Hello!
We have made it this far into the games development without ever using something called shaders. To a game developer, this statement might sound insane… and now I am learning about shaders I tend to agree.
Why the sudden interest in shaders? Well, since development began I have been fighting issues with rendering and scaling artifacts in different situations. Some players would get a sort of… ocean wobble in the world as they ran around, others might even see little lines appear. Things might blur slightly, or you might see pixels sort of jumping around a little bit.
I have tried many, many different approaches to fixing these issues, varying from belt and braces to just plain bad. In the end though, thanks to some help from a few people in the LibGDX community, I have been introduced to the world of shaders… and now you can be too!
This version of the PTR client uses our first iteration of a shader designed to remove artifacts, scaling issues, and related nonsense in scaled pixel art game such as Mirage, and I must say for me at least the different is very noticeable when running around the world. It has eliminated a ripple effect I wasn’t even really perceiving, but now it’s gone movement is eerily smooth…
In addition this shader is doing some seriously heavy lifting on supported Android devices, making the scaled UI and text significantly more readable! If you can’t tell, I am quite excited about this, and I would very much enjoy feedback on Discord of your experience on your devices.
Changes
- New shader implemented on the Client
- Will silently fall back to old rendering style if it isn’t supported
- Removes rendering artifacts when running around
- Prevents “wobbly” things
- Results in very smooth scaling
- Significantly sharpens and improves readability on Android
- Spells
- Incantations are back using new spell language rules
- Casts are cancelled if target enters a safe zone
- Casting now checks:
- If the target is active
- If they are on the same layer (duh)
- Fixes:
- Crash on other player’s spell cast overlapping their spell interrupted state
- Inability to cast after switching vocations
- Spells with cast times still firing if the target leaves the area / enters a safe zone
Spell Language
On live spell language is largely just a clusterfudge of latin and lies. I decided now was a good time to look into how spell language is build in other games, and learned quite a bit actually. With this in mind, after much reading, spell incantations are now being built from a new set of language rules (subject to change of course) that will expand as we add more spells.
an - rune iv - instant / action us - over time ora - protection / shield ori - cancel / remove eka - movement / thrown (physical interation with the world) omi - change / enchant aso - create (like fire fields and such, bring a thing into the world) ide - destroy eti - locate isa - strike uro - heal mag - more amp - medium tel - projectile min - less par - targeted glaci - ice ignis - fire vis - energy nex - death pet - physical san - holy fel - nature
For example, the two spells at the moment are Lunge, an instant damage physical strike (Ivisa Pet), and Meteor, an instant damage fire stike (Ivisa Ignis). All of this is of course subject to change, but it feels cool to build incantations out of bits of language like this.
Roadmap & Livestream
I have had a lot of questions about the roadmap and when the next livestream is, so here is the rather simple current short-term roadmap:
- Add channelled spells
- Add support for status effects (dots, buffs, debuffs, etc)
- Re-implement AOEs, with a “warning” template if they have a cast time for the duration of the cast so everyone can see which squares are going to get hit
- Update the Android client to support the new spell system
- Make it so NPCs can be assigned spells and will cast them sensibly
- Add 6 spells (a full bar) for each vocation to help guide balance and testing going forwards
As you can see we are very much in the get the fundamental combat mechanics added phase of the PTR now, which is excellent. The next livestream will be held on the PTR release that delivers the last bullet point here, with the aim of getting a lot of players onto the test realm so we can have a big PVP war and really put all of the new features through their paces.
Thank you very much to everyone who is following the project and checking out the PTR changes as they land – I understand it is taking a long time to bring the PTR up to parity with the live game, and believe me, nobody feels this frustration more than I do! But I am confident now more than ever that once this lands live and we have a significantly better game – this is going to all have been worth it.
See you soon!
Fhox