Introduction
Welcome back! In the month and half since our last post, the world has changed quite a bit. While I don't mean it as a pun, both the real world and Nightfall's world are much different from what they were at the time of our last blog post. As it has with most of the world, COVID-19 has effected the development of Nightfall… but don't panic. We're all doing well and any sort of effects it has had on the game are now in the past (I hope!). Since we're sure that COVID-19 is something you are probably sick of hearing about, we promise not to talk about it in this blog post other than briefly in this introduction. As a lot of you already know, many of our team members are college students. A lot of us were home for spring break when our classes were moved to be online for the rest of the semester. This meant that most of us did not have our workstations (PCs) or resources that we were normally used to and our schedules changed drastically. It took a bit of adapting to but we're now situated and things are headed back towards normal. Two of our other team members were also in the process of moving houses to a different area during these crazy times and all of these factors contributed to a bit of a stall out. Rest assured we are now all as safe as we can be and happy to be back working on Nightfall. Thank you for your patience with us during these unprecedented times! With all that said, let's ditch the pandemic talk for the remainder of the blog post and get to what you're all here for – What's new with Nightfall?
Render Pipeline
Shortly after our last blog post, we upgraded from the default Unity render pipeline to the Universal Render Pipeline (URP). This was a long time coming change for us and we made the decision to switch over to give us more flexibility with lighting, visual effects, and the graphical side of Nightfall as we continue to improve the look and feel of the game. There are both pros and cons to this. Beneficially, we've been able to vastly improve darkness at night and begin work on lighting systems. We've also fixed a lot of little things we did not like about the previous lighting. On the more negative side, the URP is not officially supported as the main rendering pipeline for Unity yet. What this means is that a couple of things we think are key to the game's visuals are not yet implemented. The good news is that they are coming, but we are unfortunately stuck waiting for Unity to add them. They just released their 2020 road-map and did mention some of the things we are waiting for will be coming soon so we have our fingers crossed!
One of the most common concerns/questions we get is about not being able to see depth in the terrain when you are looking at many blocks that are the same. A fix for this is Ambient Occlusion. Unfortunately, this is one of those things we are waiting on Unity for, however, we did mess around with some workarounds to show you what it might look like once Unity offers support for it in the URP.
We are well aware of the depth issue and it bugs us as much as it does you. We are looking forward to AO support being added for the URP but in the meantime you'll just have to bear with us!
Lighting (Day/Night Cycle)
So you may be asking… what good has come from upgrading to URP? The answer is – lots! For starters, we've really been able to capture true darkness at night. While we still have a lot of tweaking to do, this will make you think twice about heading into the dark of Nightfall without any source of light. We'll likely put off some faint glow from the moon to allow you to have slightly more visibility, but for the most part it will be up to you to provide your light in the dark. This true darkness will exist in caves as well. We're really excited to start fiddling with this as it allows us to work on light sources as well. We think this is an integral part of Nightfall and will make fighting off the creatures of the dark have an even larger impact.
Don't fret too much! There will be ways to stave off the hungering beasts that may lurk in the shadows. You'll be able to carry and place light sources like torches or campfires in Nightfall. In the early game, these light sources will be your saving grace at night. We'll probably make them temporary as there will be many other sources of light that are more efficient than these crude starting tools. We'll also be making use of some more aesthetically pleasing VFX for the effects on torches and fires alike. Here is a quick mock-up to give you more of an idea of what we're thinking…
We'll continue to share updates with you as we work on light sources in the coming weeks. We are currently experimenting with solid light blocks in game and will have something to show for it soon.
Water Shader
With the URP also came new capabilities for Shaders. We have a brand new water shader and a new part-time team graphics dev! Make sure to give Oscar a warm welcome over on Discord! Nightfall's water has been needing an overhaul for a long time and he has begun to make those improvements. We still have a ways to go but water is already looking ten times better than before! Thanks Oscar!
Caves
In our temporary weekly update on Discord, we showed off the start of caves. Since then, we've continued to work on caves and their generation and have made some decent progress. We still have quite the ways to go with improving cave noise and making them generate in the size/shape we want but this is good progress towards making the temperate “Tier 1” underground.
Ores
Ores now generate in the world. As you can see with the coal above, our ores are not just flat 2D textures like some other blocks. Ores in Nightfall are three dimensional and give the impression that they are embedded in the stone. When you remove a block of stone covering ore it looks like the ore was in between the two blocks which really adds to the atmosphere of the game. With the capabilities of Nightfall's engine, we'll be adding in lots of variants for ores so they do not all look exactly the same, however, they'll still be recognizable as their intended ore. We'll also accomplish this by generating the ores at random rotations. In the above image, they are all facing the same way, but this will not be the case once we modify their generation.
