i am not a game dev but I also have a deadline to crack a uni exam in the next year around this time or potentially end up jobless and most probably homeless. Was feeling hopeless but your previous vid definitely hit home. Your attitude towards your situation was genuinely uplifting. Will follow along your journey. Btw your game also seems to be coming up together good. Would love to see where you take it. sorry I wont be able to provide any meaningful feedbacks as I myself could never afford gaming due to financial conditions. But definitely cheering you on. All the best😊
Ayyy, good to see it. I personally know a RU-vidr with over 200k subscribers that might be interested in playing this game one day, she does a lot of different evolution sims and stuff.
Thank you! It’s getting there, especially with all of the recommendations in the comments. I have four more fish planned for this first stage so I hope to introduce you to them soon! 😊
Now that I think about it, you could make the sand a warmer color when its closer to the camera and a colder color when its farther away. You could also make moss for those rock, they deserve it :) PD: that's awesome progress, keep it up
Nice job! Seeing every layer added individually was mesmerizing, each so subtle but contributing so much in the end. If you have any need for help regarding sound effects or music, please feel free to contact me.
the MOST IMPORTANT thing to feel underwater is the water reflexion on the floor, it changes everything and u cant ignore that. Exept that, nice video ^^
Thanks! I would say that’s been my highest recommendation from the comments in this video. 😂 I’ve been learning shaders this week and have already implemented it. Hope you enjoy it in the next video!
To add to this, those are called caustics, and they have mostly been figured out really well by the industry by now, and are easy to implement. Any game dev can appreciate a feature that is low effort with large impact :)
It's a great start on the layout and with the art style it looks like it won't be too demanding to run for many players. Can't wait to see how this and the other stages develop.
AVNJ is a marine biologist who once worked with that one aquarium simulator, and seems open to checking out smaller fish games. Maybe he might be willing to help out! It would also help with exposure. Otherwise, looking great!!
Yes, the plants! That part looks so much better than in the first video. I think the movement is great. I’m no fish-naming expert, but I do really like your art style for the fish. I think you nailed the colors to get that pond feel, even if it isn’t exactly murky green like it realistically would be. We artists have to take artistic liberties to get the idea across while still making a thing of beauty, and I think that’s exactly what you’ve accomplished here. The green floaters look and behave too much like fireflies. They have that glow of a bug rather than the glint or shimmer you would expect from dust. It also looks like all the bubbles come up in the foreground rather than the background which isn’t the most pleasing to the eye. Overall, great progress!
Good luck on the game dude! My only suggestion would be to add some stylized textures to everything instead of relying on colors alone, Also adding water caustics on the ground would add ALOT of depth, the caustics would also be on the water above aswell and would make the whole scene come together. Keep the hard work up!
Thanks a lot! I’ve been working on learning shaders this week. It’s been slow but I’ve made some good progress with new textures for pretty much everything. Your wording about “stylized textures” has been actually really helpful for some reason working on the fish. That phrase was ringing in my ears all evening yesterday. 😄
Thanks! There are absolutely a few game inspirations for some of the game mechanics, but I've always been fascinated with simulating real life with code and art. Hopefully those things will combine into a cool and unique game in the end!
Well this is a great start to your Game Dev/RU-vid career. You're probably close to getting monetised? 1 more video needed and maybe half way on your watch hours?! Creating games is something I keep thinking about doing, but I get bored quickly! (That's why I'm here) Others in my strange niche have already started posting videos using Unity and Blender. Do you have any coding or gaming background? Sorry if I missed this in your previous video! Maybe have a look at the game Grounded for more visual inspiration on ponds. It's definitely looking much better though with those changes!
Thanks! Yeah, the subs are nearly there, just a few more videos to get the watch time up (I'm only about 20% on that front.) The Indie GameDev community is awesome! Not much coding experience. I learned a little bit of Visual Basic as a teenager, then didn't touch code for like 15 years before getting into Unity. But plenty of gaming experience! I've never streamed or anything but I haven't stopped gaming since Sega Genesis and SNES were popular. Grounded looks cool. I just watched the Koi Pond trailer. Thanks for the suggestion!
