That's the thing, I don't believe he does. Lighting appears to be (almost, except the rain/lightning scene, which is easily done by overlaying a lightmap and adding some bloom) entirely static, so you can't actually tell, if it's raytracing or not. From what I've seen, there's not even a day-night cycle in this "game".
HBAO has an extension technique similar to what you're describing called HBIL, though it's nowhere near as lightweight as SSAO. I see references to an "SSGI" technique, worth mentioning that in PoE1 they use a technique he called SSVGI which I don't remember much about, but it's also very interesting and works nicely in 2D and games without much depth (i.e. PoE). Both techniques have the upside of having a constant time complexity regardless of how many lights are in the scene, though 50ms for a frame on a 3060 definitely classifies as a heavyweight algorithm.
I have my doubts that he is. It doesn't make much sense from the screenshots that have been posted in here, if it is in the game they're not making much good use of it.
The fact that he died of ass cancer of all things tells me there is a God and he's a dick.
I dont remember it, but i recall seeing a rough short where he described how he implemented ray tracing into his engine in an "effective manner" (dubious)
But it's not "his engine". He is making Earthbound in GameMaker Studio. Either there is confusion or he is spewing bullshit.
It was posted earlier in this thread, here's the clip. Note that he doesn't claim to have built a custom engine, only a custom lighting engine.
Yeah sounds about right. Got the engines mixed up, thanks for clearing that up!
Supposedly if you beat someone with a phone book it doesn’t leave any bruises. Not sure if that’s just Hollywood make’m’up or if that’s true though.
To be charitable, starting your own company is exactly what you should do in an area you think is not being properly served by the existing companies operating within it.
That's fair. I just find it funny that this guy promotes the message "YOU DON'T NEED A PUBLISHER" to his audience, starts a publishing company and when he gets asked about developers publishing a game with Offbrand he speaks from both sides of his mouth:
for anyone else who wants a play, I recommend checking out igg before it's not there. doesnt seem very FUN but it's there.
I wonder if it's gonna be a "it gets good after 40 hours" situation. Indie devs have a habit of starting development with the beginning of the game, so the quality picks up throughout. Though from your screenshots I don't hold out a lot of hope. At least the light coming out of the crack in the door looks neat, but again, nothing that could not have been achieved with an overlay and a mask, probably much faster than doing a bunch of line tests anyway.
