It would be so cool and scary to have the lighting reveal something in darkness that you can't normally see. Perhaps a ghostly figure that hides as soon as a bolt hits. It could indicate an area of interest where you might find a clue as to what happened here or where you could find your next objective.
7:40 . One suggestion i have for the water drops in order to make it cheaper, is to instead of particles, use an animated texture, it will have repetitive tiling as first... but then fill in about with some planes of different sizes with a single animated drop as its textures, it will break the tiling repetition, and you can go further more by mixing the animation time of these individual drops, like, faster drop animation on the smaller planes and slower drop animations on the bigger planes. Regards
@@Legend64Project on water surfaces Decals with a Paper 2D Sprite Sheet of rain drops should do the trick and for the rain particles I don't really know but if you want to optimize I would suggest a billboard parented to the camera hud that changes if you angle the camera but I have no idea on how to achieve that but maybe standard billboards placed at different distance from the camera should achieve the effect of distant pouring rain if the texture on them scroll seamlessly horizontally while rotating the camera to hide the trickery.
@@Legend64Project Yeah, first thought I had was an animated texture. Something transparent, so they can intersect without cutting each other off. That way you can avoid having an obvious seam from them being tiled, and instead rotate and overlay them as you see fit. If you wanted to avoid repetition, you could have two or three different animated textures, or if you really wanted to save on resources you could have one animation and have different instances of it start at different points in the loop, so they're out of sync with each other. Maybe have the speed offset just slightly, like OP said. Also mirroring the texture half the time would potentially double the perceived randomness of it. Or, if you REALLY wanted to make it look random and organic, you could apply all of these ideas. I do think however that a little bit of repetition and unintentional pattern recognition in the assets adds to the N64 charm. OOT used an animated texture at Link's feet for rainfall, but if he was standing on a ledge or a railing, it would clearly be floating around him, so it was an equally immersion adding and breaking effect. I think a smarter version of this could be a good fit for this game. Have an animated texture (subtler than the water one) show on top surfaces within a certain radius around the player.
Was just about to recommend something like this. Parallax animated droplets would probably be the route to go on a more limited system like an N64. As a bonus, you could even include a murky vignette like you've got rain in your eyes, or maybe if the textures get too blocky near the screen you could fade the texture out as it gets closer and sprinkle a few higher res particles or opt for some sort of mipmapping
@@tommyjohnson9176 yeah i don't think I agree with this. It's probably easier for it to feel that way because you're getting an inside look and it's coming from a solo indie developer that you probably more so identify with.
@@mpmedia6735 No I really think expansive open designs and higher visual fidelity works against the cultivation of this sort of mysterious and otherworldly atmosphere to a great extent
The low-poly art style leaves things to the imagination, which can actually be more immersive because your mind fills in gaps in the way that is most natural to you
Totally this I can't really bare myself to get "impressed" with modern near-photorealistic graphics for gameplay value. It's cool technically and fun to check out every now and then but all that work does not garuantee a good game
@@chickenitza8 Another way to frame it in a less cynical-to-the-point-of-envy fashion: It is a love-letter to the late 90s/early 2000s video games of the N64 platform.
Makes sense it reminds you of kakariko village since the terrain from the same game. The village terrain is Kokiri forest without the buildings and trees and such.
@@someuncreativity Right, the terrain he started with is really similar to Kokiri Forest (if not identical, even Link's Treehouse is there), the area is adjacent to woods that people get lost in, there's a well in front of a windmill, there is an orb-shaped spirit following you, and the game is called Legend 64. The game looks really awesome, but all these similarities are a bit much.
@@kevinstefan98 yeah, i gotta say this is starting to sound a bit too similar to ocarina of time. then again, we've only seen these bits and snippets of the game; im sure he's got a bunch of creative ideas up his sleeve and that these are just to give players that extra sense of familiarity
I'd imagine the classical way of doing rain on water would be to just have a repeating animated texture with the effect baked in. The original couple of Unreal games are great examples of how good animated textures alone can look, with water effects I still think look cool as heck 20 years later.
This is simply amazing. The N64 style has always been great looking to me, maybe even more than pixel art. There's just so much depth in this, the windmill looks stunning. This is so, so good.