As you can see, we spent a lot of time getting ores to feel right in game. Vein size and rarity are two important factors we will begin to play with now that ores are generating properly. We will be doing extensive testing on this in the coming weeks but if you look closely in the image above you may be able to spot a lot of the ores found in the normal Tier 1 underground systems. What ores do you think the placeholder art interpretations represent? We'll be sharing a lot more about the ores found in the early-game of Nightfall in an upcoming blog so stay tuned!
Explosives
In our last blog post, we showed a very primitive version of explosives in Nightfall. What originally started as a test became a feature and we've continued to improve it since the last blog post. We now have models for all the explosives which you can see in the images below. We also have the ability to easily change the size, shape, and strength of the explosions. We're looking forward to playing with this more… especially with our new ragdoll physics when the player dies.
Ragdoll Physics
Awhile back we teased that we added ragdoll physics to corpses and we couldn't be happier with the results. Along with the three new clips showcased in this blog, we'd like to go a bit more into depth on how these will play a role in Nightfall.
When a player or creature dies in Nightfall, their body will become even more interactive in the form of ragdoll physics. Currently, you are able to push the bodies around once they are in their ragdoll form just by running into them. Eventually, you'll be able to use the drag key to drag bodies around the map. Corpses will eventually despawn but you will also be able to break them apart. Sometimes when you attack a creature, pieces of it might fall off and have ragdoll physics activated like this. This is going to take a lot of fiddling to get right but we're really excited for the possibilities with this. Imagine dragging a corpse out to bait in a monster, or, pushing corpses into a pit to feed your captive beasts. The possibilities are endless. We even think this would be awesome with VR, but let's not get too carried away at the moment…
Here you can see what death currently looks like from the player's perspective. The respawn screen is temporary but you can see the little cut scene where the ragdoll is activated and even in its rough form it looks pretty good!
Biomes
Wisteria Fields
The Wisteria Fields are a MAJOR work-in-progress mostly because the main feature of this biome will be its wispy, flowery trees that stand tall in the fields. As you can see, the current state of the biome is just a new color of grass and some pretty flowers, but once we have our dynamic tree system situated this biome will take on a whole new look.
There are lots of flowers that make up the Wisteria Fields (and more to come) but as of right now you can spot both Lavender and Perennials growing in the lush plains. How many different variations of Lavender can you spot?
Wetlands
What used to be the Bog biome is now the Wetlands. This biome is not much more than some early terrain generation experiments but it has changed quite a bit since its original tweet and I think it deserves a mention. One of the main features here is a block we haven't talked much about – Mud.
Mud is the first type of block that a player can sink into. When standing on Mud, the player's feet will be sunken into the block a little. This adds for a gooey feel to the block and with some SFX, it will help to enhance the atmosphere of the Wetlands. James also created some Cattails which will make their way into the biome in the future.
Mountains
While these screenshots are a bit dated, they do a good job of showing off some of the new mountainous terrain we've worked on. This is a pretty solid improvement from the older versions of the mountains and looking back on them we are pretty happy with how this turned out. We'll revisit this biome in the future as we add more blocks/terrain tools to the game.
Workstations
Decoration Table
The Decoration Table! This might be my favorite (aesthetically) of the new workstations. I mean just look at it! Beautiful! The Decoration Table (similarly to the Carver) will allow you to create variants of blocks. This station is used to both color blocks AND combine them with other materials. Try putting some cloth and wood inside of the Decoration Table and see what happens! Maybe you'll get a combination of the two blocks! ?
We think that this will make for a good way to allow for some really unique and highly requested building blocks to make their way into the game. It also allows players to have an easy way to color their blocks rather than adding lots of different crafting recipes.
Oven
We mentioned the Oven in a previous blog post, but it now has both a model and UI. Here is a brief excerpt from DevBlog #7 explaining what the Oven is and how it works:
“…[T]he Oven is another new workstation coming to Nightfall. It will be made with clay and is one early-game way to cook your food. You can try to cook your food on a Smeltery but because of the immense heat put off by the Smeltery it will be much easier to use the Oven!”
The Oven is a great early-game way to cook food efficiently and make sure you have some hot meals to put into your belly.
Hunger/Thirst
We teased the new Hotbar UI a little while back and asked you to guess what the meters were for! We had a lot of unique guesses, and a few people on the Discord managed to get pretty close, but the answer to the mystery was… Hunger and Thirst! We now have a proper home for both of these elements in Nightfall.
We know that Thirst is a scary word, so before you panic, hear us out. This is a mechanic we're still toying with. We really do not want it to be an annoying aspect of the game. Currently, we're concepting lots of ways to refill your thirst including through some foods similarly to hunger. We will make sure that this mechanic is not so much of a hindrance that it ruins the game.
