Universal Nimian Legends : BrightRidge HD (by Robert Kabwe)

If you need help with Testflight, I can start digging into it, too (only know it from the user side so far). Or maybe someone here has experience from the other side already and can assist a bit.
If all else fails, I can always ask niebau. But I'd prefer to avoid that currently, as he has enough on his plate with pre-launch polishing for Tactics Maiden (shameless plug and all that, I know ).

@Kyoshirin: Thanks a lot for the confidence in me, very much appreciated

 

Update 1.2 New Animal Shapechange

In version 1.2 coming soon you can turn into an eagle like before, but you can also shapechange into a butterfly, stag and fox. Become a bounding deer and run through the forests with others of your kind or float across flower filled fields as a butterfly pollinating plants and seeing the world from a grass sized view

 

i never get tired of seeing screens from this game and the weather effects look really good its like the world keeps growing bit by bit !

 

Thanks - me too Ive been working hard on update 1.2 and it's almost ready. I just finished the algorithm for the dynamic weather. It procedurally generates storms, rain, wind and fog. I had to build a system to fade in and out the weather effects because at first they were just on and off and it was jarring.

I had a cool startling moment where i was running around then this blast of wind rolled over the hills - wind also affects grass and trees which sway wildly in the wind. There's also a cheat section that lets yo turn on and off various kinds of weather instantly so the whole thing is moving towards a kind of wilderness sandbox thing.

Aside from a few more bug fixes, the weather and the new shape changing forms, the other big remaining item for this update is the corrupted people - villagers are corrupted and run wild through the mountains attacking on site and banished by a new mechanic called Light. they're created by the Dark Fountain and its part of the prep work and setup for the upcoming quests.

 

Sounds good - i cant wait to get my hands on an iPhone6 and test out the game i'll be there almost day one.

5S has a ton of power and i can only imagine how much more the 6 could handle. I'm looking into ways to expand the graphic detail on newer devices while keeping the same core project file, like how it lowers detail on A5s. I think the answer is an extensive Quality Settings panel in the options.

Right now in my private beta i have a very detailed quality options, but im going to hold off until version 1.3 to release it. Its because it needs some kind of internal logic - i have to disable quality options on A5 devices - turning on high detail for example on an A5 will crash the game. But also i have to figure out how to handle and/or limit it on A6 and A7. For example, you can increase the grass density, or the grass view distance, but turning both up to max on even the 5S crashes it (it would probably work on the iPhone 6 though). So i will need to probably detect the device and offer up relevant detail options, or have logic that adds up the point' cost of each quality switch and limits things somehow? Anyways, all part of the development process and a tricky puzzle I love trying to solve

In the meantime, update 1.2 coming up does have a very basic quality setting where you can enable or disable reflections. this is the biggest source of lag on all devices (its completely disabled on A5 devices) and reduces the 'drawcalls' from 500 to 250. So in the next update ou can disable reflections to get an fps bonus on your 5s or ipad retina if you refer smoother speed over detail for example.

Anyways I owe this whole thread to you so thanks again for your continued support and good advice

 

@protpop great to know tgat the update is coming along nicely,just a little thought what did you think about fxaa and anisotropic filtering? Did you try them yet I don't know if it helps but ppsspp has these settings in the graphics menu and I tried them on both peace walker and monster hunter and I didn't experience a single fps drop.
Also can we increase the resolution in this update?Thx

Also I see that drawcalls have been the limiting factor here 'metal' when it releases would actually be of great help ,wouldn't it?

 

Corrupted people? Hhmm, does not sound child-friendly anymore; sorry to hear that as much as I am looking forward to this personally, mind you. Darker settings like the below-mentioned Kane are my favorites by far.

Also, weird side-thought (why do I always get those *after* you put work into it?) :
I really like that Brightridge is so devoid of actual people, and wouldn't mind if the few that are there disappeared as well. Gives it some unique feeling.