Beautiful update as always! Truly incredible work. If I could throw in a tiny bit of visual feedback, I'd love to see the lightning flashes happen in a quicker duration and maybe reduce the # of frames on the bolt animations themselves. To me, the most effective part about a stormy atmosphere is how abruptly the lightning cracks and the sky flashes. It already looks beautiful! I just feel you could really drive home that "unsafe" feeling even further with a little more precipitance :) Can't wait for the next devlog!
Would like to gently suggest that if you do this, you provide an option to turn them off. Abrupt flashing lights can be dangerous to people with photosensitivity, and the more abrupt they are, them ore dangerous they can be.
Every single devlog makes me more excited for the next one, I can't wait to see the finished product! Please take your time to work out your vision for this world at your own pace.
This is such a cool project!!!!! I really REALLY! love that you impose technical limitation on yourself to better hit that oldschool look, because I gotta say it works like a charm, the look and and athmosfear of the game is totally spot on for an N64 game. I am really impressed.
As someone who really wants to make their own video game, how much of the passion is actually coding and implementing code into the game. Awesome project, your definitely a big inspiration for me man.
You're saying the rain makes things uncomfortable, like you wouldn't wanna be stuck out there for a while. But as someone who grew up during early 3D and loved rainy days because it meant I could stay in and play video games... this is like paradise to me!
I've been a casual observer of the OoT/MM modding community for years, and a common issue I see is mapmakers struggling to break off from established aesthetics in preexisting maps. You really knocked it out of the park with the environment design on this one, the area feels totally fresh and new, completely different from anything featured already. Those nooks and blackened doorways do wonders for prodding your imagination. Kudos man, keep it up!
This is super cool, I love it! Also, unrelated sidenote: for some reason, this village feels like it's taking inspiration from those ruined English villages in the middle of nowhere, even though I can tell it's mainly based on old Japanese villages. I think it would be cool to slightly tweak environments from the initial established aesthetics of the game to give the player a specific feeling but not so much that it feels like a different game (example, how the temples in Tears of the Kingdom have different architectural styles and functions but still feel like they all relate to the same plot), and this environment, combined with the castle, does that perfectly. Can't wait to see the next devlog! ^-^
The use of the villages layout to resemble Kakariko is more clever than you'd think. Having it similar enough so that players can make the connection but different in that it's destroyed and of course, in a different game entirely, can effect a player enough to have this place become significant but also, *personal* because it resembles something special to them that's been wrecked.
An art style I love executed well, and this is quite well done The aesthetics are nostalgic yet so stunning and atmosphere feels eerie but beautiful. I’ll start watching the other devlogs to see what I missed. Other than that, keep up the great work!
Your devlogs are greatly inspiring to me! Love it! If you want the rain particles to be more cost-effective, you could have the particle system follow the player (or camera) around, with the rain particles set to world. This means that you can greatly reduce the area the particles need to cover and therefore the particle count.
If the change from default to bright happened more quickly (hold it), followed by a swift fade, with the lightning lighting up the entire area, it might look a little better. Similar to how it would in real life, the lighting changes drastically. Although I'm not sure if it would affect the N64 style or the game's visibility. Anyway, whenever you upload a new devlog, it just makes me happy. Watching these videos and hearing your thought process is such a treat!
Thank you so much for making these videos, and for that matter, this game. You are very inspiring to me and every time you post a video I get a burst of creativity and motivation to work on my own game. I can't wait to play this!
loving the stuff big man, been watching for a while, you helped me figure out texture atlases when i was first getting into 3D, i cant wait to see this finished. keep working hard, we're all cheering you on
This is great! I'm excited for your game. I love the format of your video when talking about details and showing us glimpses of how you do things in the editor. It's inspiring
man this is so accurate to how N64 textured things, specifically in Zelda OOT and Majora's Mask. This almost looks like it could be a romhack, but it's quite beautiful.
Lightning in a heavy storm really sets a mood. When you look up into the dense cloud cover and see a series of light flashes and several seconds later you finally hear the thunderclap crashing all around you. Don't think I've ever played a game that really captured that feeling. 🌩
Been following this for a while and im so glad to see another devlog! this is so fascinating to me! I been wanting to be apart of an N64 style game one day doing sound and music, so im sort of living vicariously through you and this project. Love that you are so open in sharing this too because i've actually learned a thing or two from you (in blender, im newish to it now doing visual stuff for my music). This so far is one of my favorite anticipated game projects; cant wait to see the next one homie!
