Ghost of a Tale - Moving to Unity 5.0

Hello everyone! This is going to be a quick update to tell you that I’m currently in the process of converting the game’s project to Unity 5.0 (beta 20). I’m not even using any fancy Global Illumination yet, but the new lighting engine shines through:



This is a rather involved task but it is also indispensable for Ghost of a Tale to move forward. The reason is we’re going to need the new navigational mesh abilities which should allow us to achieve our goal of streaming the game’s environments instead of having to put loading screens at select locations.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Ghost of a Tale is my first game ever, therefore it’s not going to be a sprawling epic tale. In fact, it is the very first step on a longer journey, for us as well as for Tilo.

If the game meets with success then we will be able to keep on telling this story with greater confidence. So this game is going to happen in a single (rather large) location with environments going from subterranean caves to the top of high towers (think “Ico”). And everything is consistent from a spatial point of view.

So it is important for us to be able to tap into Unity 5’s new capabilities regarding pathfinding across several streaming interconnected locations. Plus this new version has a lot of improvements in many domains (lighting, physics, animation, etc…). There are still many issues that I need to fix for the Unity 5 conversion to be considered complete, but I am confident that this the right choice. And I really hope it will pay off in the long run!

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Dajjer said:

The sound I'm hearing is the air being let out of my expectations ballon.

I have never understood the need to change game engines in mid project. I would say go with what you got, make it stable and bug free. And then use an updated engine in the sequel or your next project.

Now I'm wondering if this game will ever get released. Or are we witnessing a journey the land of vaporware.

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seith said:

Well I'm sorry you feel this way! The move was dictated by Unity 5.0 allowing us to stream environments instead of having loading screens at every location change. Plus many, many bug fixes the project direly needed.

I feel the 3 days it took to convert the project were worth it and do not threaten the release of the game in any way. Please feel free to read more on the blog…

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GothicGothicness said:

well, it looks to me like that candle is giving out way too much light….

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