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Superlate reply!
If you can't be bothered to read the below - you're forgiven. Here's a
Link to a trailer, and here's a link to a new
IndieDB news post.
Thank you all for your feedback and the super interesting discussion on DD's artstyle & reflections. The lack of reply afterwards is not because I don't value that - in fact, I'm very, very thankful for all your comments (including the negative!) - but rather because I had to think about your suggestions. And I'm still not done thinking and deciding, but I guess I should reply.
So, in no particular order...
Backgrounds - DD now features Skycubes. Woo! The game used a simple background image before, which I deactivated due to problems with the PostFX shaders. But they're back now, in form of a skycube! With the additional advantage that when the camera moves around now, the background now also slightly shifts - a neat effect! At this point, it's just a rather simple gradient, but nothing stops it
in theory from using something else there - the plan is for the user to choose from a variety of options what background he or she wants for their dungeon. The problem
in practice is the lack of time (and money) - there's so much to do! So overly detailed skycubes might not happen too soon. But that's something that can easily be added later. But for the moment, tinted skycubes. DD really uses the red/green/blue-parameters of entities
a lot.
Reflections - I really enjoyed the discussion on this. Thanks to everyone who participated!
Right now, there's two tiles that reflect the environment (to different degrees) - the water tiles (shallow water you can walk through at reduced speed) and ice tiles (which are slippery). So it's definitely not something the game depends on, though - well - if you look through the screenshots I've posted, you can see a rather large part of them features reflecting tiles, it's obvious that I like the reflections as well!
In order to solve the problem with reflecting tiles at different heights, I think I'll go with Superku's solution and try screen space reflections, even though I'm not too happy with the PS3.0 requirement. I realize it's not a huge deal nowadays, but it still bothers me that DD with it's look requires PS3.0-hardware
But I'm sure it's worth it.
Dungeon Defenders - Yeah, that's a pretty project, huh? I also like it's looks. HeelX comment here
I think that the hidef VS lowres approach in ratchet's screenshot is very appealing.
is interesting to me - I'm trying to use a similar reasoning when I said:
My general rule is to make effects fancy, which makes them stand out a bit, and which in general I like
But I'm not going to pretend DD's effects are as fancy as Dungeon Defender's (alright, so that could get potentially confusing with the abbreviation not being clear). I'm probably not going to try and compete with their pretty lighting - DD's super simple solution can result in some surprisingly good looking caverns, I found. I don't think investing more time in that would be a good idea - there's other stuff to do. Thanks still for sharing that!
Alright, I hope I didn't miss anything. Thanks once again for the comments and feedback! It's very much appreciated!
Oh, and before I forget - yeah, The Walking Dead videogame has an amazing story. I really, REALLY liked it. Some very depressing moments in there, though.
