Descent Devlog Update [Editor Tools & Shaders]

Hi all. Long time no see.

I've commited to seeing Descent to completion this year. I thought that I would share a small update as well as a bit of a description of how I use Unity's custom editor tools to make working on this game a little easier.

I came up with this game on the fly over the course of a week, and it just kind of grew so big so fast that a lot of the processes are not exactly streamlined. For example, each room has a whole load of colliders and floor tiles which i had to place manually on 90 or so rooms! These are the kind of things that I've decided to approach from the ground up to make adding new content easier, and hopefully make the game run more smoothly too.

Upon revisiting the project, it was clear that the scene view in Unity had become super bloated. Loads of objects in the hierarchy and a mess of rooms on screen. From a distance all the rooms look the same, so if I needed to visit one specific location, it could be hard to find exactly which one I needed.

Using Unity's editor scripting capabilities I put together this view which helps by:

• Identifiying rooms by name using a label
• Shows connections between rooms
• Adjusts room positions to create a kind of 'map'

The opening rooms as seen in the improved Scene View

Rooms grouped by section in Scene View

A New Look for Descent with Shader Graph

What else... well, I am in the early stages of working on a shader to give the game a bit more of a stylised look. 

Shaders have always been a bit intimidating to me, and it's been a while since I've even attempted them. After revisting some of the basics using AdamCYounis' excellent video on the subject, I am well on my way.

Here's an early attempt. Probably a bit too pretty for a game which aims for tension. We'll see what happens here.

What else?

Here's a few more things I've been working on recently.

• New dedicated font
• Massive amounts of code refactoring
• Settings menu / save functionality
• New music + minigames :O

So it is coming along, basically. Can't wait to share more with you all.

See you next time.
PATCHWARE