I've been starting to work with Unity and already thought up of a game to make, but I ran into a problem. With unity free you cannot have hard and soft shadows which is bad because I wanted to make a 2d platform adventure game that is dark and you have to use light from fire in order to see. I want it to look and feel dark that is why I want to use soft shadows so it looks like the fire is glowing.
Now I am looking for a engine or anything else that could allows the use of shadows for making games on pc not apps. It can be 3d, but 2d is preferred. Also I am looking for an engine that has a free version or that is relativity low cost (<$100). Is there anything out there that can make shadows like this? or should I use more common engines like udk (which I know has shadows but not really sure much about it)?
Alternatives to Unity?
1st approach
For a 2D-only implementation, in unity, you could try writing a simple lighting algorithm that pokes bits in a custom texture with texture.SetPixel(); You'd have to poll all shadow casting objects and write into some secondary texture attached to them.
To speed things up, you could create the texture at lower resolution and "jitter" the pixels for some simple blurring.
Problem is, this will still be slow. Quite slow. And to do custom shadows from what I assume are alpha-textured quads is not only even slower but decently complicated as well.
2nd approach
Use the alpha buffer to build your own 2d shadowing system. There's a great article on 2D Shadows right here.
Should be fairly easy to do for basic polygonal shapes. Not so for alpha-textured quads.
Alternatives:
Corona comes to mind. UDK might be ok too but UDK's overhead and requirements are a bit harsh for a 2D game.
p.s: someone built an alpha-buffer based ( stencil buffer unavailable in free ) hard-shadowing plugin. Could try that first.
For a 2D-only implementation, in unity, you could try writing a simple lighting algorithm that pokes bits in a custom texture with texture.SetPixel(); You'd have to poll all shadow casting objects and write into some secondary texture attached to them.
To speed things up, you could create the texture at lower resolution and "jitter" the pixels for some simple blurring.
Problem is, this will still be slow. Quite slow. And to do custom shadows from what I assume are alpha-textured quads is not only even slower but decently complicated as well.
2nd approach
Use the alpha buffer to build your own 2d shadowing system. There's a great article on 2D Shadows right here.
Should be fairly easy to do for basic polygonal shapes. Not so for alpha-textured quads.
Alternatives:
Corona comes to mind. UDK might be ok too but UDK's overhead and requirements are a bit harsh for a 2D game.
p.s: someone built an alpha-buffer based ( stencil buffer unavailable in free ) hard-shadowing plugin. Could try that first.
Author
Alternatives:
Corona comes to mind. UDK might be ok too but UDK's overhead and requirements are a bit harsh for a 2D game.
With corona I am looking to make games that are on PC not apps, but I will look into the 2d shadow.
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
