Sorry, I'm still at my day job right now and can't yet compile the mac version. I'll also try out the webGL build before I give it an upload. Need to see if it can even run on browsers.
Here's an example shader for the CHAOS element.
https://gyazo.com/c6fb23222096585191125b3475bb8da7
Feel free to ask me anything about shaders except how to write in HLSL! Lol. I understand the math and the process, I just cannot do the syntax.
Wow that sounds amazing! I'm a Maths guy (went to school for it, use it for my programming job) so I would be very interested in learning about this.
I have been curious about WebGL, John Carmack's contributions, linear algebra involved in some of the 3D engine stuff (currently working on some of the fish lens problems that come with those DOOM-style POV games)
Is there anything you are interested in learning in, improving in, advancing in related to games/game dev?
(wondering if we can help each other? 🤔)
WebGL: can't help you there, I'm learning that one as I go and am prepping some stuff for a big update.
3D engine math: being able to utilize different normal vectors can allow you to do really cool stuff. tangential vectors, I believe, need to be manually calculated and there isn't a nice little code block to use in this case, so HLSL must be utilized or you can just capture the normal and utilize a perpendicular. one of my FAVORITE shaders I've ever made used a sphere calculated around a single point to control either saturation within sphere (inside = colorful, outside = desaturated) or alpha/opacity (inside = transparent, outside = opaque). I used the backface of the mesh to then give it a big emission on the inside. Looks like a hole was punched by a laser cannon.
John Carmack stuff: I know of the fast inverse square root he used, though tiny efficiencies like that are much smaller fish with the technology we're using now, nowadays we try to optimize on larger sets of components/features and reduce the scale and complexity of larger sets of calculations.
What I want to learn: I'm very functionally minded and I have been told (in nicer words) that my UI is ugly/unprofessional and that my game doesn't really aesthetically pop or stand out in terms of visuals. I kinda have a checkmark system in my head (i.e. does it work? then great!) and there's little space for thoughts such as: it may work, and may run fast, but it doesn't look *pretty* or *cool*. I want to learn how to make things look cool, really.
Thank you for all the fleshed out responses. And hitting all my questions haha.
Narrowing down on the UI stuff, this is actually something I do for a living hehe (designer, UIs for webapps, etc) I can definitely echo the need for such things because a good design can actually improve your engagements with the thing itself, through affordances and the like. It's really interesting.
The shader stuff actually went a little over my head 😅 Can't really visualize it right now, and perhaps that's the problem. 🤔
Hmm, is there some help you are looking for wrt UIs and stuff? I'd be happy to offer constructive feedback / ideas if you're open to it. :)
