Kip

Added low-light preference per-pixel dynamic sampling!
A feature to reduce noise in low-light areas of the render by dynamically increasing the number of samples based on how dark the pixel is.
Currently an experimental feature, but works quite well! Doesn't kick into effect until 2 samples later, so the viewport is still plenty responsive

After install WSL on my PC again, I managed to fix gcc compilation problems (restricting -static flags to Windows MinGW only), and now Linux builds should work now! MacOS builds are also semi-tested, and Linux builds have been tested to work on WSL Ubuntu. Pretty cool that WSL now has graphical app and OpenGL support

After wrestling with github actions and c++ compiler hell (what do you mean different architecture lead to different syntax requirements???),
Experimental builds for MacOS (Apple Silicon) and Linux are now available!

Apparantly switching to VS last minute is a bad decision lol
caused all sorts of memory access hell
Switched back to MinGW (properly this time), everything now (hopefully) works!
Resubmit for reverify (oh I shouldve probably logged before reverify right)

Finished writing help content, github repo is now up! Ready for release.
Going to update my website, then ready for ship!

oh my god writing the preset scenes take so long :)))))
That was hell.
But now, everything is done! Except the help window, everything is getting ready to be shipped!
omgggg

me want stickers! Also CLion wakatime nuked 2 hours again (again) (again) (again)
Working on preset scene system: A collection of procedurally generated demo scenes that the user can load, they'll showcase most of what the engine can do.

Texture creation modal is done!
Image texture modal is done via ImFileDialog :3

next step is maybe a scene system (and help content) then everything is done!!!!!!!

Texture window is done, along with all texture properties. This was quick.
Next step is the texture creation modal, the image texture one will be hard :<
anywaysss

Material creation dialog is also done,
so everything material related is done.
next step is doing the same for textures,
then preset scenes,
finishing the help window,
then it's ready for ship!

materials!
Diffuse and metallic material properties are done,
material slot drag and drop is done,
added texture slots with a shortcut to create a new color texture

Objects can now be added! Add dialog is complete, so now everything object-related is done.
Gonna do the same for materials, and then textures. Image textures will be hell though.

Working on the create object dialog! When this is finished, all object related things should be finished. The support methods should transfer smoothly to materials and textures as well.

Finally got cpp includes fixed.
Compound (object list) properties is implemented, and object slots are implemented too.

wrestling with cpp's insane include system..
everything is broken :)

fuck; CLion wakatime is broken again. Oh my god.
Implemeneted quad, disk and cube properties!
All mesh properties is now complete, still has list and translators needed to be done.

once again, wakatime bullshit removed like 2 hours of time for no reason at all '<'
but anyways, object properties now work! Sphere is implemented, but this properties system was hell to implement. A lot of refactoring was needed to make this work in realtime. But after wrapping it in some UI things look are looking pretty good

Geometry panel is half done, scene objects can be removed/added, drag and drop support is here, and work has begun for modifying geometry at runtime. This will be hell to do, since a lot of geometry is generated using a system not really suited for runtime modification, esp. most need to regenerate low-level data based on the changing high-level parameters.

Scene view is done.
There's some very nasty background stuff going on with render workers (I hate multithreaded code omfg)
But it now kinda works???! The code is not pretty nor optimal but it's good for the use case (I hope)
anyways scene system is done so geometry coming up next

Started work on scene hierarchy!
A bit different from my original design, but this would require minimal edits to the hittable system I currently have.

finished camera and rendering settings. Some design work has started on scene management.
Too bad wakatime broke again and nuked today's time :)

Started working on windows and configuration panels. Integration should not be too hard. The hard part would be the scene system.

Updated imgui theming with Inter as the font
Apparantly clion decided to report my project as two repos now uh
hope it doesn't break the time tracking again

Added a system to make the rendering process perceptually faster and more responsive!
The render workers will randomly decline rendering some pixels to speed up the image submit process, so a render will be presented to the user quicker. Then after a few cycles, the workers will prefer rendering pixels that has been neglected (with low sample counts) so the final image will have roughly the same amount of samples.

integrated with opengl + imgui, now the viewport automatically refreshes the viewport based on render
Next step: maybe do some rendering optimizations (checkerboard render?), create the scene system (this will be hell)

Multithreaded rendering is done!
C++ ownership/references/pointer is hell lol 0-0
but now multithreading works! Here I have 10 render workers running each on there own thread, with 1 sample per worker. The result is then merged together on the fly.
Still a bit slow, maybe checkerboard rendering in the future? But mixing algorithm would be pretty hellish

Mostly finished the multithreaded rendering!
Next step is to integrate opengl to display the render!

