Welcome to Noshrac. A harsh desert world where humankind is at the brink of extinction. You are a Son of Nor, a mage with telekinetic powers and the ability to bend the elements to your will, trained to defend the remaining humans from the onslaught of the Sarahul Empire and the perils of the desert. Solve puzzles using your telekinetic powers, venture through long forgotten temples, terraform the desert and fight to the death alongside your friends in this co-op fantasy action adventure.

Post news Report RSS Son of Nor Video Dev Diary #28 - Surprise Eggs

The Easter Bunny paid us a visit. Lots of surprises. New shaders, new animations, and something very cool happening with telekinesis. We're also preparing for a serious Kickstarter campaign.

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For all of you who celebrate this Sunday in any way, shape or form: HAPPY EASTER friends in all parts of the world! We have a looong list of presents of new cool stuff and some surprises for ourselves.

  • We put together a scenery to make some nicer screenshots.
  • Julian coded a new shader that takes 5 textures (actually 6): 1 diffuse, 2 normal, 2 ambient occlusion, and one for highlights included in one of the AO maps.
  • The new shader was requested by Ruben who created new rocks that looks so much better again than what we had.
  • Ruben did an animation for absorbing magical elements such as fire or wind - doesn't look right yet.
  • Ruben did an animation for running sideways.
  • Aaron did an animation for the fire burst spell - we're quite happy with this one, only minor tweaking needed.
  • Daniel created new sand particle textures for when rocks hit the sand.
  • Julian implemented the new dust cloud effect with Daniel's texture.
  • There's something special going on with canyon walls. You can point your telekinesis at huge rocks. But you're not powerful enough to lift them in any way. Instead, ...
  • LOOK what the Easter Bunny brought us! THANKS BERND! And HAPPY EASTER everybody.

Take care and watch out for April Fool's jokes tomorrow!


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BioDestroyer
BioDestroyer - - 2,857 comments

The game is looking great!

About the absorbing animation of the fire, I think the fire should be "sucked" by the player. I don't know about the hands, we can't see them very well from that point of view.

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ChrisPolus Author
ChrisPolus - - 88 comments

yep, you're right. this is what we noticed too. we leave our animators quite some freedom to come up with their own things and style. and then we're learning what works and what doesn't. so we just noticed, too, that cool movements IN FRONT of the characters are not so cool as nobody can see what happens. and it should be more an absorbing or pulling motion than waving. spot on BioDestroyer

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Nixtwiz
Nixtwiz - - 195 comments

Looks awesome! Love Unity. So much potential. Never thought this kind of game was possible. I have to agree though that sucking in the fire would be a little cooler. Other than that its looking great! :)

By the way why are you using dual normal maps and dual AO maps?
I don't use normal maps or AO maps, currently just do 2d mobile development so I don't know what that would be used for.

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ChrisPolus Author
ChrisPolus - - 88 comments

eh, this comment is probably more for Julian to reply to ;) he'll be back Tuesday from his short Easter holidays.

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umauj Creator
umauj - - 6 comments

@Nixtwiz
We are using one tileable AO and normal map to get high frequency details on the stone. So even if you stand very close by you can still see quite some detail. The "other" AO and normal maps are just the usual onces. Not tilable but capturing all the major features of the object.

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Drakenreiter
Drakenreiter - - 29 comments

The improvements are subtle, but the game looks even cooler now. Now for that animation... did you guys play or at least see how the protagonist from the new Bioshock Infinite does those idle animations with his hand depending on the Vigor/Power you have selected? Let's say it's fire, the flesh from the hand starts burning in a way and the hand becomes half fire. Now, you don't do it exactly like that, but incorporate that idea into a sort of fist animation (I really have no idea how to better say this). The character basically keeps his arm in a tense way, with his fist closed (fingers towards him) and when you decide to release that fire, he opens his fist and points his palms forward releasing it. It's the best and only idea I have and I think it would look simple, but cool. I just hope I made myself understood

Cheers!

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