Since the last post, finalizations on character writing while implementing more Unreal engine specific features that I had more trouble doing in Unity. The general visual appearance of the pixel art with light-effected textures is an attempt to create a 2.5D look similar to triangle strategy, without having the same voxel type appearance it has for its environments and textures.

Moving Ships

The clip above shows the 2D animated ships mixed with the water that receives shadow and reflections from Unreals basic lighting system. In the previous Unity Incarnation, all water and environments were Pixel art with transparency which made dynamic use difficult. In addition, the Rain is a simple niagara system with windforce that makes the rain movement seem less 2D.

Storms

The above clip shows a pixel storm that was relatively simple to create using Unreal’s niagara system. Experimenting with the tech has opened up more opportunity with things I can explore narratively which as been nice. A lot of potential gameplay mechanics as well as story has previously been less possible due to having to purpose everything in pixel art or hand-drawn stuff which massively increases the scope of the work.

Lighting and Glow Effects

Switching from using unlit sprites to lit was originally for the purpose of applying shadow so I didn’t have to create an extra pixel art shadow texture for everything. After getting it to work it made sense to create glow effects as an extra way to cast shadows and make better visuals. The above clip shows a unit with a enchant-buffed weapon, and activating spirit to create another outline glow effect. The room light is dimmed on activation to accent the effect.

Weapon Icons

Other work has just been adding other pixel art assets into the UI, and making sure the game always renders the UI at a specific pixel ratio, regardless of the resolution of the window. In general though, moving from 1×1 pixel art to 2×2 pixel art has been way better for dealing with weird pixel rendering.