Started work on UI
decided to use dear imgui via glfw(opengl3~4ish)
Now I gotta research how to use opengl now arghh '-'
=]

Added volumetrics!
Rendering side features are mostly complete now, next step is to create an interactive realtime scene system / UI

Added transformation modifiers:
translation (move) modifier
rotation (x,y,z axis rotation) modifiers

So now the cubes in the cornell box has fallen over lol

uhhh it's the funny box!!!

Added emissives support! Now (diffuse) lights can be added!
(1000 samples, texture controlled emission)

Added quad + better" disk primitives. Spent way too long wrangling with cpp's insane inheritance system oh my god cpp why are you like this

uhhhh procedural marble texture via perlin noise manipulation
:>

added image texture support! via stb_image library for image read

uhhh work on procedural textures!

Implemented bounding volume hierarchy, which uses AABBs to do an initial ray intersection test before doing the expensive shape intersection checks. This brings some dramatic speed increases! sped up by 87% with 50 samples!

Also added space-time rendering (fancy way of saying motion blur) but yeah animation is technically possible now lol

• some other small refactoring (aka cpp is hell)

Copied the scene from ray tracing in a weekend to debug any render artifacts. Everything seems right!

Added more materials!
- refractive
- reflective
- debug normal thingy (prototype of a basic custom shader system, lambert with normal as albedo)
More camera controls!
- FOV
- Pose control
- Depth of Field
Started work on more primitive meshes too
- Y-aligned circular disk (arbitrary height and radius)

Gotta work on getting this thing multithreaded, and make a gui (im thinking sdl+dear imgui? not sure yet) for it some time.
Doing barebones graphics stuff is super fun though.
Here's a render showcasing everything new (DOF made everything a bit blurry)
150 samples, 800x450, max 24 bounces

added lighting model system!
Materials aka shaders can now be assigned to objects,
currently true lambert and true reflective(Metallic) materials are added!

Basic diffusion rendering is here! Reflected environment lighting
Currently no any materials yet ("Shaders) but diffuse lighting looks okayish?
raytracing is remarkably simple to do though

Doing this project mostly to teach myself c++ (hell), and some computer graphics stuff on the way! Will probably move on to opengl after this project is done :3

Currently done: Fake sky shader, normal shading!

I'm proud to announce that ACEDIA 1.2 is now released!
Please check out the release trailer.

If you can, please download and try out the game! (click no thanks when asked to pay, Windows and Linux builds are provided) alternatively, please watch the trailer, there's also someone's playthrough of Version 1 in the comments of the itch.io page.

Overall, not only is a large new scene <INTERMISSION> added, dialog is added, a lot of newgame+ content and variations are implemented, plus a bunch of bugfixes, performance improvements and added the much requested mouse sensitivity slider.

I am super proud to say that development of ACEDIA version 1.2 is finished!
After some testing, builds and preparing promo material,
ACEDIA V1.2 WILL RELEASE TOMORROW.
Please check out this teaser! (not tracked by hackatime ;-;)

(devlog: finished full dialog)

So much work on the sky system! Please check out the video! (btw 100 hours celebration! :D)
- Animation system done, some sky animations are added
- sky overlay shader thingy done (looks very cool imo! Not the same as the hl2 effect I wanted to do originally, but this looks super cool too!)
- Ambience added!
All that's left is to actually write the dialog ;-;

Made a new song: Lunar (not tracked again haha ;-;)
More refinements with the egg dialog UI
and started work on the sky overlay shader thingy (think hl2)
song will be added to yt when 1.2's released

More work on dialog system!
Got a bit carried away with the placeholder text lol

Started work on modular dialog system. Way overengineered for the egg dialog but whatever :3

undertale brainrot is real

A lot of changes.
- MAIN: Migrated all scenes to use the V2.5 Planar reflection shader. This is a modified version of the shader that's in my smart planar reflector plugin.
- Added sit transition for chair
- Started work on egg dialog UI prototype
- Tweaked Pause UI again (now it's darkened, looks okayish not sure if ill keep it)

