Hello there, this is your boy "Weekly Updates" coming to you live this Saturday!

Arguably this week wasn't really full of showable things, but still, there are a few.

So let's get right to it then.

Portals Are Fully Working

So let's start with the fact that portals are now fully implemented and ready to go!

This is so much better, as now the game has a significantly smaller amount of vertices to render, which is great.

I also now disable each renderer of a room instead of disabling it. This effectively means that rigid bodies affected by gravity won't fall through the ground anymore when the area isn't being rendered.

New Bow Animations

Next, I want to talk about some new animations I've added to the bow.

The bow used to be really static before, but now there are pertinent animations like arrow loading and launching. It makes the bow so much better, to be honest.

Here's a video of it:

New Textures

As part of my LOD remodelling, I've also taken the opportunity to texture some of my relics to make them more iconic that before.

Let's take a quick look at two of them right now:

I also use texture to greatly reduce the amount of polygon on low LOD models. Most of my high LOD models had actual geometries as details, and creating textures was really easy (thank you Cycles of the baking!). 

I've also used my tri-colour map shader to map each channel of a texture to a specific colour on my colour palette.

While I'm not sure interpolating colours with texture channels is quite optimal it does make my geometries a whole lot simpler without sacrificing many details at all...

New Relic

So this one is a bit special... 

I've finally managed to add a new relic: The Membership Card

Membership Card

Quote

A unique card that can give you sensational deals in most malls

Stats 

• -15% Luck.

This card is a Mall Membership Card. It a more blueish tint compared to the pink-ish one of the credit card and it has an ID photo on it instead of a magnetic strip.

With it, the player gets some discount at most malls. The catch is that their luck gets nerfed, meaning that while they'll get cheaper items those might be of lesser quality or rarity than usual.

Lights

Next up, let's talk about lights.

I have to say that while lights are cool and all, they also induce significant overhead and slowdowns in Unity. (Especially with Forward Rendering)

To remedy this I've decided to switch to Deferred Rendering. This means more lights at a reduced cost.

However, rendering shadows isn't still free. I've seen that most meshes get rendered many different times if it produces shadows.

This is quite a thing to consider when designing things like special rooms and whatnot. 

Honestly, I'm not sure shadow casting is needed. This is something I've got to brainstorm about...

LOD Updates

Lastly, I want to give a quick update on LODs.

With all that time put into it, I'm pleased to say that at least 75% of most of my models are done!

But there's still 25% to go, so let's finish this thing once and for all!

Minor Updates

• Fixed bugs with some malls not properly being chosen;
• Fixed a bug with the portal algorithm disabling rooms fully visible by the player;
• Changed some shaders to make them compatible with the deferred rendering pipeline;
• Added a bullet clip to the gun:
  • It's basically being shown only in the guns' reload animation.
• Fixed a whole lot of bad UVs on models;
• Updated and optimized some particle systems;
• Changed some materials on some relics.

Next Week

There's one thing on my mind right now: finishing those LODs! 

Afterwards, I need to tinker a bit with lighting and whatnot. 

Next up it's new enemy time! 

And finally the usual suspects. 

I also need the time to resolve some of my GUI and also find time to add localized text too!