refined the 3d cursor a bit.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@eniko the only real limitation of pixel fonts IME is the scalability (at least beyond integer scaling).

There's also the issue of supported alphabets/glyphs, but unless the game will have user strings this is at least something you control.

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

decided to go with a very 16-bit feeling aesthetic for block game's GUI. took a while to set up the shader for the background color gradient but it's totally worth it with the dither and crunchy pixels. and it can go diagonal, horizontal, or vertical!

oh and yes, you can customize the gradient colors :3

#EniBlockGame #GameDev #IndieDev #PixelArt

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

Oh did I mention the GUI image atlas is loaded via json so, aside from the background gradient which is a shader, I guess that means the GUI is skinnable?

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

took all dang day but i have my custom font ready now. it's a tweak of the font i made for MidBoss to make it look a bit more like a system font, so i'm calling it sysboss

comes in regular and bold

#EniBlockGame #GameDev #IndieDev #PixelArt

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

Reminder: if you have questions about block game you may want to check the site at https://enikofox.com/blockgame because I probably answered your question in the FAQ on there

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko i've got two burning questions about block game: will there be blocks in it and will it "have game"?

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@aeva I feel like it answers the latter via answering that it will have fox girls 🤔

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko yusssssssss

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

implemented auto GUI scaling, in a way where i can easily mix low res pixel and high resolution image elements

pictured are 640x360 and 960x540 (resized with nearest neighbor to 1080p in post) as well as 1080p

the GUI will be designed to scale cleanly with crisp pixels into 720/1080p and beyond (4k/8k)

#EniBlockGame #GameDev #IndieDev

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

note that the magnification and low resolution makes the linear scaling on the 540 pixel resolution look much worse than it is. for example, here is 1600x900, unscaled, which has linear filtering on the GUI pixels

#EniBlockGame #GameDev #IndieDev

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

this GUI scaling is why making the background gradient shader was kinda tricky. the way i render pixel perfect stuff at high scales is to just scale via nearest neighbor

but the gradient is just two colored triangles on the GPU, so there's no texture to scale. instead i had to do the pixelated effect in the fragment shader so i can set a scale and render the menu background at high res but with the expected chunky pixels

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

created the hotbar today, and block game is really starting to look like a game now!

and best of all, the entire bar is reskinnable by changing the gui.png and gui.json files :3

#EniBlockGame #GameDev #IndieDev #PixelArt 🎮

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

just gotta put blocks in the hotbar when you break em, and then place them in the world from the hotbar, and add torches somehow and we'll have ourselves a playable prototype

if i can pull that off in the next 10 days i'll have taken block game from nothing to playable in just 2 months. that'd be a nice feather in my cap

#EniBlockGame

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

it doesn't just look like a game now, it *is* a game! :D

select hotbar slots with scrollwheel or with the keys shown in the upper left of the slot (indicated by background color). press 'R' to ready/sheathe whatever's selected (indicated by the golden cursor). while nothing is readied or the slot is empty left click breaks blocks. if a block is readied left click places that block

#EniBlockGame #GameDev #IndieDev

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

made a little shack :3

#EniBlockGame

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

i have updated the block game website FAQ (https://enikofox.com/blockgame) with mouselook details

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

please welcome block game's first ever rendered entity: the stick!

#EniBlockGame #GameDev #IndieDev #PixelArt

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

One thing I like about mr stick here is that I use smoothed normals on it despite it being boxy and low poly so it looks more round like an actual stick because dogmatic adherence to "everything is a sharp faceted cube" does not actually produce a pleasing aesthetic (in my opinion)

[lisyarus@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko Tbh I do think that specifically Minecraft aesthetic is quite unique and works rather well, but it spawned a voxel-worshipping cult with games where everything looks like they took a normal game and voxelized everything with ~10cm voxels but only on the model level, so you can still have arbitrary orientations and even animated models, and I just can't stand it? It looks worse than a non-voxel alternative in pretty much every way...

[breakin@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@lisyarus I personally think Teardown looks interesting despite being about what you said. Leaning into more physical lighting might be what saved it perhaps (for me).