Short dev update. Imported the finished chair model to INTERMISSION. Added collision and basic interactions, next step is to finish the transition and egg dialog.
Devlog's here mostly to celebrate the 90h mark haha :3

A loooot of visual tweaks for INTERMISSION. Like the finale chase, both sections are in the same scene, so rendering setttings / fog / camera / compositing / audio has to be carefully tweaks to make the two areas have their own distinctive atmosphere.
Experimented with lightmapping, but raytraced lightmap cant really replicate the stylized environment I wanted, esp. for the house of leaves section.
Btw, the floor is a long planar reflector! Used the addon version of my planar reflecto since the ACEDIA version currently in project is somewhat outdated.

Started work on some props for INTERMISSION egg talk.
Took me way too long and it's only half done XD
Finished the texturing for the desk, still has the chair's texturing left to do :p

Scene transitions done, egg(new game+) is mostly finished(?)
INTERMISSION is now 40% random chance of showing in first run, or in new game+

TODO: egg dialog

Level mesh, doors, lighting and soundscapes are now all added for INTERMISSION. Todo: scene transitions

Looks pretty good, but perhaps can be better

INTERMISSION is now in the ACEDIA project.
Level geometry has been ported. Collision, lighting, doors, reflections still has to be ported!
Man porting from Unity to Godot is kinda annoying

Added mouse and stick look sensitivity settings, which were much requested! ;)
one of the lots of qol features and tweaks thats going to be part of 1.2!
qol things will be considered the unreleased 1.1 version of acedia, and the new content will be technically 1.2. But since work for both parts are ongoing together, so I'm just going to skip 1.1 and release all the new stuff under the 1.2 update.

Another test with the weird som issue where time isnt committed with a devlog??
Here's a view of the megastructure I'm transferring to ACEDIA btw
yes theres something the corridors connected to, that will be in the game alsoooo

Devlog's mostly to reset whatever funky thing was happening with time tracking with the last devlog.
Mostly worked on promotion materials (not tracked ;o;) Commited some of my filming setup and refined some readmes and itchio pages. Finished some EARLY work of extracting stuff from my other unreleased project to prepare it for transferring it to ACEDIA. Tbh I started the preparations a loong time ago, but I was never sure abt whether i should link my projects together. But maybe it would be kinda cool, maybe it can work as some sort of teaser? Yes the previous is a house of leaves reference :3

Spent some time making a trailer for the game. Tbh I shouldve published with this trailer finished so that it can boost traffic, but its too late now :shrug:

Extracted the assets from ACEDIA and turned it into a standalone plugin! Added readmes, tooltips and everything.
This is the first time making a godot plugin so hope everything's working haha

I didn't expect to take this long to make this plugin standalone so didn't make any devlogs haha ;-;

Currently waiting for verification by Godot~!

ACEDIA is published!
All supporting pages are finished, and the github repo is now live!
Spent a lot of time wrestling with Git LFS, but hackatime doesn't track that ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Check it out!
https://kip.gay/acedia

Finished main menu, finale music, and finished build.
Currently working on adding reference to ACEDIA on my personal page and everywhere else
Everything is now prepared except the trailer, and moving the project to github.
This will probably be the last devlog before release!

Finished music production! Unfortunately not tracked since its done on iOS :(

Full soundtrack is published noww
YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLerme6EePpdE4NGK1pCkN5AA0sxJJn0jp&si=B2sjhdxzUvClAwYf
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/kip_music/sets/acedia-original-soundtrack

Also here's one of the songs, [Runner].

Working on music production!
Originally wanted to learn ableton for this project, but if I did that this project is probably gonna get delayed for another month again ;-;
So I'm using garageband instead haha

Since nothing's finished yet, here's the album art I made when I was borrrrrred

Finished the main menu and ending animations,
There's still the intro animation and music left to do.
Probably can release tomorrow or the day after.

Mostly finished the main menu, there's still the intro animation and audio work left to do, but still pretty happy with how fast I got the main UI work done.
Controller navigation is also working.

Didn't have time to explore music production, so I'm working on the extras today.
Finished the pause menu and graphics settings. Now the project's polished enough to be called a proper game!
If I have time, I'll work on the main menu today too.