On page 39, you mentioned the "Spirit Hunter" as one of 3 new NPCs. Do you have a character model for it already?
If not, maybe this: Somehow, my oddball mind makes a connection to the opening scene of the M.Z.Bradley's "Mists of Avalon" movie, where they re-enact the Wild Hunt, and tells me "something like Arthur in that costume would be great for the Spirit Hunter").
Or, if you don't mind going down even more the Celtic route, Cernunnos or Herne the Hunter.

For darker inspiration, there is a Karl Edward Wagner Kane shortstory that also features the Wild Hunt (and depicts it gloriously, in my opinion); cannot remember the name right away, need to check my books later. It's the one where he meets his daughter Klesst, and takes revenge on people meeting up in an old/abandoned inn again.
Update: Just found it, thanks to Wikipedia's lists: Raven's Eyrie. You can find it e.g. here: http://books.google.nl/books?id=qy6JAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT59&ots=vEgAAO4A0J&dq=klesst&pg=PT59#v=onepage&q&f=false (sorry, don't know how to cleanup the link).

Another questgiver could be an Ent, the third a Water Nymph (thinking about the Garlet Stone statue in Stag Habitat here) or who-knows-what

And the Corrupted could be animals only. Creepy Crows (check out the intro for the iOS game Crow for inspiration), things like that.

 

Thanks for the push, and the technical info! I just added Antialiasing to the quality options. I'm using FXAA2 and will test it on devices over the next few days. Its true that adding this now will really help when the MAc/PC/A8 versions are released (well, A8 is the same file as now but you know)


Dont mind teh screenshot - im using FXAA2


Antialiasing Off in this image, this is the quality control panel (which will grow as time goes on). You can also see the new "saving" icon that shows up in the bottom left corner whenever saving takes place - a bit more feedback for whats going on behind the scenes.

The resolution setting will have to wait since it's more involved. I have to figure out the default resolutions for all devices and create custom sizing scripts, but its on the list (which is getting done which feels good

The real limit for the game is the textures. I mean, even the A5 can push around the objects at a decent rate. But reducing draw calls does tend to improve frame rate too. Im hoping for 2GB ram on A8 devices and combined with metal try and throw the highest res everything and full quality options at the screen.

 

Wow you're so well read and versed on these things. you must read a lot of fantasy

Funny you mention the Nymph because in my old game Nimian Garden there's a waterfall nymph who asks you to bring her flowers and I am thinking of porting her into BrightRidge. You can see her at about 3:07 in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIP9HF3ZBAc

If you'd like BrightRidge with (almost) no people, you'll like the "BrightRidge Family" quest - you go back in time to before BrightRidge Inn was built and its almost completely devoid of people. You can hang out in the past as long as you like.

I don't have the spirit hunter model yet - actually i am thinking of using Mixamo FUSE, a relatively new software that lets you create custom characters and animate them. At some point of i want to use new characters effectively i need to look at upgrading to Unity's mecanim system - so the hunters may be legacy animated characters or they may be new depending on how that all turns out. Thanks for the reference links - i read a Marian Zimmer book when i was a kid, i forget which one, and liked it a lot.

You always get ideas after you work on them because working on something opens your mind to new ideas The same way all of the feedback on the Touch Arcade forum helps me try things i dint think of or push ones i did think of to the fornt of my mind

Quest givers like the Ent is an intriguing idea! And corrupted animals is actually on the todo list - great minds think alike I like the flavor your research brings - you'd be great working with an art director to bring some verisimilitude to projects.

 

I read (almost) only Science Fiction and Fantasy, in all kinds of flavors, and indeed a lot
I never counted, but I still have a few hundred books; and am slowly rebuilding my movie collection (which was a victim of my divorce), think I am past 200 there again as well.
And I soak up mythology, legends, faerytales etc. like a sponge.
Add ~30 years of fantasy roleplaying, and you end up with a huge storage to draw from.

Bradley wrote a ton of stuff herself, and has her name on even more, e.g. the numerous Darkover anthologies. So without any hints I can't tell you which one you liked

The "hanging out in the past" sounds intriguing, really curious what you came up with.

