Rodrigo Soria

Brickotori announcement trailer YouTube video by Anawim Studios

Announcing Brickotori!

It’s been a while since I last shared something about the game. But right now, we have huge news! Our Announcement Trailer is live!
Here’s the video 💛
youtu.be/h0W2gUdTepc

#videogames #gamedev #indiedev #forgottagslol #announcement #trailer #new #cozy #cozygames #brickotori

A little update to the store page pictures ✨

I think it looks better now, right? 🥰

#indiedev #gamedev #steam #update #pictures #screenshot #solodev #storepage #stillWipLol

That's great! I will be attentive your posts as I'm also interested on how that works hahaha. Good luck!

A kid-core room with crafting supplies on a desk, a custom lilypad chair, and a large frog terrarium tank

A small cozy bedroom and gaming lounge with bi pride lava lamps, some plants, and a cat tree

A lofted bedroom and gaming area Overtop a living room with a fireplace,and a cat tree and sofa

A refined, simple olive colored kitchen with counters along the wall, an island, a dining area, and a lofted seedling growing area. A dog is in the kitchen begging for snacks

@kenney.nl has made an incredible game to just chill and vibe with! this is MakeRoom, a sandbox room builder

thanks again to @wholesomegames.com for trusting me to showcase this game to my community. there will definitely be a part 2!

[ #twitch #streamer #wholesomegames #steam #indiegaming ]

Somehow my screen broke when we arrived at home after the Otakuthon...
You fight well my friend 😇

But hey! Now I have a cool free CRT effect 🤣

#events #indiedev #journey #crt #otakuthon #montreal #accident #screenbroke #gamedev #solodev #screenshotmonday #lol

Had a lovely time at Otakuthon MTL this weekend! 🌿✨

Lots of folks played Brickotori, shared feedback, and even learn the controls without help! 💛

We also met amazing people and fellow indie devs!

#brickotori #indiedev #gamedev #otakuthon #mtl #montreal #games #indie #playtest

Thank you!! 🥰

I just added a gallery to the game!
What do you think about it? Do you like the animations?

Btw, all your creations will appear here! I just put the loading state

#indiedev #brickotori #gamedev #indiegames #steamgame #ui #feedback #gameui #solodev #cozy #wip

- Art by @saralavanchy.bsky.social ❤️

Wow! Congrats!!

As promised! New UI for the main menu! 😁😁

#gamedev #indiedev #ui #brickotori #indiegames #unity

ahhh yes, the sweet opportunity to pay a small one-time fee to tell the world I'm 18+! 😀

New main menu UI from @saralavanchy.bsky.social!

Will I be able to implement it? 😅

#gameDev #indieDev #brickotori #UI #gameUI #gameNews #indiegames

I had a game like this on my TODO list hahaha. Congrats man! I wish you the best on the release! It looks awesome 🥰

Wow, thank you very much! Super encouraging words! 😁

Sooo, what do you think about the challenges and this approach? Would you do it differently? Why?

Honestly I'm open to more ideas! If there is a better way to do things, why not?

#indieDev #gameDev #devlog #gamedevlog #brickotori #log

Players can enable/disable this feature individually using a button for convenience. This will effectively "hide" the effect from such player only, so he will not see through the bricks, nor other players will see him.
A bit hard to explain with words lol.

This was a nice experiment! And even tho I am not a big fan of see-through effects, I do see the benefits. There are multiple ways of making it, but this is the way I found that "solves" all those questions. Specially the multiplayer related ones.

And that's basically it! But no! Wait! It doesn't end here!

Since my bricks are already using a shader, I needed to combine all of this with that shader. And because it was not a shaderGraph, everything needed to be done using shader code, particularly hlsl.
Which I didn't know before lol.

Both areas are calculated based on the size of the shape in screen space, not world space! And in relation to the camera's view angle.

All pixels within the minimum and maximum area gets their alpha blended between 1 and 0. Leaving 1 for those outside the max area, and 0 for those below the min.

Lastly, (or well, in-between), we need to consider the maximum area we will have for our see-through effect, which means at which distance we will start to hide bricks.

As well we need to have a minimum area, which means at which distance the pixels will have 0 alpha.

Then those translated coordinates are used together with the pixel's position being rendered and its distance from the player to determine how much should we "hide" its color (in other words, change it's alpha value).

And then, I update a bunch of variables on the bricks' shaders. Such as the closest player's position, and its size.

On the shader I did a bit of math magic to translate those world coordinates (position and size) to the screen coordinates (Now that I am thinking about it I might move that to C# 🤔)

So, for handling all this I'm using a combination of shader code and regular C#.

Through C# and a simple collisions I get the bricks between the player and the camera. Group them by closest player, Filter them by height (so, ignoring those below the player)

Alas, Besides all that, we still have another problem.

Problem 8:
- What about performance? Maybe we have a great idea, but if it is too complex or heavy we wouldn't be able to implement it...

And I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting more considerations... but let's go to my experimental approach

Problem 7:
- Multiplayer. Well, having split-screen local-coop brings a whole set of problems.
Should all players see each other with the see-through effect?
If yes, what if the effect on player 1 annoys player 2?
What happen if two players are close to each other? Should they be able to hide?

Problem 6:
- Animations, maybe?. When changing the selected brick, an animation is played on them that affects their scale. This is not really a problem, but a matter of taste?

If we abruptly change the size of the see-through window, then it looks abrupt. Which doesn't feel "right".

Problem 5:
- Since bricks can come in different shapes and sizes, we need to adjust the size of the see-through effect based on them. A "circle" is not enough, because there are long line bricks (1x8) that will mostly take the whole screen if zoomed too much.

Problem 4:
- We need to hide anything that obstructs the view of the selected brick. From ANY camera angle (because players can rotate the camera), and almost any zoom distance (because players can zoom-in and zoom-out).
Also, we need to consider that PC players can aim whenever they want.

Problem 3:
- When going up and down, the hidden bricks need to be automatically updated, as well as when the player is moving. If you suddenly go too far or switch to "select mode", they also need to be updated.

Problem 2:
- Not only they need to know what's below, but also what's at the same height.
If you don't see anything and there is a brick where you want to place yours, you may think there is enough space to place your brick, but it is going to be red and you would not know why.