Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 4d

I'm so glad you finally have a steam page! I've been looking forward to being able to give this a try for months. Congrats!

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 4d

The funny part is that the barrel needs to be squished to fit inside the mount space. I guess we'll see how this works for turrets with more significant barrel overhang, like the 450s...

The projected damage UV map of the Mk61, showing the barrel squished lengthwise.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 4d

The most annoying part was accounting for the fact that smaller components fit in larger sockets, so the UVs stored in the socket need to be scaled accordingly. Here you can see the gray box takes up more space than the turret base. That took a little bit of napkin math but it worked in the end.

The editor view of one of the turrets from above, showing how the socket bounds extend beyond the mount's base.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 4d

Aside from the obvious increase in shader complexity, there's no additional overhead for this from applying damage to the hull normally: the sockets pull the armor damage mask texture directly from their corresponding hull segment and do a little UV coordinate remapping.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 4d

This technique isn't as simple as the engines, which are just mapped directly to their corresponding points on the hull in Blender. I have to determine the corners of the socket and it's rotation on the UV map and record those, then assign those values to the component material after it's installed.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 4d

I wasn't super thrilled with the original mount damage effects I did a little while back, which would just grunge up the mount's whole mesh based on damage below it. It was really just meant to keep the mount from appearing pristine after a reactor bloom, but I knew we could do better.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 4d

Time for some more #gamedev #techart: Damage effects from the hull being mapped onto the turrets! Using the alternate UV map hack we came up with for the engine damage decals we can now make damage appear on components mounted on the hull as long as their material has the correct properties.

Two Mk61 turrets on the Raines frigate, with damage decals mapped onto them from the hull.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 5d

Never a good day when I have to open regedit to debug a crash... #gamedev

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 6d

After a whole season of harvesting and freezing tomatoes from our garden, it's finally time to make and jar some sauce. This pot is like 15 or 18 quarts and it barely fit half of them.

A large metal pot filled to the brim with tomatoes.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 8d

This really whips the llamas ass

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 14d

It's not perfect, as it only projects the hits directly underneath the bell, but it allows us to texture all of the engine components on a full UV map while still knowing where to address damage in relation to the hull.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 14d

The engine bells are projected flat on the UV2 map, down onto the surface that contains them. This allows us to sample the same damage mask from the hull under each point on the bell, and doesn't require another hull segment with its own mask. This works for the small maneuvering thrusters too.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 14d

The updated ship models and new damage shaders allow for damage effects on the large engine bells and maneuvering thrusters. The way we did this without adding additional colliders for them is actually a pretty funny hack. #gamedev #techart

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 15d

I appreciate the little red marks on the affected versions, but I open Unity Hub maybe once a week (or whenever my editor crashes) and update it even less. The email subject didn't include "critical", "security", or "vulnerability". The words it did use I commonly associate with FOMO marketing.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 15d

I'm not a communications expert but "Unity Platform Protection" sounds like you're trying to push a branded security product on me and not a notification of a *critical security vulnerability*. Maybe lead with that next time. #unity #unity3d

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 16d

Somehow ended up with Gold Vauxhall. Gotta say this is a first time error for me... #gamedev

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · 17d

Something funny we learned working on this graphical update for Neb is that apparently there are two models for the Vauxhall light cruiser. One is 10% larger than the other and at first we weren't sure which one was actually currently in the game. #gamedev

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · Sep 5

My assessment at this point? Aside from 250 AP, which everyone burns through 100% of in a boss room, the consumption rate of most ammo types is actually pretty decent. Some don't get used much but that's because the corresponding threats haven't been encountered yet, so we'll see where those fall.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · Sep 5

The large drops following difficult battles are good prompts to place ammo looting opportunities either at the end of that room or in the next one where they can recuperate.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · Sep 5

The campaign save system is snapshot-based, with an autosave each time you transition to a new room. This provided a really great opportunity to go snapshot by snapshot and compile how much of each type of ammo the player had at the end of each room.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · Sep 5

Understanding how players feel is important, but I also *want* them to feel the strain as it adds to the "behind enemy lines" mood. I want the player to have just enough to get through, but feel like they won't. So in order to balance these two competing concerns, I made this tool yesterday.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · Sep 5

More #gamedev tools for our singleplayer campaign: In order to balance the ammo economy, one must understand the ammo economy. We're about to start testing the third (of four) zones in the campaign, and testers were reporting how they were starting the feel the resource strain by the end of zone 2.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · Aug 23

There's nothing quite like wasting an hour debugging a simple issue to make you spend the rest of your evening (and the next morning) making an in-game visual debugging viewer for your homebrew campaign scripting system so you can see the values being passed around in real time. #gamedev

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · Aug 21

One of the many things you have to learn the hard way in Unity. C# UnityObjects are wrappers of the underlying C++ objects, and those can be deallocated while leaving the wrapper alive. It's not really their fault though, C# doesn't allow overloading the ?. operator.

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Lys @lystingdangerously.bsky.social · Aug 19

Haven't decided yet. There are pros and cons to both release schedules. Right now I'm just focused on the work.

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