Paul Muren

software engineer, hobbyist game dev, takes smash bros too seriously.

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

I've been posting updates on bluesky lately

probably won't keep this page up-to-date, so check out https://t.co/395SQzcXCo if you want to follow along

#Hexagon #Grid #Terrain #Bestagon #Godot #Blender #ProcGen #Wargaming #IndieDev #GameDev

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

@JamesSurowiecki To the 90 mph people:

Yes, (30+90)/2 = 60

But this assumes that you are traveling 30 mph for an hour, then 90 mph for an hour

The issue is you will run out of road (the 30 remaining miles) long before you complete your hour at 90 mph

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

To implement click-to-move, I figured I would need to procedurally define a collision shape for my terrain

Turns out #Godot already has built-in methods for converting meshes into collision shapes 🙌🔥

#indie #gamedev #procgen #hexgrid #terrain

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

@ehgoodenough eventually . . . a monster-laden wilderness where incredible treasures wait to be claimed by those with the skill and cunning to reach them

but for now it's almost nothing 😄

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

Replaced my placeholder characters with something more humanoid (thanks https://t.co/KUWDT78T4y for making this asset free)

Experimenting with character movement features, starting with these space indicators in the terrain shader 🎨

#gamedev #godot #indiedev #lowpoly #rpg #psx

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

One trap I fall into is incessantly tweaking individual colors in-engine (or in code 😱)
I'm always happier when I take a screenshot and play with colors in an editor until I have a real target to work toward

#gamedev #godot #hexgrid #terrain #rpg #landscape

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

Messing with the grass shader and wanted to share this experiment to show that even the sloped tiles are regular hexagons (from the top down)

Still haven't settled on the final look, but I don't plan to keep the stark boundaries between hexes

#hexagon #terrain #godot #gamedev

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

Experimenting with sheer cliffs

I tend to create examples manually in #Blender before I try generating geometry

(you can see where I prototyped the 19-vert hexes in the bottom-right)

The cliffs look cool and make me me want to overhaul things again 🤪

#gamedev #procgen #hex

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

Now the terrain can approximate any heuristic function. Just for laughs, here it is trying to keep up with high amplitude Perlin Noise 🏔️ (followed by a more serious example)

Did a lot of refactoring to make this step feasible 🔧

#gamedev #Godot #procgen #hexagon

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

I roughed in some natural-looking colors so it's a little more obvious what I'm up to

Planning to embellish the landscape with a combination of texturing and geometry (GPU) instancing

#gamedev #procgen #indie #hexagon #GODOT

(this is still like max mountainousness ⛰️)

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

Milestone for the glow-up

I added 4x the geometry to keep vertex data from bleeding along edges

Now I can cleanly differentiate between flat areas, slopes, crests, and the feet of hills in the shader! 😈🎨

(btw, typical terrain will be less mountainous)

#gamedev #GODOT #hex

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

Hex terrain update:
- now using proper wave function collapse to generate geometry (no heuristic yet)
- only using traversable tiles now (height 0 or height 1)
- vertices know if they are at the tops or bottoms of slopes

next: glow-up

#indiegame #Godot #procgen #bestagon

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

I'm making this hex terrain generator for fun. My main goal is to handle elevation changes gracefully. While I'm proud of this result, I'm considering rebuilding the core algorithm with wave-function collapse so I can play with different constraints.

#gamedev #indiedev

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

@Acerola_t and now, the one nobody has been waiting for: volumetric sand.
Downgraded to PS1 graphics so I can go wild in the fragments, and I kinda like it here.

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

⬆️✨

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

@Acerola_t making a rare twitter appearance to say thanks for inspiring me to try out shell texturing. It's the first time I've used shaders for anything cool and some of the most fun I've had programming. 🙏

The sauce here is that each cell can render its neighbors' grass, too.

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

@AbateSmash Was that you who just dismantled me with Ness for 20 mins? Thanks for the lesson :))))

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

@AggroCrabGames Shine out of shield EZ Clap

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

Entered a #Melee tournament for the first time in a long time today. Placed 9th among 52 entrants and had a blast. Playing from home doesn't suck, mostly thanks to @Fizzi36 (who has a patreon). Thanks to @AllChatEsports for roping me into their first online tournament. #SaveSmash

[Paul Muren @blandprix]

@forrest_pruitt Good stuff, Forrest! You deserve it!