Finally getting around to popping in again Hope all the Unity stuff works out for you in the end. And the expansion to PC and Mac is a good idea, broadening your audience. I said that before: the Doonpillar screenshot looks great, I really want to see more of it. Sidethought: day/night cycle in the desert would be awesome and if you want to go all out, a draught/rain cycle where plants start popping up left and right when e.g. a wadi floods or the yearly 5 minutes of rain fall. And did you notice that Apple increased the app file limit to 4GB? So you can throw everything into one big environment now, hopefully. Anyways, I'll faithfully wait for what you have in store for us, be it June or December.
Thanks Nullzone - you're so inspirational Unity is getting things together. Right now I have a version of BrightRidge i Unity 4.2, 4.6 and 5beta. 5 is still waiting for lightmaps but when they come, if it works stably im going to upgrade to that. And if not im going to stick with 4.6 for now. But 5 gives metal and Ive been working to bring more shadows and detail to IOS, as well as the mac version. Metal really speeds things up. Any ways Unity is updating weekly right now so i should have a stable version to commit to within the next month. I love the day night cycle. Ive been working hard to make a great skybox for the desert, but i also like the idea of a dynamic sky that can change. Unity 5 also allows changing lighting conditions while retaining the objects shading. So it might be a good time to try a dynamic sky. in doonpillar the real action is underground in the gigantic underground temple the game is named after. Yeah I read that about the 4gb. BrightRidge is only 120mb so its good to know there is a huge ceiling of space if I end up combining the 4 games in a master version. Realtime Shadows and Illumination
Nimian Legends BrightRidge on iPhone 6 with Metal Nimian Legends BrightRidge, iPhone 6 running on Apple Metal with realtime shadows, anisotropic filtering, 8x anti-aliasing, global illumination and improved atmospheric scattering. Realtime shadows is the big thing. I have them working back to A6 devices. These are screenshots from the iPhone 6 using the games camera mode.
realtime shadow and global illumination looks sick. when can we expect it dev? btw, your next game must be a survival open world game. oh man i can only imagine how great it will looks
Thanks redribbon yeah, the shadows really add a lot of atmosphere. Right now I am almost ready to switch over to Unity 5. im just waiting for them to debug some lightmap issues. It's built as a single project for Mac/PC and iPhone and it will be in version 1.3 this spring. I'm working hard to bring the quests in too.
Absolutely gorgeous, color me extremely impressed And seconding an open world game in your universe, survival or not.
Thanks Nullzone I think the experience im getting from creating BrightRidge is going to come in very handy for my next game. Ive learned a lot. Before I die i'd love to have a more open world game based on http://nimianlegends.com. It would be cool to explore that entire planet in 3d. Unity has been kind of in Chaos, but with a lot of work i am close to having the game work as before in Unity 5, and Unity 5 brings all these cool new visual additions to it. I'm really loving the lighting.
Guess you'll want to start a little bit smaller than modeling a whole planet right away Anyways, I think a survival game would work great in your world. Bloody hard to model though, I freely admit that. There's just so much stuff that would be nice to have, from building shelters to hunting, making tools or clothing and weapons, etc... Personally, I'd love to see a survival game with somewhat of a Ravenloft mood; where the night is scary and you have to tread carefully lest you awake something nasty.
oooo - i like it! If I ever get around to Doing Nimian Legends : Ookstergot it would have a theme like that. Ookstergot is a smoke-choked smuggler's city in the Duchy of Antjmark, just north of BrightRidge. I've always pictured something sinister lurking in the sewer temples, growing in power and keeping a watchful eye on the sleeping city
I've been able to bring a lot of improvements im making to the Mac version to the iPhone update. I'm getting quite close in quality on the iPhone 6 thanks to metal. These are actual screenshots from iphone and mac. I'm also getting into puddles! so far they whould appear in at least Iphone 6 and 5S. I just have a Mac screenshot.
Many landmarks in BrightRidge have been updated with new details, and a new species of tree has been introduced which really enhances BrightRidge's forests.