@@WyrmyrGames That's still really good for 2 videos. Took me 20 + videos to get monetised from start July 2018 to 21st Oct 2018. I started on the Atari 2600 lol had both of those and still gaming! Dipped my toe into the games industry in 96 but sadly the company of 15+ years went bust!! Still something I'd like to do, just not sure I've got the energy or time.
Love it! Definitely a more pond-y feel. Unfortunately not going to look for the fish. Bad memories from my bio major days. If I get over it I will consider it…
MOTION SICKNESS WARNING: Some viewers have been getting motion sickness from watching this video, including me, so proceed with caution. Please be assured, while I can't do anything for this video, fixing this issue is a top priority for my viewers and future players. Thanks everyone for your patience and helpful suggestions. (I'll pin this as soon as I'm allowed to 😑)
Looks amazing so far! just a quick idea for maybe a future feature, what if you could raise up from the water and look after above water creatures and plants!, good luck on your game :D
I used to love these kind of games as a kid, interactive fish tanks. There was one i used to play, and if the fish got big enough theyd eat your other fish
Your fish movement and animation are impressive. You might wanna Look Into shaders instead of having hundreds of animator Componenta running every frame. Good job on the level
I'm not sure how technical of a developer you are, or how technical you want to get, but I think you could write a relatively simple vertex shader for your underwater plants that shifts the vertices of the plant on a scale that increases as the vertex approaches the top of the mesh, then implement a really simple "current" or "wind" system that feeds a direction and strength into any plant within it's bounds, which the plant can use to move those vertices. This can get as complex as you would like, all the way to developing a realtime fluid dynamics simulation to generate the strength and direction for a given cell. Of course, going that route would be a significant undertaking, but could add a LOT to the feel of the water in your game, and bring it to life. I've worked on a wind simulation of sorts, myself, and followed the example of God of War to get it working. There are a couple of really good GDC talks on the subject.
Thanks for the recommendations! I'm not technical at all but I've been learning shaders since posting this video (per the many suggestions) and its coming along.
Great visual improvements :) The only thing I dont love are the green particles. I think their speed, directions and look is too similar to basic environment particles seen in games, and not enough like stuff you'd find in a pond. Personally I'd revisit their color (a bit less bright and random more brownish/white colors) and make them move slower. But those are details, it's already looking quite nice.
You could try to implement the animation from the Plants using a vertex offset shader instead of animating them with bones if you run into performance issues. The shader work by sliding a world aligned noise texture over the material and offsetting the vertices with the texture, you can also rfine it by baking in a gradient to the vertex colors from the bottom of the plant to the top and using this as a strenght value. This is also a time saver for future plants since you dont need to rig it and animate every plant by hand since it will be completly procedual and also allows changes like wind speed, wind strenght, wind pattern in runtime
Unless you need a flat bottom on your rocks, I'd recommend that you just model the full round-ness of the rock. Often games will use just a few rocks that look unique enough from a few different angles that they can be leveraged to feel like several unique assets. Along with the random rotation and a very slight non-proportional scale using the terrain tool, you can get a lot of variance for very little work.
@@WyrmyrGames another option for fog (though a bit more complicated than using the standard fog) is to write a custom post-process shader that applies a gradient based on depth. So it would work the same as fog (a color is added to the pixels, and the amount that is added is based on depth), but instead of a single color, your shader would sample a gradient. You can remap the depth values, so that where you want your fog to start would be '0' and where you want the infinity of your fog to be would be '1' and then apply that as the UV coordinates to a simple 1D gradient texture. The gradient can start light blue, then transition to tan, then brown. I recommend checking out GDC talks on the art of the game Firewatch, where they talk a little about their implementation of just such an effect. As for writing shader, I recommend you get yourself amplify shader editor (or just play around with the built in Unity Shader Graph). If you're having trouble finding a tutorial to do what you want in your shader, you can typically look it up for Unreal engine because the Unreal engine material editor uses the same nodes as amplify shader editor and Unity shader graph
I know you are on a tight schedule, but if you want to further improve how your underwater foliage looks, you should look into animating it with a shader. It's usually done by having one big noise texture scrolling through the world and things animating based on that - it's how you simulate gusts of wind or, in your case, waves of water.
Hi! I absolutely love how easy it is to see everything now! I’m terrible with fish species btw, but are one of those a “Beta” (I think that’s how you spell it) fish?
