Scoops

Announcement: The Crabmeat Steam Demo is Out Now!

An early segment of the game is available for those willing to brave the ice ❄️



Explore the full depths when the game launches March 10th
store.steampowered.com/app/3671850/... 



Please Wishlist and Share!🦀🦀
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Haven't had much to show lately between being sick and working on inventory system prototypes.

Currently playing around with a 'segmented' inventory that would allow each equipment to have slots tied to it.

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Been sick all week, but I managed to get some good progress done on items!

I can set up animation overrides and logic per item type. So here I've got a unique equip animation for the gun and a throw action for the block.

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Testing out more FPS animation stuff. Definitely need to set up a good system for allowing spine/head movement from animations. Punches without a little screen shake or windup feel weak.

Everything's lining up with the camera well though!

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I set it up quick as a test animation but its really been growing on me. The hands on hips + point makes the character so sassy

I'll have to include it in the game as an emote or something

Thanks!
Yeah, I had to try a few different methods before I settled on this one. Right now it's first aiming the Upper Chest toward the view direction, and then re-aligning the hands back to their original animated positions when they're not being used.

An added complexity was the fact then when you're not moving/using your hands, the controller allows some free head movement for immersion.

When pointing (or using weapons/tools) though, I need the body to match the head direction. It's nice to have all of that working and not be jarring.

Another pointing post, but I've got the FPS animation IK set up pretty nicely now.

Looking around maintains more complex positions like the crouch, and still keeps the hands always pointing exactly where I expect them to be when the player is using them.

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The placeholder walk cycle I'm using from mixamo is so goofy 😭

I really need to animate a replacement in between character controller work.

Still working on the character controller for Hadostruct.

Today I networked the left/right arm controllers, so now you can be pointed at by your friends!

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Before finding that talk, I was just rendering at half resolution and then blurring it as I upscaled.
Which worked, but it was a bit pixelated and couldn't go any lower than 1/2 resolution without looking really bad.

The new system looks better even at 1/4 or lower, and runs faster.

YouTube video by GDC Festival of Gaming Low Complexity, High Fidelity - INSIDE Rendering

I cannot recommend enough that anyone making their own volumetric system watch INSIDE's rendering talk from GDC: youtu.be/FMfC47xsImU?...

There's a ton of good tricks in there for getting good looking volumetrics with a low sample rate. Finding this talk a few weeks back was a goldmine for me.

It's a bit noisy this far out, but the volumetric lights can even be rendered from over 200m away. Instead of sampling at consistent step lengths, I'm sampling on a curve so that volumetrics have a higher sample rate closer to the camera.

Another dev log about Hadostruct's lighting because I'm super happy with where it is now!

This is actually 8x downscaled volumetrics. Even at such a low render resolution they can still show shadow details and keep the surface of the water well defined.

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A picture of the Blender DataTransfer modifier window, with Face Corner Data checked.

The trick ended up being a modeling workflow change, actually.

If you have a smooth-shaded non-segmented mesh, you can copy the normal data over from that to a segmented mesh using a Data Transfer modifier in Blender.

Messing with normals can achieve a lot of fun effects!

Character models in Hadostruct are fully segmented, but I want them to look like they're all one mesh. I spent a little bit recently figuring out how to emulate that.

The end result is pretty fun, being able to 'pull apart' what looks like a single mesh.

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Doing a custom draw pass to inset actual 3d decals into the environment for bullet holes

They react to lighting and have occlusion since its a real mesh, using a zdepth trick to appear ontop of the surface

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Thanks!
And yeah, I've really only worked on 3rd person animations before. It's fun learning about all the considerations that go into designing first person ones.

I decided on a fullbody controller for Hadostruct for a few reasons (immersion, animation reuse), but it sure does introduce some interesting complications!

Today's focus was on getting first person animations to match the camera direction at all times. It's not quite there yet, but I made a lot of progress.
Also, made some new animations for pointing and idle to replace the ones I had!

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It's been so much fun working on all of these systems for the game. I really want to be able to nail the visuals of lights shining into and out of windows in a deep ocean.

That's enough of a thread on the lighting for now. It's very fun to look back on how it's shaped up!

It's got full control of the volume properties too, so I can make liquid profiles and swap them out on the fly, even on a per-room basis. The same goes for the atmosphere in each volume, in case I wanted thicker or colored fog.

Since the game will involve submarines flooded structures, I needed to also support multiple water volumes.

So it also supports water volumes that can be filled and emptied. That way individual rooms can flood and the lighting will work fine between them!

It's all done through a base shader that I set up for all objects in the game, so the water is always present.

I have a 'water plane' for rendering the foam on the top of the water, but all the lighting effects are part of the base shader.

When I started work on Hadostruct, I knew it was going involve a lot of water. The first month was nearly all researching water shaders and volumetrics.

I'm really happy with where it's at now! Light changes color as it passes through liquids, which has some really cool effects.

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Thanks!
I love the vibes of your game too! PSX style is real fun.

Hello Bluesky! Indie dev (and modder) here, new to the platform and looking to start networking and posting dev logs. My current project is a first person submarine sim that I've been working on for the past month.
Here's a video of testing I was doing today with IK pointing.

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