Part four- tragedy strikes

There is a way I like to manage my time, when doing game jams. Basically- I want to have all the main stuff implemented by the midpoint. Then I can decide, if I want to add more stuff, polish what I have, or fix bugs if it turns out my game is glitch as hell. Normally, I do a combination of all three.

The other thing I like to have is a web build. This one is simple- people are more likely to play a game in their browser, than download and play. Basically my least popular web-build game had more plays in a week, than my most popular non-web-build in a couple of months.

Another thing- web builds take more time, than windows builds, especially when my PC is a bit of a potato. Basically, at the early stages of development I do windows builds and send them to my brother for testing/ feedback via google drive. I don't do web builds until... well... midpoint, when I want to show the game to other people.

And then came the shocking revelation.

I realize, that web-builds handle some stuff differently than win-builds. Some sound effects aren't available. Lighting looks not-as-good. Stuff like that. What I didn't realize was how much worse it's gonna look, when I decide to set all the mood with dynamic lighting, and it's just not gonna work.

This was terrible. I imagined all the players that would decide that there was an anomaly, because the shadows looked janky, or a dynamic light source randomly turned off.

I decided to remove the dynamic lighting altogether. This also meant removing two anomalies, that relied on light suddenly switching off. This also required setting up light probes, and building lightmaps. If you don't know what the last sentence meant- light probes, are thingies, that tell nearby objects how static lights should affect them. When lightmaps are built, data from light probes are used to "paint" light on static textures. My PC being a potato- building lighting takes about 20 minutes, then building a web build (I need to check how it looks on web-build), another 10 minutes.

Things begin to look ok, but there's another problem. I have two instances of the apartment at all times, and I just can't make the lighting look THE SAME. Again, I have a vision of a player, going into "anomaly" door, because shadows look a bit different.

This takes time. I make slight adjustments to the probes and settings. I start the build. I go do other stuff. Hang out with family, eat dinner. Verify last changes, make more adjustments, start build again. I spend my evening watching 30 rock, iterating on the light settings every time the build finishes.

It never looks good. And then it hits me. I use a bunch of 2d graphics in this (and let's be serious- every) game. I made a material that allows them to work nicely with dynamic lights, but now, since I'm not using dynamic lights, I'm back to usual sprite material. The sprites are the only thing that look ok.

So I delete all the light probes, and run the light rebuilding. I end up with this flat looking lighting. It actually looks good with unshaded 2d sprites. The lighting is less atmospheric, sure, but IT LOOKS OK ON THE WEB BUILD!

Crisis averted!