u/groato

Based on Evans Bohl's amazing toon outline shader video, I made a color edge detect shader. As you can see from the images, it detects changes in color from one pixel to the next and gives the game a cartoony look. In the first example image the shader is ONLY on the building and not the little robot. (the robot is sporting a cel-shader and an edge detect shader).

Blueprint link for material function to detect color edges. The graph doesn't have green differentiation but you can add it if you wish, I found leaving one or two colors out gives my game a better look, but it depends a lot on what types of textures you use and how you have your parameters set up. If you wish to use it, follow Evans Bohl's tutorial on the toon outline and just replace the material function for depth detect with my color edge detection. If you are AT all into post process shaders, Evans' videos are a total gold mine and should be viewed by everyone, because they have so much important information.

I run it alongside two different other shaders (said outline shader with a few mods) and a cel-shader) and you can see the complete results in the game pics I posted. I use shaders only on some objects and nothing uses all three shaders. Mainly because cel-shader naturally destroys any effects the color edge detect shader has. I've got stencils that I apply to objects that the shaders read and only work on those with certain stencils - for ex. stencil 2 applies cel-shader and outline shader detect, stencil 1 only color edge detect shader etc.

As you can see from the last two images that displays the whole game, the effects at long range are quite subtle (the color edge detect shader is used on the buildings mostly) - but they give a distinct "feel" to the look even at a very long range (camera spring arm length is 2000 units in the "close up" and 100000 units in the zoom out). Or at least I think so :D

(Here's a link to my game Botlings the images are from: Steam )

If you have any questions or comments, super happy to explain further! And also eager to know what you all think of the look?

Edit: And also very keen to know if anyone has a similar look with a different approach as using multiple post process shaders is always not ideal from a GPU utilization perspective.

DEMO OUT NOW NOW!

We've (by we, I mean I, because I'm doing this pretty much solo) just released our demo and hoping to get as many people to break it as possible. Here's a link: Steam

Wishlists are also much appreciated, but hoping people would play the demo and tell how they feel! Honestly too, no sugar coating please.

Botlings - from swarm to buildings

Build and automate a factory using small robots that can only move forward. Route them through turners and splitters, make do research for you and have them mine and refine resources - and also have them carry all that stuff! But watch out, the more your factory develops, the more independence the little Botlings get and might just rebel...

But what is it, like really?

I think the demo plays more like a base building game with RTS elements rather than a pure factory automation game. There are no conveyor belts for starters, and while the Botlings might seem like conveyor belts -replacements, they are much more as they also create the buildings and do all the work.

You can also enter a first person view and check the world through a botling's eyes. Combined with the fact that there are catapults that throw the botlings around, it's quite fun to tour the base with one.

Demo is soft locked to a fairly short tech tree, but you can still get the base game play experience and produce even more botlings. There isn't much iron on the map and you can't build bridges, so you can't build 1000s of botlings in it. 100s though, yes.

Future plans

My current timetable is to release on Early Access this summer, but let's see where we're at when we get there. Base game is darn fun already, but I'm still a few weeks from getting the Botling awakening logic fine tuned to a level where players will enjoy it (and not just get frustrated).

I'm also working on additional models for the environment because it's quite bare at the moment. But they are gonna be ludicrously awesome and spacey!

The base game has multitier building already, but it's a bit finicky and not user-friendly so I left it out of the demo. It is quite fun though (at least now since I toggled botling death off for when they fall from heights).

Some Links

Botling jumping around on Youtube

Discord - join us to keep up to date!