Here is a peek at some concept UI for one more meter that you may soon find animated on the hotbar. We'll leave it up to you to guess what it does. Come take a whack at it on Discord!
Some of you may have noticed that our Discord now has a brand new logo. James designed a lot of new designs (more of which are available via Patreon) but we ultimately went with these two logos as the more official ones. You'll see these cropping up in lots of Nightfall related places in the coming days if they are not already there now.
Checking in on Alpha…
Last blog post, we presented you with a list of things we'd like to make significant progress on before releasing a closed Alpha version of the game. We are happy to say that we are still making progress on this list and have actually made a significant dent in it already. By no means does this mean that we are ready to release tomorrow, and we still have lots of big hurdles in our way, but this is good news! Below, I have added a note on anything on the Main Alpha List that we have made some progress on since the last blog post.
- Dynamic Trees
Nothing worth noting in this blog post.
- The Underground
Caves and ores are now implemented into the world. Tier 1 Temperate Underground has significant progress. Ores are now much easier to add to the game and set parameters for. Caves need a decent bit more work but exist in an early form.
- Workstations
Almost all basic workstation models are completed. A few still need UI. A lot of them are ready to be implemented into the game.
- Enemy AI
Nothing worth noting in this blog post.
- Water Physics
Nothing worth noting in this blog post.
- Hunger/Thirst
Hunger and Thirst are both implemented into the game in their early forms and will be improved in the coming weeks. Expect to see food/early cooking in the next few months. Expect to see crops/farming sooner rather than later!
- Proper Lighting/Night Improvements
Massive improvements in this department. Expect to see lots of cool light stuff in game very soon. Day/Night cycle and true darkness are coming along great. We have a bit of work to do before getting true darkness to work in caves.
Music
We are thankful to be putting out another incredible piece of the OST along with this blog post. As always, send Jaykoa your love over on Discord for continuing to produce incredible music for Nightfall! This piece is called Magritte and is not one you want to miss! <3
Discord, Patreon, and Social Media
Discord
https://discord.gg/2BKtNks
Use the link above to head on over to our Discord. This is the absolute BEST way to communicate with myself, any of the Developers, and the community. We have dedicated areas for you to suggest features, give feedback, learn more, and most importantly - ASK QUESTIONS (and get an answer too!) This is the easiest way of supporting us and is totally free! We are so happy to see so many of you already taking advantage of this by joining, talking to each other, suggesting features, and grilling us with questions! It's been great!
**I know I mention Discord in every blog post, but seriously, this is a great place to get to know us better! You can earn in-game profile tags, suggest features directly, and we do different things throughout the week for you to participate in like Feedback Friday with more to come in the future! You're missing out if you haven't hopped in yet! ❤️
YouTube
Check out our YouTube channel for other pieces of Nightfall's OST. We will also be posting Devlogs, Trailers, and more here in the future!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb0eFml5-iRYt6mgG2k2LTw
Click the link above to head over and subscribe so you don't miss future videos!
Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/vgnightfall
While we don't require it by any means, Patreon is a great way to support us directly. You can pledge to monetarily support us monthly here. We do have various tiers of support that each provide unique rewards like special roles on our Discord server, access to even more direct communication with Developers, and of course, eventual early access to the game to help us test. One of the tiers even lets you work with us directly to add a creature to the game! You'll also get bonus development content and an even closer peek into our development process directly through Patreon and Discord when you subscribe! We've already posted a lot of extra content on our Patreon!
Thank you to our current Patreon supporters:
Basic Supporter - iDraws
Patreon+ - BOWSER0897
If you don't like Patreon, you can also choose to support us directly with one-time payments through PayPal.
You can donate through PayPal by clicking here.
Thank you to those of you who have chosen to do this in the past or through Patreon.
https://twitter.com/venatus_games
Our Twitter is a great way to keep track of weekly updates to Nightfall! We post screenshots, GIFs, videos, art, job positions, and more! Twitter is free to use and an awesome way to stay up to date with all of the Nightfall news! Head on over to the link above and give us a follow to learn more!
(Closing)
And Night is Upon Us!
And that brings us to a close. Thank you all for taking the time to read about our little game that means so much to us. We are happy with the direction that the game is heading in and will continue to keep you updated in the coming months. We have some cool things planned for the near future that you won't want to miss so make sure you keep your eyes open on Discord! We've got a lot of exciting things making their way into Nightfall now and we are getting closer to a closed Alpha each day. Thank you for putting up with us in these crazy times and remember to wash your hands! We better get going before the Harvesters come out! Until the sun rises…
Humbly,
Jack and the Venatus Team
