RageSpline - Create smooth 2D graphics inside Unity - Coming soon

I posted this on the showcase earlier, but I guess I should post it here too.

I got a lot of positive feedback from this video and I decided to put my game aside for now, and put my focus on polishing these tools ready for the Asset Store.

You can try the level I'm creating in this video: here.

 

Wow, that looks very cool and cute. Do you have a poly count for the demo scene, is it suitable for mobile devices?

 

It looks great.
Do you know when it will be in the asset store and how much you want for this fine tool?

Want, want

 

Cool!

 

The game is quite cool - very unique. It's quite frustrating though. Maybe after "firing" the cube, clicking on it kinda puts on the brakes and makes it stop? Would still be challenging, but you wouldn't need to replay the level 327 times to make it to the end

 

I'm mainly iOS-developer myself (I have Unity iOS basic) and even though poly/vertcount is quite high in this video (~5-10k), my 3GS device can handle it very smoothly (mostly 60fps).

Since making of the video, I have tweaked the splitting algorithm to be more intelligent, so that you get more bang with less polys.

I'm also giving the user an easy way to tweak quality vs. polycount with variables.

I have no way to test with Android version so can't comment on that.

 

About when: I'm working really hard to get it done and pretty soon I'll be looking for couple of friendly developers for a closed beta test, so stay tuned.

About price: It's not going to be free, but I haven't decided the actual price. Why don't we turn it around and tell me what you would pay for something like this?

 

I'm actually designing the game to be slightly frustrating (hence the name Ragecube), but I can agree that the current level on the demo is way too hard to be the first level of the game.

 

This is a no-brainer for any iphone developer if you make it easy to adjust the curve tesselation/resolution. Very nice job, I will pick it up the minute it's launched!

I didn't see any texturing work done in the fast-forwarded video, is the neat coloring seen in the web player actually vertex colors generated by your plug?

If you need beta testing, don't hesitate to ask. We're working on an ambitious IOS title slated for release this fall, which would benefit a lot from this type of plug.

 

Tesselation/resolution will be easy to tweak. There are going to be two options: fixed vertexcount or more intelligent angle-based approach, where you set an angle threshold for a new vertex around the curve (steeper curves need more vertices).

Yes it's all vertex colors in the video and no texturing. The tool doesn't currently have texturing support on top of vertex colors, but I'm planning to implement it too.

Sure thing. PM me if you got something to show for your project.

 

A very cool piece of tech.

 

Just a quick teaser to show how I'm currently optimizing the tesselation. Putting a lot of verts on the curves keeps the quality of the shape the same all the way. If you split your spline into fixed-length parts, you are wasting polys on straight parts and getting artifacts on the curves.

 

Great idea, very creative

 

Sold!

 

Today I got texturing support pretty much done!

You can tweak scale/offset/rotation of uv's with the magenta colored handle. Same stuff for gradient is with the green one.

 

are you some kind of tool creating god?

 

I think the real tool creating gods work for Unity Technologies. I just drink from their fountain.

 

This looks very cool. Add me to the list of day one purchasers!

 

Very nice!

 

Low-poly


High-poly

Introducing the emboss raises the polycount to almost double, but I still don't think it's going to be a problem. Atleast with iOS. I can't test with Android, but if all else fails, you can always drop down the quality all the way to down, like in the screenshot above. That extreme low-poly version looks kinda sexy too

Embossing in general is still giving me a hard time too. Round smooth shapes (like in the screenshot and in the original video) work ok, but more edgy stuff still looks craptastic. I might need to take a step back and figure out better approach. I also had to throw away the "advanced" tesselation. It's varying vertexcount was causing artifacts and I don't want to re-do everything. It wasn't essential anyways.

 

How soon can you get version 1.0 up onto the asset store?

 

I'd love to give you a proper date, but let's just say that all the core stuff is working well now and in theory I could release right now.

However, I still wan't to tweak stuff, do proper beta-testing and have documentation/videos done before launch. I'm sure there's also some bureaucratic hoops in Asset Store too, that I'm not yet aware of.

I have a one week of holiday from my dayjob next week, so I'm really hoping I could hammer out beta during that week. I'm going to make a separate post for finding maybe 2-3 beta-testers very soon, so stay tuned.

 

You could always take a sort of Minecraft-like approach and release it in it's current state but with a reduced, early adopter, price and continue to provide regular updates with fixes and added functionality over time. Then raise the price when it's more stable and fully feature-complete. Totally up to you of course, just a thought...

 

This looks awesome! Love it!

 

How is it with regards to batching?

 

This is amazing!

I want a copy!

 

You're right and I have given it some thought too. I do this for my games and have released everything from the very first ugly prototype for people to play. I think with indie games it's the only logical way to go.

With tools I think it's a little different. Or maybe it's not. I have no prior experience. I feel that when you pay for a tool (even discounted price), the bugs and radical changes hurt you more. With a game it's just "ok, it crashed, no biggie", but with tools it could be more like "oh, they changed the way the meshes are saved, I just lost all my work" etc.

Maybe I just try to leave some stuff out from 1.0 and polish the rest. It means less documentation, less bugs, less drama -> quicker release.

 

Sounds like a plan.

