Moving on to Unity 5.0
Hello everyone! This is going to be a quick update to tell you that I’m currently in the process of converting the game’s project to Unity 5.0 (beta 20). I’m not even using any fancy Global Illumination yet, but the new lighting engine shines through:
This is a rather involved task but it is also indispensable for Ghost of a Tale to move forward. The reason is we’re going to need the new navigational mesh abilities which should allow us to achieve our goal of streaming the game’s environments instead of having to put loading screens at select locations.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Ghost of a Tale is my first game ever, therefore it’s not going to be a sprawling epic tale. In fact, it is the very first step on a longer journey, for us as well as for Tilo.
If the game meets with success then we will be able to keep on telling this story with greater confidence. So this game is going to happen in a single (rather large) location with environments going from subterranean caves to the top of high towers (think “Ico”). And everything is consistent from a spatial point of view.
So it is important for us to be able to tap into Unity 5’s new capabilities regarding pathfinding across several streaming interconnected locations. Plus this new version has a lot of improvements in many domains (lighting, physics, animation, etc…). There are still many issues that I need to fix for the Unity 5 conversion to be considered complete, but I am confident that this the right choice. And I really hope it will pay off in the long run!
Finally -and this is completely unrelated- I thought you guys would enjoy this fun game mechanic I recently implemented (thank you Cyrille for the candle flame behavior!): Tilo can now use a candlestick to set ablaze some banners! (Make sure to watch the picture in full screen!)
Who knows what it may reveal behind? Note that you’ll also be able to use a lantern in the game, which will procure a much wider light radius. However the candlestick, although far more limited in terms of lighting range, will let you to burn away a couple of things; it’s a careful tradeoff and both are definitely useful… 😉
BrainFlush
January 22, 2015 at 2:10 pmAwesome to hear! Looking forward to everything you have planned.
It’s been a long journey but well worth it.
Until next time. Have a good one.
Christoph
January 22, 2015 at 3:36 pmThank you for the update, looks great as always. And don’t worry about the length of the game, I actually prefer short and concise games these days ;).
KwisatzHaderach
January 22, 2015 at 8:36 pmWow, good call to convert to Unity imho. It will no doubt benefit the game in the long run and also might up the public hype once the game finishes completion.
As far as the candlestick and lantern are concerned: you know Seith, balance is everything in a game, so make sure to spend another half year on getting it right! I don’t want the forums full of people whinig over an overpowered lantern or cheap candlestick-noobs ;p
KwisatzHaderach
January 22, 2015 at 8:37 pm^^
that was supposed to mean “Unity 5”
tony
January 22, 2015 at 11:14 pmit looks like it willl be a really cool game i cant wait take ur time to make it the best you can
Kevin B
January 23, 2015 at 12:31 pmIt’s looking great! Those moments when you realize you have to spend weeks combing through tons of code and assets instead of creating new content… ~_~
Gabriel
January 27, 2015 at 11:41 pmGoaT looked awesome while running in Unity 4. I can’t wait to see it in motion running in Unity 5.0!
daniel
February 23, 2015 at 10:10 amThe burning mechanic looks really nice, though I hope we’ll have the option to just peek behind the cloth without destroying it!
Pingback: Playing with fire » Ghost of a Tale
June 22, 2015 at 6:55 amDavid Swinney
March 11, 2016 at 7:54 pmEnjoying reading other articles about the conversion of existing games to Unity 5.0.
We’re in the process of doing the same with Egowall and have written several articles about our experience. It has not been easy and we’re not all the way there yet.
If you’re interested, the first article in the series is at http://blog.egowall.com/blog/2016/2/19/egowall-and-webgl-part-one; we welcome any comments or feedback.
Thanks!