely know how to use a webcam, so come keep me company and lets have a lol for a tiny bit! In a nice way!
Dino Me lookin’ like I’m about to have a dino meet-cute
Finally, an Update on Ole Dino Marty
And now on a personal note! I will be out of the office as of the 8th on sick leave for my mental health! I have left some fun vids and posts for you all so you can keep having that sweet, sweet behind the scenes Goodbye Volcano High content while I'm away, and I am leaving you in the capable dino hands (...claws?) of Ramona, who we all know and love!!
Why am I mentioning and sharing a pretty personal thing like this on a dinosaur-themed newsletter? Well because I like being honest about the toll that the past few years have taken on so many of us (if you are feeling chill at this point in the pandemic that's great but wow tell me your secret!) And I also wanted to share because it can be hard to feel that your health and wellness are important when our hyper-capitalist society so often pushes us to the edge of what we can realistically do and handle. But I deserve recovery time! And hey! So do you!
If you are someone who has had to work full time through a lot of the pandemic (as I suspect many of you have!) and are also struggling with health issues or burnout of any kind, I hope you have the support and network to have time to recover. If you have the access, you can chat with your family doctor or even a walk-in clinic doctor and see about a doctor's note for taking sick leave. You may be able to apply for EI while you're off. (I'm talking in Canada here, I have no experience doing this elsewhere, so take that for what it's worth!)
Love to all my dinos, and talk to you next month!
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2020
This game is in the games from Quebec sale on Steam as coming soon and that reminded me that this still exists and is still going and I laughed a lot which was great. Any halfway competent eight year old could have farted this shit out by now.
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- Aug 1, 2020
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
AKA: We couldn't be arsed to do our job properly.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2016
If it's not meant to be seen it's just a waste of money to make it correct. Use your hand or phone to block out the white portion and that's how it will look on a TV.
I don't really understand why they even have that type of animation system, they can't do much more than what is shown without the game going full Parappa the Rapper where everyone is a paper doll in a 3D space.
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2019
It's because without some ridiculously complex tryhard animation system, they're literally just a visual novel with no gameplay.
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2020
I'll take the rainbow option and say whoever is working on this shot wants to at least keep some idea of proportion on where her limbs are supposed to be. I know it's still a dumpster fire, but you bet your ass some of the speds on the team are invested enough to try and be consistent.
I mean, it's probably more work than what needs to be done by an order of magnitude, but I want to believe it's a stupidity that has some drive behind it.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2016
It's just so awkward. They have joints and layers in the characters to some extent, like the head tilting forward with a parallax effect on the hair, but the arm movement is completely fucked and I suspect there's a reason for the seat belt cutting off the hair. It seems like they have created a system capable of incredibly limited movement, like the arm movement looks alright for exactly one frame. I hope all hands will come offscreen like in old horror movies where they didn't have animatronics in the creatures arms.
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- Aug 1, 2020
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- Jan 16, 2019
Is it me, or does the perspective look really weird in that screenshot of them taking the selfie?
MysticMisty
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2013
I haven't noticed, those weird as fuck grins keep pulling me in every single time. Aside from looking pasted on, they feel so unnatural and wrong.
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2021
Wow one of PS5 launch titles is a Visual Novel.
I wonder if the SteamDeck has any of those...
I wonder if the SteamDeck has any of those...
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2021
Who knew a visual novel would be so difficult technologically-wise.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2016
Now that you mention it. I bunched them together and lowered purple guy and IMO the perspective looks a tiny bit better.
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2020
The lack of a reflection or shadow on the table is throwing me off, makes it feel like the table is 3 times the size it actually is
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2014
Did her fucking arm just motion Tween?
In a fucking game intended for commercial release?
Neet Tokusatsu
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2018
I'm starting to believe this game was meant to be a money-laundering scheme.