After playing a few railshooters again i can say at least the time crisis series use some sort of glowing shadows.
Sadly shadows do not work very well if the cursor is to small, not even with colored ones.
I did a first try how you can see better the crosshair while playing (not taking collor blindness into account for the test). Not happy with it at the moment but it totally make sence to use more colors or glow to see the crosshair better if it is such a small one like a dot.
This what i end up after testing a lot of different things, the one in the images works very well. At least to see where the crosshair is.
And after hours of having fun again i noticed two more things.
I NEED a fast pace arcade mode, and as sombody else mentiont seems like the models are rally a little to small to get this feel arcade feeling.
Edit:
This is for example a crosshair from time crisis. I think this is a akmost perfect crosshair and i will do something similar for the normal crosshairs mabye also for the small dots.
At the moment i dont know if UE can have emissive materials for normal UI textures. If not i need to figure out how to do this.
hmm a glow effect is not the same as emissive. Emissive could be āself emissiveā (lit but not shining light on anything else), āemissiveā as in shining light on the environment. UI does not shine on anything. You can make a simple glow post processing effect, like neon.
Actually, you could make use of something actually emissive in 3D like a flashlight pointing towards where your cursor aims at. Just a thought.
After tesing quiet a few options i still could not figure out how to use a post process for glowing on a cursor widget.
I endet up for now with a colored vector based crosshair. Also was looking for the color blindeness for this, hopfully this will work. I am not sure if i understand this the right way but using red and yellow should not be a big problem.
A short video for the test.
This are the vector graphic is created. They look a little strange as file, but it works in game pretty well as i noticed after testing. To me it seems like you can always see where the crosshair is.
As long as there is a good contrast (not brown to orange) it is usually just fine. Crosshairs look OK they donāt have to be big as long as you get the contrast right. Maybe a white shadow instead of the red shadow since the left cursor center is read already. again increases the contrast. white > red > yellow > black is a pretty strong contrast
Thank you @Roy_Wierer.Seda145 this is really helpfull.
I was also testing animations on crosshairs. I can switch the colors for the small animated part (was just a test at the moment). Does this look like what you mean with white contrast (i noticed a static white bg looked more like a bug or color error)?
The cursor is very visible good. I donāt think the color shifting animation on the center really adds anything, itās actually just fine the way it is.
If you want to add animations to it just to make it more visible or satisfying there are more clean looking ways which also prioritize accessibility and functionality. In games and operating systems I have found the following cursor types:
(OS) Fast cursor movement makes the cursor grow.
(OS) Initial cursor movement makes the cursor āblinkā.
(Game) Hovering changes the cursor type by interaction.
(Game) Shooting changes the cursor shape or color temporarily.
(Game) Hits or misses change the cursor (think hit marks).
Thereās also color blindness modes built into the engine you might want to add those to your main menu settings.
Someone with Protanopia should join the chat though XD about up to 10% of guys.
On the simulator it looks more like a desaturated image but I believe that actually the reds , orange, browns would mix into a grey blur of the same color:
I did not know UE already have this as an option, thank you.
I was thinking about how a postprocess needs to look like and give an option to select this. Even better if it is already there. I will test this and if this works i can much more easy build the colors of all around this.
It is almost funny. It doesnt matter what you think you know ā¦ always more to learn.
Itās not a magic fix if the palette doesnāt work, red will be red but itās good to have. Iām also glad that you are willing to deep dive into the accessibility improvements, the big companies can learn from that. You might also want to know then that there are built-in options for other things like text and subtitle scaling, subtitle background etc., it only requires a UI to control these.
I also tested the game with switching the modes during gamplay manually to see how it looks like.
Next thing i will have to look at is how to use color palettes for this mode the right way. Not sure if this could be done with a post process or if a complete new set of all images would be needet to create. Need to test this first based on the other information for this out of your given links.
After testing more with this color blindness it seems like one of the save colors to use is yellow, red mostly looks like black. So i will have a deeper look and try to take this into account while finishing the textures for the models.
And what i noticed also, if the blue enemies stand in dark spaces the look almost black, will add some sort of yellow emissive i guess.
I moved on for now and try to find a performant way for storing statistics into a player profile.
So something boring what can drive you crazy sometimes again
Seems like this works good without having any impact to the performance of the game. Maybe this will help somone or knows a better way?
As i have thousands of lines of code writen, it is always good to have something to visualize what you do. I noticed often if i do not do this i spend hours to understand what i have done in all this lines.
I think i have to give the same disclaimer as you ā¦ i donāt really play many rail shooter. But it was fun to play the game. I have some feedback for you aswell:
Mouse movement feels weird. I think it has some sort of smoothing applied. I would expect a more direct control in this kind of game. So maybe add an option to disable that?
Interface and the game itself is really self-explanatory and you can jump right into it. Also the changing cursor when you are out of ammo is really nice
It could maybe be cool to also show the weapon not only when reloading but also when shooting. Just an idea maybe is not so great for readability but i think it would improve the immersion. Maybe just on the right or left side so it is not blocking anything.
The throwing blades are a bit hard to see when they come directly at you ā¦ maybe a vfx could help there
The time before the character starts walking feels a bit too short i feel like. The character moves directly as the last enemy dies. A slomo effect could also be neat for the last kill if it is not overused
Great variety of environments. I think fans of rail shooter are gonna love this game
With them, You can easily share/collaborate, embed media in a arbitrary fashion, publish read-only view, animate, and theyāre GDC presentation ready. LOL. Example.
I love Google Slides so much, Iām using it for HeadlessStudios.com Frontpage. haha.
Nice Flow-Chart Design Document. What app are You using?
Thank you @Zssork for testing the demo and giving feedback. And for pointing out this things.
The movement speed of the mouse as option is on my to do list.
Hmmm showing the weapon ā¦ yeah as an option to select sure a good thing. I could need this also later if i really decide to do a VR version.
Better visibility of the blades is also a good point. I thought you can see this good enough. But i guess it is because i know what will happen at wich time.
The fast turning was meant for some sort of timeruns (Timer is not displayed atm.). If you kill fast you move fast. But i guess turning a little slower would not hurt, because it is for everybody the same.
Tried Prezi and Visio in the Past. However, to be very honest, I find those mindmap tools too rigid. I treat Design Docs as āLivingā Documents with intention to update/modify constantly as needed. They are more so Visual Aid for myself to work out: ideas, flow charting, design, art design. The only way the content solidifies is after implementation.
In regards to throwing blades, I concur that they are a bit hard to see when they come directly at you, but I just think the scale needs to be larger/thicker to solve.
Ah alright :). I tried a few myself also still have YEd on the PC but I hate starting it up just not to be able to drag things where I want them to or not knowing a ton of shortkeys to get basic things done. So far I didnāt have that issue with XMind a lot. Tried Visio long ago too. Anyhow XMind is not only mindmaps it does have some ok ish scheme types
I figured out very early that it would be an better idea to use a hardware cursor, so i used this. But thank you for the hint.
I guess it is more like the settings i use. I ran out of time and only hade 2 days left to finish the demo, this is why i use at the moment some from the marketplace.
There is some settings for controls into this, but i did not notice myself this is a problem this is why it is still the way from the start.
At the moment i have so much to do with all this changes and what is missing i just cant decide what to do first
good. I donāt think the color shifting animation on the center really adds anything, itās actually just fine the way it is.