 

I don't know much about static batching because I only have basic version, but AFAIK the requirement is that objects share the same material. All the RageSpline shapes without textures will share the same material. All the color-information (outline color, fill/gradient color and embossing colors) is baked in the mesh via vertex colors. For different textures, you need different materials, unless you do an atlas, but then you can't really tilemap.

Does this answer your question?

edit: For dynamic batching, the vertex count is obviously mostly too high (the limit is 300 verts).

 

Sounds good, that is what I expected. Using vertex colors should ensure that static batching works. I (personally) wouldn't be concerned with dynamic batching, as that wouldn't be what I use RageSpline for.

 

wow fantastic... when when?

 

I decided to save time and not do proper closed beta-testing. Instead I gave the tool to couple of my friends to play around. We found a couple of bugs and there's still some shapes and forms that cause some minor headaches, but I think it's now v1.0. I started to make documentation and here's a icon/logo that I just got finished:

 

Looks cool. Looking forward to this being released on the Asset Store!

 

I'm sorry for bumping this thread and not releasing a product yet, but just gotta show this. I decided that there should be a little example game with RageSpline when you purchase it. So started making it and 24h minicrunch later this is what I got.

I'm very close to finishing documentation and I think we can see RageSpline in the Asset Store quite soon.

Testdrive the game here

 

Nice!! We will have these demos (demonstrations), after buying the tool?
About how much will it cost?

 

I'm giving the Ragecar source+assets with the tool, but the RageCube in the first video is not included, because I'm releasing it for the App Store later.

I haven't decided yet, sorry.

 

So sorry .. I wanted to buy just to look at sript cube ((
The game was not planning to release .. just for fun.
I do not think that perimer from the first movie like that would prevent you from making a game, and sales tool would be greatly increased...
Perhaps the example of other content?
I just want the code dice.

 

Bizarre, your example game with the car is just like a little game I've been making recently but without your tool, obviously. The "road" in my game is randomly generated using flattened cubes set at different lengths and angles. It works but has an angular look whereas yours is nice and smooth and basically looks much better. Oh well.

 

You are not the first one in the last 24h to tell me that it's exactly like the game they are making. I guess it's one of those classic mechanics that every other developer ends up reimplementing.

 

I guess I can console myself with the fact that mine plays better. That's what I'm telling myself anyway!

Anyway, looking forward to your release and I'll be first in line to buy it!

 

Hi Keely,

I think this is primarily? an Editor tool but can your framework be used to create spline based objects program-ably?

 

And what about texturing ????

No MattSimpson ! I will be the first to buy it !!!

6R

 

Yes. You can create RageSpline-based gameobject from thin air, or modify an existing one, and access the spline points via code. It's an array of points, each has position, two handlespositions and width of outline. You have functions like AddPoint(), GetPoint(), GetNormal(), GetWidth(), etc.

After you have modified the points-array, you can call the RefreshMesh() and RefreshPhysics(), which will render the actual mesh for your MeshFilter-component.

And let's say that you would want to create some custom way to build those polys: You could easily build your own system, where you just poll the values with GetPoint() and GetNormal() and make your own mesh just to way you want and still benefit from my easy-to-use editor UI.

The performance might be a problem if you do a lot of RefreshMesh() every frame. So far, I have only animated small parts with code, like mr.Cube in the RageCube video (check the first post). Atleast in the iOS-platform, hammering a lot of different meshes every frame might tear all the Unity's underlying optimizations apart, but I haven't really stress-tested this aspect properly to say anything accurate. If you generate static mesh/terrain/whatever, this will not be a problem.

 

Yes the basic texturing and uv-positioning is supported. Check out the screenshots earlier in this thread.

 

Awesome work @keely! Oddly enough, I had just started something similar to this. There was another thread going on about 2D tools and all that fun stuff. After seeing RageSpline I decided I might as well let you do the heavy lifting and I'll just throw money at you to get a copy There were a couple things I had on my spec sheet that I was curious if RageSpline has coming (if not, I get to hack away at it once you release it

- the ability to make the border inside the main shape instead of outside (this would be for instance to add some overlapping texture details like moss on a rock for example)
- non-connected segments like just the top half of a circle
- uv coordinates for the borders

 

I didn't do any market research or anything. Just made a tool for my own game and it got some attention. About throwing the money, I already got your iAd-plugin and plan to purchase some more where that came from, so I guess we can call it even

In my v1.0, there is just straight-forward uv's with scale, rotation and offset, which are easily modified with single handle.

I'm planning to implement separate texturing for the border polys or something similar.

I know people (me included) would like to make shapes, where repeating texture would follow the contours. Examples could be ground terrain with repeating texture, or maybe some top-down racetrack. I already experimented with some per-point UV-mapping features, but decided to leave them out from the v1.0.

Anyways. I know there's a need for more flexible uv-mapping that the v1.0 currently has. I just haven't really decided what is the most logical way to implement them. I bet you have some ideas, since you already given some thought on this. What are all the ways that people would want to texture spline-based shapes? That's the bottom-line question IMO.

If I understand what you mean, this is supported. I have a option for the outline to be either "loop" or "free". Free means that the outline becomes basically an open-ended line (you can still fill the inside too if you want).

 

brilliant!

 

Love the possibilities! Would love more videos!!