Nimian Legends BrightRidge 1.3 running on iPhone 6 Realtime Shadows, Atmospheric scattering, puddles, realtime reflections, High Dynamic Range rendering, Depth of Field
You are really pulling out all the stops now, ain't ya? The water effect in the bottomleft corner of the last picture looks very interesting. Does it move when you play?
yeah, i'm building the Mac version and have upgraded to Unity 5. And while i work on the mac version there have been a lot of things im able to port over to the iPhone 6 (even iphone 5s can handle realtime shadows with soem optimization). The next update has more extension quality customizations which kind of future proofs it for when A9 devices come out (you can just turn on more detail until your device cant take it) or lets you have a bare bones version. The puddles in the screenshot are something im really happy about. They dont move but they look great live and very wet i learned the technique from studying Unity's new viking demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojHQl6tujGI Using the same technique though ive seen it is possible to make moving wet textures. My focus right now has been on getting BrightRidge to work in Unity 5 the same as it was in Unity 4 (it took a few months, it was a HUGE change). Now that its in im cleaning up some transition bugs, and adding new details using the new Unity features that are making everything look much more interesting and atmospheric. Then i'll be able to see how else i can push the visual fidelity. I would say that crisp textures, antialiasing ect is my strong suit, but i do like creating expressionist atmospheric settings. I think i would consider myself an Expressionist Open World Wilderness Designer
Nimian Legends BrightRidge 1.3 running on iPad Air 2 I'm still working on the details but so far it can handle almost all the effects of the Mac version as well as full resolution textures.
You should just release as it is, bet quite a few of us would be happy with that. You can always update with more stuff later, whenever you have something new ready. E.g. the Trese Brothers do that with their games too. What I have from them went through quite a few iterations with small improvements in each.
Nullzone, you are the voice of reason I just finished a large project in my day job, so i will be able to flesh out some of the update details. The last of the plugins i use was updated to Unity 5 last week, and there are a few conversion issues i have to fix, but it should be ready soon. The big issue is do i make it Metal Only (better game, A5 devices cant download it but that means less 1 star reviews and no unhappy A5 users, but it means a new URL that doesn't have high search) or just update the current version, which means A5 users downloading it and in many cases it crashing. I have to admit the stream of 1 star nasty reviews is draining me. I am beginning to feel close to a burnout since i am doing this project at night after a full time job. I wrote a post bout this on Unity forum asking for help, but i will repost the forum article below in my next post too. Thanks for all the moral support and advice you've been giving me since the beginning. I really appreciate it and honestly, creating and releasing a game commercially has been a real learning experience and i feel it will help me with te next ones. Thats the best part about getting older is experience
Help This post is reposted from the Unity Forum. I thought i would ask around to get opinions on what to do I have a decision to make that has been weighing on me for a few months, and I'd like to get people's opinion on how to approach this. I have an open world wilderness game Nimian Legends BrightRidge on the apple App Store since August 2014. Originally the game only worked on A6 device and up. At the time Apple didn't give devs a means to restrict downloads to specific devices. They only way I could prevent users with A5 devices from downloading the game was to put a warning in the description, which I did. People with A5 devices still downloaded the game and were understandably upset when it crashed, leading to a string of 1 star reviews. Reviews for the game were basically either 5 stars from people with A6+ devices and 1 star from people with A5 devices. So i worked hard to optimized the game - no easy feat considering it is a sizable open world area, and got it to work on A5 devices most of the time. But it still crashes sometimes unless you restart your device/close other apps. Hardly ideal. So now I am creating a new update of the game that works on Metal devices - A7 and Up - and I have to make a decision. If i just update the current game /binary, which has the benefit of a widely known and promoted URL, then it will continue to be available to A5 devices and that means more 1 star reviews. It also means i feel restricted adding new content to the game because i am trying to (largely unsuccessfully) accommodate older devices. It is kind of like trying to make an Xbox One game run on the original Xbox. I can restrict the update to Metal devices only. This will likely mean better reviews as it will keep A5 and A6 users from downloading the game. But you cannot update a game to a version that wont be available on devices it previously was available on. Bottom line - a new metal version will have to be a new game and binary (BrightRidge HD?) and have a new URL that has no links to it. Also, people who have bought the game for 99cents or $1.99 would have to buy it again at this new URL because it is a new binary. Option 1 What I was going to do is continue to update the current binary and just accept the 1 star reviews. It will likely work even worse on A5 devices because i am adding content to the game as well. But it will work on A6 as well s A7+ and have the benefit of an established URL Option 2 But now i am thinking just bite the bullet and create a new Metal Only HD version at a new URL, lose the search engine and review links, but gain a more stable, richer game experience because only compatible devices could download it. I would then make the current version on the App Store free but not update it again. This option is closer to putting the game experience first - it will be a better game. Also, I know game devs are supposed to have a thick skin, but the 1 star reviews are somewhat nasty, and involve something I can do nothing to fix (they are based i crashing, not game experience), so they are demoralizing. I am a solo game developer working in my spare time, and I have limited time, budget and energy. Does anyone have any suggestions?
