Hope you’re coping ok with these impossible temperatures. Here’s a recap of what we’ve been up since April:
Tugboat concept art by AmirDraws
We found the perfect water shader, then our server died (more on that later).
We finally figured out about replace and overlay shadowmask lightmapping. Let there be baked light.
3D models and templates from our team #
Khaleer’s stylized plant pack
30 FBX and godot .tscn files.
- 7 Tree Models
- 4 Bushes
- 2 Fern clusters
- 8 Grass patches
- 8 Ivy variations
- 4 types of flowers
More info: ++https://niwl-games.itch.io/plants++
Freeman’s sky shader + FPS starter kit #
Learn more about templates starter kit, and download the sky shader from here: ++https://niwl.games/assets/godot_starter_assets/++
Here’s a little demo of how it looks if connected to day and night cycle with a simple script attached to the directional light:
All this work is possible thanks to the support of you patreon supporters.
Which brings us to our next point:
Thank you!
Our first server turned off and refused to ever boot again. SSD unreadable by any method I knew of. Thankfully we had a backup from a week before, and a few team members had the latest work synced locally from the repository.
But that still left us without a physical machine that would run as the server. The previous server was a used laptop found on ebay for 80$. It served us well for 4 years and we got one of these tiny ARM servers as the replacement. More energy efficient and faster to iterate for our team.
In terms of costs, we find that it costs less to buy this than most hosting providers would charge us for a year. We’re trying to be lean and sustainable from the start so we don’t rely on (and become the product of) Microsoft’s Github, or be limited by free tiers.We have 100 issues on The shipyard, but also opened repository for future games, such as The Lighthouse (temp title), a game that Freeman is working on). Also a multiplayer card game, and internal art pipeline tools for blender and godot. Overall, we have more ideas to share with the world than free tiers allowed. Until next time, yardies!
