I’ve been lax in updating this blog in real time over the
past few months, so it’s catch-up time now that the holidays have arrived (and
now that someone might actually read it).
First up: Cove!
Early development began with experiments on different ways to turn a blocky grid of cell data (so far simple true/false flags as to
whether each cell was solid) into a semi-smooth mesh. Some experiments were more successful than
others, but I did arrive at a point that I was reasonably happy with for mesh generation. What I struggled with for quite a while was
finding a lighting system that I was content with, since the built-in Unity
vertex lighting simply did not want to cooperate with a mesh like this (eventually I had to de-link each triangle to get the automatic lighting to treat it nicely). Further, I hadn't even begun to do real cell data generation algorithms. Here are some screenshots from back then:
Debug objects showing cell locations:
Steps in night/day lighting effects:
Testing noise on a slope.
Testing alongside Unity water - kinda neat, but not the right style:
That's as far as it got; Cove’s been sitting in stasis for a few months now because
I started participating in game jams (both in person and
online). Between jam projects and
various life events, I’ve not found the mental energy to return to Cove. It's not dead, but it’ll probably sit in the
background for a while because some of
the jam projects feel like they have more immediate potential. More on those jam games next.