2:45 I would suggest ensuring you have an option to turn off plant motions entirely. That's still too fast for my mind. I'd also suggest an Itch or GOG release, for those who don't use STEAM, but that's up to you.
I haven’t but that’s an excellent idea! I supposed I’ve been avoiding texture so far since once one thing is textured everything else, I imagine, would need to be textured. So for the sake of cohesiveness I’ve left everything untextured. But I’ll definitely look into it. Maybe texturing certain things will make untextured aspects pop more? We’ll see I guess. Thanks for the suggestion!
I know you are still learning but you should look into vertex animation and skip the skeletal mesh and animation update for each plant, its going to add up
needs caustics, softer shadows, overall just better shading. plants could use some form of subsurface or at least a fresnel, water needs ripples, need a better murk, water isn't actually that shade of blue and has more lighting and gradient to the depth
@@WyrmyrGamesIf you want simple caustics, you can use a projector/scrolling decal (if your render pipeline supports either) and flip through pre-generated looping caustic textures, because realtime caustics are expensive, but projected ones are cheap. Water is honestly hard to get right in games, I'm mainly a programmer, but I've been working with the VR FishTank team and we've tried many things for our water so far. It's not easy, but the caustics add a lot of detail quickly. Try googling "Free caustics generator" if you want to give it a whirl.
I know it seems intuitive to skin your foliage (give it bones and an animation)...but it's going to obliterate your performance. You're much better off writing a shader for waving the foliage. This looks awesome btw!
It was the only way I knew. 😄 But I'll get right on learning shaders. Sounds like they'll help in many areas and maybe make development a bit easier. Thank you!
I think you should take inspiration from dave the diver. It is not a simulation game but an adventure game with fishing, sushi, farm and aquarium, ask me if you need more info
I'd love to make a video about it, especially once I flesh it out, but basically they have avoidance for the invisible barriers so they stay in a certain area using raycasts. I initially used raycasting for finding food but it wasn't reliable enough for testing (they just weren't seeing the food) so I switched to a system where they always know about/see the food and go for it immediately as long as it's the type they like. It's basic but I'll likely keeping working on it. Thanks for asking!
Oh man, nobody animates plants to simulate the wind or water current. You must have decent PC if you are not noticing problems with performance, but i guarantee the game will have them on lower end platforms. You should research how to do those animations with a shader, there is a ton of tutorials.
Thanks for the suggestion. It seemed like the right way at the time. But all of the similar comments convinced me to learn shaders this past week and they've already been implemented. I hope to get the next Devlog up to show off my shaders by the end of the week.
I'm very excited to see how this game will turn out. While I am not a big fan of simulation games, I am a game developer who aspires to make a career out of it. I hope to see you and your game succeed, so I have bring up some honest notes: 1. If this game is paid, I doubt anyone is gonna buy it. Even if the game is cheap, it feels as though the game is not worth the price. It's not a game I would play, and I'm pretty sure it's not a game most of my friends and peers are willing to pay a dime for. Usually, we prefer games where we have more control over. 2. This game doesn't really stand out. Other than being a very excited audience of this channel who religiously listens to the steps you take in this game development process, there isn't really a reason for me to play the game, let alone someone who doesn't even know about your devlog series. 3. This video doesn't really reach a huge audience. It's more likely for game developers to click on this video than gamers who might actually play the game. 4. Make the game good (look) enough to represent the rest of the game and attract a wide audience who will be compelled to try your game. With that being said, I hope you take note of this and strategize more thoroughly to make ends meet with this game and finally quit your janitorial job! Looking forward to your next devlog.
Thanks for the solid advice! I hope to improve in all of the areas you mentioned through iteration on the graphics and gameplay, along with feedback from RU-vid and testing when I get that going. This is only the beginning but your comments suggest some areas I should focus on so thanks!
So far it’s that clip I had toward the beginning: you place fish, feed them different foods to cause them to grow and evolve, discover new fish and unlock different biomes. Balance your ecosystems by managing fish populations and just try to unlock everything basically.
@@jordanelevons1685 For the mechanics it's mainly the Chao Garden from Sonic Adventure 2. Viva Pinata and Zoo Tycoon had interesting ecosystem elements that I enjoyed. I have no inspirations for the art style. Just modeled the fish shapes based on pictures of real fish and colored them very simply.