And of course I shopped around for some visual inspiration:
Some kind of spirit bird, and not the friendly sort: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_ajl89qZW9s/UHt8zwLGCWI/AAAAAAAAAQs/jF6i3K9Z4Cs/s1600/SBOwl.jpg

That's a werewolf from an 1840s story, but qualifies as haunting spirit too, I think: http://paulacappa.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/werewolfgraveimages.jpg

These Horned Gods might be right at home in Brightridge: http://unholyvault.deviantart.com/art/The-Horned-God-86872850?q=gallery%3Aunholyvault%2F72825&qo=150
and http://unholyvault.deviantart.com/art/Samhain-83762951?q=gallery%3Aunholyvault%2F72825&qo=159

Didn't find anything good for Herne the Hunter yet, will dig around a bit more tomorrow.
But I can offer something different this time, audio stuff S.J. Tucker, Hymn to Herne: http://youtu.be/IFJ3ScrZ1sU

Found a few for the Wild Hunt, though:
Does this guy look threatening enough (not the best image ever, admitted) : https://www.peginc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ajpg6-e1334180942447.jpg ?
For related - and really outlandish - old rites, check out Rauhnacht (Twelfth Night in English, according to Wikipedia).
Two pictures from Austria: http://cdn1.salzburg24.at/2012/12/29122012wildejagdat_05_009aktivnews_49-600x399.jpg , and http://www.goldenerochs.at/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/rauhnachtbild5.jpg . Ain't those nice snowdemons on the second picture?

And thanks a lot for the compliment about my small contributions! I'll make a point of showing that to my artsy wife who always claims I have no sense of style

 

Thanks for listening and I'm sure the game will look even more beautiful and much more 'console quality' like now.Superb work protopop.

 

Do fauns/satyrs feature in your lore?
Found this http://unholyvault.deviantart.com/art/Pan-51764188 , and just had to imagine what it would be like to run into one somewhere in the woodlands.

For "scary as hell", take this from the movie Pan's Labyrinth: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ODMBPLrgf7c/TYZn5xBSaJI/AAAAAAAAAaw/6CXxVKigmYI/s1600/faun6366.jpg

And a not-so-creepy version: http://images.geeknative.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/zentaur-faun-1.jpg

For a real jawdropper, scroll down to the two Woodland Faun images here: http://www.pinterest.com/wolfet247/face-off/

 

@Mamalovesyou: out of curiosity, do you have a graphics background? Definitely looks like you know what you are talking about

 

new ideas always do sound scary but i think about the whole world you already created and it amazes me so I'm interested to see what potential the corrupted people and future animals plays into the story really sounds interesting lol i feel you @ null zone but seeing his hard work makes me want to see how it comes out " the corrupted people/ animals" ! again at the end of the day its your world so as we all come together bit by bit I'm interested to see it play out and yeah @mamalovesyou i sense the graphics potential in this one ~yoda voice~ lol you know your stuff i just honestly love the team work on this forum. I think the multiple save file idea will help people decide to tailer the game to their liking like having a save file just for exploring and stuff and one for jumping into quest that way you could focus on things you enjoy more , i remember how i had 3 different save flies on GTA san andreas ( each file the character had different weapon sets outfit on and fighting style ) lol i guess thats why i suggested it because I'm terrible at choosing paths and always want to explore it all

 

No not really I just game a lot on pc and all I know is from tinkering around the graphics options a little bit,I've done a little bit of programming in C++ but that's about it,It's nothing special just a click away from google stuff really.

 

Ok I'm TOTALLY CONFUSED. There are 42 PAGES of discussin in this tread since launch, AND A TA REVIEW! Who ARE you guys comin in asking for insights without READING THRU THE THREAD FIRST?!!

 

@Hypocrypha: Relax, breathe slowly, in ... out, in ... out
And welcome to TA so to speak, you discovered one of the iconic behaviour patterns here:
"Read? Nah, 42 pages is way too much"

 

I'm one of the first members ever on TA, but thanks.

 

Was speaking figuratively only thought the "so to speak" part gets that across. Ah well...