Absolutely love this series, thank you for all of your efforts! During the lightning strikes, I'm wondering if the brightness change in materials should happen a bit more quickly. It might help make them *pop* more.
I'm a VFX artist and the first port of call for optimizing your particle system is to always use GPU emitters if you do no need any CPU dependant features. If you are emitting 500+ particles always use GPU particles. The next step is to reduce the amount of particles being emitted. For rain there are several techniques to do this but the most obvious is to have your falling rain particle system follow the camera - it doesn't need to attach, just follow it's X,Y world position, then position the emitter at an appropriate height. That way you can shorten the range of the emitter to like 10-20 meters. Alternatively, you can place several particle systems in the traversable areas of your map and by setting culling distances using Effect Types, systems too far from the camera will go to sleep and wake up when you get close. The most optimal is the camera following technique. Setting up a robust blueprint will let you do many types of effects not just rain, like pollen, dust or falling leaves. Older games did use some particles but often used scrolling rain textures mapped to concentric cylinders. Each having a higher tiling amount or smokey texture to simulate dense distant rain. You can offset the overdraw cost by having very simple materials. The last option which is considerably more complex but extremely cheap compared to particles is to use a static mesh with a world position offset based animation. This is an excellent option but lacks the dynamic behaviour of particles. If you want to know more about this technique check out Simon Schreibt's website, particularly the Cool Stuff with Textures post he did that explains how this works with downloadable examples. If you need rain occlusion - preventing rain from clipping through overhangs and interiors, that deserves a thread on its own. I advise to never use particle collisions to achieve this, it is very expensive, most games do not do this and is a surefire way of getting yelled at by your technical director. For the ripples on the water, the cheapest is to use a tiling material. The material consists of a mask containing a tiling texture of hemispherical heightmaps, a sine wave and time is used to phase the visibility of the ripples. If you pack 2-3 variations of the tiling texture into one texture and composite them together you can break up the tiling appearance pretty easily. Add some noise too to break up the circles.
Amazing work, theming and atmosphere are so immersive. I wish to make something on this level of pure mood and atmosphere as this, keep up the good work.
You give me inspiration to work on my own game, I think it’s important to surround yourself with inspiration like this. I finally subbed but been watching for awhile!
Please keep going im excited to see how this turns out, your N64 style has been a huge inspiration for me when i model characters in blender for a game me and my brother are making.
lovely work... everything is extremely on-point, even smaller details like the houses using different roof textures/wall textures to differentiate them all. cannot wait to explore this world!!
These devlogs are so cool, love them a lot and i enjoy having them in my feed every now and then Really wish i had an source of income so i could support this project because it really deserves it ^^
Loved this, exactly that I've been looking to see on RU-vid for a while, I love level design, and I since I am working on a 2D game I cannot get back to my 3D one, hehehe So I should focus on one project at a time! Thank you very much for sharing this with us
I love your content so much man, however long it takes, I can't wait to play it. I'd love to own a dummy cartridge + box and paper manual of the game when it comes out.
2:55 I could recognize the landscape of Kokiri Village anywhere. Honestly a really cool reference, especially with how different the town came out in the end, its nearly unrecognizable.
this is a really great video the game is moving along with new environments and gameplay features (in the last video) its really awesome to see the game developing and taking shape :)
Looking good.. I recommend making the lightning / thunder more realistic so it doesn't become annoying; having the frequency and distance seem more randomized.. so the thunder becomes more delayed (and muffled) as the lightning gets farther from the player. The most distant thunder rumbles could follow slight light flashes with no visible lightning in the sky. You could be walking around with occasional flashes, followed by low, distant rumbles and then unexpectedly get one real close, where you hear the full volume/frequency of the sound effect that is immediately in sync with the lightning. Something to help startle the player a bit. It would add a feeling of uncertainty to the exploration because, just like in real life, you never know exactly when (or where) the next thunderclap is going to happen. Also, I think it would look better to have the lightning be a more static shape with little to no movement. Probably have to fade it faster to acheive the right effect. Good luck and keep at it!
