Lost Twins 2 News

Hi gamers! Today, we're diving into the intricacies of sound design, focusing on the audio experience of a box falling from various heights. Crafting the right sounds for this seemingly simple action is crucial for creating an immersive and realistic game environment.

Box plays a crucial role as one of the key objects used by the twins to solve the puzzles and navigate through the levels so its sound was an important factor in the gameplay experience. We wanted distinct and realistic sounds for a box dragging, falling from varying heights, and our sound artist did an amazing job in achieving this. We wanted to achieve realism by accurately representing the impact and material properties of the box and the landing surface, ensuring variety by creating noticeable differences between low and high-height falls, and maintaining consistency so that the sounds seamlessly fit within the game's overall audio environment.

For low-distance drops, we wanted to focus on the initial contact sound, slight rebound, and any secondary movements while for high-distance drops, the focus was on the dramatic impact by dropping the boxes to capture the build-up of velocity and significant impact upon landing. For the dragging sound, we wanted interactions between the box and the ground, capturing the subtle details of friction.

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With meticulous attention to detail and a deep understanding of sound dynamics, our sound artist crafted a rich auditory landscape that perfectly complements every gameplay moment. From the delicate subtleties of a gentle drop to the thunderous impact of a high fall, achieved the perfect balance of realism and emotional impact. The final sounds were integrated into the game, with different audio triggers based on the height from which the box falls. Extensive in-game testing ensured the sounds matched the visual experience and player expectations, and adjustments were made based on feedback, refining the audio to achieve the perfect balance.

We hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the sound design process for our game. We're thrilled with how these sounds turned out and believe they will significantly enhance your gameplay experience. Thank you for following along with our development journey. Your support and feedback are invaluable to us. Stay tuned for more updates and behind-the-scenes looks at our development process.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Best regards,
Playdew Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1752540/Lost_Twins_II/

Hey gamers! Welcome back to our devlog series! Today, we're diving into the creation of a stylized metal texture for a pipe. Creating shaders for game assets involves a meticulous balance between artistic vision and technical constraints.

We aimed to develop a stylized metal texture for a pipe that not only looked visually appealing but also performed well within the Unity engine. Our primary goal was to create a stylized metal texture for a pipe. This involved ensuring that the texture's appearance remained consistent across both Blender and Unity, while also optimizing it for performance within the game.

We faced two primary challenges during this process. First, it was crucial to preserve the visual consistency of the metal texture when transferring it from Blender to Unity. The texture needed to maintain its stylized look across both platforms. Second, we needed an efficient and flexible workflow between Blender and Unity that allowed for adjustments and fine-tuning without excessive back-and-forth. These challenges required us to carefully consider both the artistic and technical aspects of the shader development.

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To achieve a more flexible and unique shader, we decided to create the shader entirely within Blender. This approach allowed for greater control over the initial design and texturing process. After creating the shader, we baked the texture to see how it would appear once imported into Unity.

Initially, everything seemed fine until we decided to make the asset unlit to optimize game performance. This change presented a significant challenge: maintaining the texture's visual fidelity without relying on Unity's real-time lighting.

To address this, we baked the shader in Blender, incorporating both direct and indirect lighting into the texture. This method ensured that the texture retained its detailed lighting information. By doing so, we could then convert the texture into an unlit asset using Unity’s Amplify Shader Editor.

The final result was successful. The unlit asset maintained the desired stylized look of the metal texture while optimizing game performance. This approach not only preserved the visual integrity of the texture but also ensured a smoother workflow between Blender and Unity.

By experimenting with different workflows and leveraging the strengths of both Blender and Unity, we were able to overcome technical challenges and achieve our artistic goals. The lessons learned from this experience will undoubtedly inform and improve our future shader development projects.

Stay tuned for more updates and behind-the-scenes insights into our game development process. Until next time, happy gaming!

Best regards,
Playdew Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1752540/Lost_Twins_II/

Welcome to another devlog! Today we'll be detailing the creative and technical journey of developing a stylized glass pipe for our project. This task came with its own set of unique challenges, pushing the boundaries of typical transparent glass materials and aiming for a more animated, cell-shaded look.

Creating a glass pipe presented several challenges. The first major challenge was to move away from a typical transparent glass material and achieve a stylized and cell-shaded effect. This required more creative shading techniques to create strong shapes and highlights from the light hitting the surface.

To achieve the stylized look, we developed a custom surface unlit shader using the Amplify Shader Editor. This tool allowed us to create the desired effects more efficiently than Unity’s default glass material parameters, significantly improving performance. A key technique, suggested by Xetirano, involved using a dot product and a vector math node for comparison. This approach helped create the shiny glass effect and the strong shapes I aimed for. Another crucial component was the Fresnel effect. By combining it with the imported texture from Blender and adjusting its strength with a float, we were able to add depth and realism to the surface. Fine-tuning the Fresnel strength and texture coordinates allowed for precise control of the effect.



Another challenge was designing a single segment of the pipe that would be repeated throughout the pipeline. Ensuring this repetition did not look monotonous required careful attention to detail and design. The texture work involved baking the effects with transparency and making additional adjustments in Unity. We further enhanced the texture in Photoshop, adding more gradient strokes to achieve the stylized look. These combined efforts resulted in a unique and visually appealing glass pipe that met the project's artistic goals.

Stay tuned for more updates and insights from our development process!

Best regards,
Playdew team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1752540/Lost_Twins_II/

Hey guys! We've got a question for you! 🎮

Would you like to see a co-op mode in our game? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!



Best regards,
Playdew Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1752540/Lost_Twins_II/

Hello, everyone! We are excited to bring you the latest updates on our game development journey. This time, we're diving deep into the creation of dynamic water effects that will elevate your gaming experience.

Our goal is to make the water in our game not just a visual element but a living, interactive part of the environment. Characters will swim, alter water flows, and encounter various underwater challenges as they progress through the levels.

Water Effect Development:

To make our water look real and captivating, we used Amplify Shader in Unity. This allowed us to create more realistic effects by using a specular surface shader.

One of the main challenges were enabling programmers to control water flow and movement through adjustable parameters. To tackle this, we used a Step node to convert a range of linear values into constant values, essentially creating a mask that filters out unnecessary parts of the water by converting shades of gray to black and white.

We further refined this by combining object rotation coordinates with a rotator node to control the angle in object space. The remainder of the shader involved fundamental math operations, incorporating a noise texture to give a realistic watery feel and animating it to simulate fluidity.

Adding to this effect, we introduced movement by multiplying the Step node with another noise map and feeding the result into the vertex offset. This technique brought the water to life, achieving the desired fluid and dynamic appearance.

From there, the possibilities expanded, allowing us to add elements such as bubbles, jellyfish, and more, enhancing the overall visual experience.

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We are committed to refining these water effects and seamlessly integrating them into our upcoming levels. Thank you for following our development journey. Your feedback and support are invaluable to us as we continue to innovate and push the boundaries of what's possible in our game. Keep an eye out for more exciting updates, and until next time, happy gaming!

Best regards,
Playdew Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1752540/Lost_Twins_II/