Prepared project for building in a few days.
Nothing too interesting.

The finale animation is done!
The finale scene is scrapped, it's going together with this scene instead.
Very happy with the camera work in this shot.
There's a lot of juggling between different animation handlers, had to wrangle controls away from the player and put them back multiple times haha
Current testing doesn't show any situations where the animation chain will get decoupled and result in the bag sibling getting stuck in place (i hope not)
All the peeps are moved by hand cause I'm a idiot and did all the animation manually in Godot instead of Blender ;-;

The chase is complete!
Still some sound work needs to be done, but I'll put that off until I made the music for this project.
All that's left is to take control away from the player and show them the finale cutscene (I may make this interactive, not sure yet)

Here's the full(ish) chase!

(Invisible upload requirements requires me to compress the video a lot ;-; I'll probably make a trailer when everything's done)

Architecture for the finale chase is now complete.
All the peeps and level geometry has been placed, all now to do is to finish the animations.
On schedule for a june release (at lease on schedule for now haha ;-;)

There's around 1000 peeps, which has quite a huge performance hit but occlusion culling + a modern pc should be able to handle it ;-;

Basic lighting done in Godot!
Dialed in an environment that I'm really happy with!
Just need to add some detail lights.

Imported the mesh into godot. GI really makes a lot of difference.
Still lots of work to do make it into a complete section!

Finished building the finale chase cityscape mesh!
The camera's going to zoom out from the player into a top-down view of the whole city.
This is probably the MOST expensive scene in the project, with 400 buildings and hundreds of people (not sure yet if people should be placed via Blender or Godot.)
Hopefully occlusion culling will handle most of this, however it will be hell to enable culling for all these meshes.

With the office chase done, the entire chase sequence is now complete.
The player can actually outrun the bag sibling sometimes, so a few peeps has to be artificially moved around to block the player when they get too close. It's annoying, but I can't figure out a better solution than slowing the player down, which itself would be annoying and weird.

Finished the train chase sequence. It's basically the same as the hallway chase so here's how the mirror works instead.
For planar reflections I added a camera that reflects the player camera's pose. The rendered image is mapped onto the reflector's surface using screenspace UVs.
I'm using perspective projection instead of frustum projection, mainly because perspective has optimal pixel density (1:1 to the screen opposed to the inverse square law), and there's no issues with anti-aliasing.

However perspective has one big issue which is near plane culling. If an object is behind the mirror in just the right way, it could obstruct the reflector camera. Since Godot doesn't support custom near plane matrix yet, I made a system where the reflector tries to find the optimal near plane based on its pose.
The system (dynamic near plane) tries to find the closest near plane to the reflection surface where none of the near plane exceeds the surface. However planes outside the reflector or camera frustum boundary is allowed to exceed the plane.
Conviniently, this also creates a quite optimal camera culling system for the reflectors, so it can be immediately paused when out of view. Unfortunately occlusion culling is nontrivial as that's done on the GPU, so I used manually placed activation areas to mimic occlusion culling for now.

The performance isn't perfect, and there's situations where it's impossible to get a perfect near plane, but combined with render layers it's okay for this project.

Finished the chase intro animation. The bag sibling's walk animation is procedurally driven by their velocity, this makes authoring animations way much easier. Some additional tweaks was done to the player controller so that changing the fov and tracking wouldn't freak out the input handler.
Also tweaked the controller support so that there are now haptics for each footstep. Frustratingly, Godot doesn't support dualsense haptics yet, so a dualshock has to be emulated using something like DualsenseY first.

Finished the supporting code for the bag sibling intro animation (also the finale chase intro)
Had to add special FOV and camera tracking controls and transitions for this particular shot. The code's pretty fragile but it gets the job done for this project.

Working on the finale chase scene. You can have three planar reflectors in view simultaneously in this part so the performance hit is pretty substantial (oh yeah gotta make the planar reflection deep dive soon(TM))

Godot's occlusion system is pretty seamless, though. Keeps the drawcalls down at least.

First devlog! gonna post more backlogged stuff later.
Office scene, one of the earliest (and most unoptimized) scenes finished. Really pleased with the ambience audio I did for the hallway.
Reflections are from a custom planar reflection script, I need to document how it worked soon cause its soo janky