Why going 2D to 3D was an epic challenge in Risk of Rain 2

and this seems like a lie this see this seems like more than I can handle if I've bitten off more than I can chew [Music] how's it going everybody my name is Thomas Gresham the creator of a game called prince with Allah I'm the creator of a game called pinstripe I'm also working on a game called once upon a coma I love making games but today we're gonna play a game we're gonna play a game called risk of rain - now this game is really fun but what makes it super fun is actually the 5 super secret fun facts we're gonna talk about about the creation of this game it's gonna be a really fun let's play wait it's not called a let's play is it it's called a dance play it's gonna be a really fun deafs play so stick around so let's go ahead and talk really quickly here about what I don't really like about the game feel and that is how the game feels when you're when you're pressing inputs and buttons so the first problem is is that

when I shoot something the gun sound honestly kind of sucks and I know that this is an early access game so it's not really a huge critique to the developer because honestly they're still working on it but the gun sound it's kind of a mid-range a little bit of treble to the sound it's it kind of feels like I'm shooting an airsoft pistol that's how small it feels and I would recommend even with the first gun you start out with and I know that this is the first gun and I know it needs to feel weak but even still I wish that there was more base in the gun more excitement to the gun and that includes includes a full range of sound bass mid-range and treble when you're on the ground and running you want to feel like the players actually heavy that they have weight and then they're making contact with the ground and you can see they tried to have some particle emitters at the feet right there see those little puffs of

smoke but it's really hard to see really subtle and so I think they could emphasize it a little bit more have a little bit more effects maybe when you run through the grass grass particles emit out of your feet and those are all really simple changes that can be made that can make the game feel a lot more alive but again guys this is an early access game so there's plenty of things that we could complain about but overall I mean I'm really impressed and I've had I've had a lot of fun playing this game today I've played for several hours but something that's really crazy about risk of rain too is that it's actually obviously a sequel to an original risk of rain and that original was a 2-d game now what the team decided they wanted to do was they wanted to make a 3d game and one of the least test it out and see if they could get the same amount of players the same amount of enemies and the same amount of chaos that was in the original risk of rain but in a 3d space now this is a huge risk both financially and timewise as a team to say hey we're

gonna actually try this out in a 3d space and see if it can work now fortunately the risk the risk of rain paid off in the long run in that chaos trust me it's still there and it's crazy and it's flying now really quick before we begin our next fun fact I want to talk about something that drives me a little bit crazy and it's the assumption by some in the gaming community that we don't really need to dress nice now I don't know about you but I do want to look great but I also want to feel comfy and I want to take easy and that's possible with cuts clothing now this is a cuts t-shirt and they make premium basic Henley's and tees that really do instantly upgrade your wardrobe now I am super picky about my t-shirts so you could trust me when I say that cuts clothing is hands-down my favorite brand of t-shirts I mean I was the one who reached out to them for the sponsorship video so if you guys want 15% off your first order use the promo code at most in the link in the description there is something really important one key thing that I've learned from the creation of this game and that is the simple fact

that everything in your game whether it's player's enemies creatures robots those things should really all funnel down to a base class and that is a script now what's really cool about this game is that whether its enemies or AI or players they all can pretty much do the same things they move the same way and they can collect the same kind of inventory and use it in the same way just two different variances what this means is that they only really have two classes that they can expand upon whether it's releasing DLC content or just finishing the creation of this game it's a long term sustainable way to make a game now if you were me 10 years ago you would start out your game creating a player class then you'd have an enemy class then maybe you'd have a robot class creature class all these different kinds of classes that are created from scratch this is a really bad way to make a game for the long term because if you have a

successful game if it's really successful on launch you want to continue to release DLC content and continue to capitalize on the success of the game that's really not possible if you've got all these random classes you're creating all right I got a monster tooth drop a healing orb on kill so the thing is is that a lot of these these items that you can collect in this game all throughout this map are tiny little variable shifts to your player so they'll change how many times you can jump they'll change how fast you can run they'll change your health or your shield all of these things are simple variables that are just being shifted but they have a cool graphic associated with them some cool little icon up at the top of the screen so this game is really honestly it's an economical game to create and they've done a lot of really good smart decisions in this game in terms of creating items that make you feel good that don't really cost a lot in terms of development

now let's pretend for a second that you're Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo comes in and they say congratulations The Legend of Zelda the very first one the top-down one congratulations it performed amazing but these 2d platformers are really exciting so we're gonna try and make a 2d platformer Legend of Zelda you can imagine the challenge of going from a top-down game to a side-scrolling platformer game and what ended up happening was the legend of link or I'm sorry the Legend of Zelda The Adventure of Link came out and it sucked it was horrible everyone hated that game it's the worst Zelda game to date by far the reason was because you know there's plenty of challenges going from a top-down game to a side scroller and the same can be said about the risk of rain original game 2d platformer going to a 3d game so some of the challenges that the team mentioned was going to a 3d game meant that the camera felt slower and the player movement felt slower whereas in a 2d game the camera seems to be moving faster because it's closer to

the player and there's a lot of stuff may be moving in the foreground and in the background but with a 3d game you can see this huge expanse and when you're moving through that you can feel daunting it could feel like you're drudging through the environment and you can feel slow one of the ways that the team accomplished a faster pace or a faster feel is to one give the player the ability to sprint but also just move that camera closer to the ground when the camera is closer to something in the foreground you could see it moving things in the foreground move faster than in the background now another challenge that was presented was in a 2d space whatever is in that window is what's relevant whereas in 3d you can see far into distance maybe miles into the scene and see all of the various things that you need to do and this can seem daunting if you just start playing the game so I think the risk of rain team really did a good job of creating an environment that kind of blocks your view so you can see that there's tons of mountains that you

have to climb and various things you have to avoid so you can't just see miles in front of you in game alright so the ultimate goal here guys is we need to find the teleporter so that we can gate engage in a boss fight want to make sure that we have as many items as we can so repairing the turret here I think we've got like four turrets that's awesome so the turrets are great because they basically just farm and get cash for you so that you can go find various capsules to unlock and get more items so this is kind of cool what is this here pray to the shrine nothing happened okay that sucks I don't think anything happened what is that give me that disposable missile launcher fire a swarm of missiles with Q see that's why I love these kind of games is they force you to be strategic and save items before using them especially when you're hanging out

with these creepy bosses there's gonna be some pretty creepy bosses coming up and they're really fun open that up so notice how I have plenty of cash to use deal more damage to healthy enemies it's a crowbar nice careful Thomas careful now let's open this up see what's in here syringe increase attack speed perfect I have to admit I've always wanted to make a multiplayer game I've thought about it for a long time but what always freaked me out was knowing that I'm not very good at the server side of things and my players are probably gonna be rightfully so pissed off about lag or getting shot around corners or whatever it is regarding the server what's cool about risk of rain to that I learned was it's a PvE game it's a player versus environment game that is you have a team of players that are

online and they're fighting the environment and that is the client side of things what's happening locally on your machine as opposed to fighting other people on the server so there's a lot less complaining about lag or getting shot around corners this is really great for you as an indie developer if you want to make a multiplayer consider making a PvE game because that means you can not really worry about the server as much and you can more focus on the client side of things all right guys you think we're ready to engage in the boss fight I think we are let's do it here we go are you guys ready I'm kind of nervous wait what happened what where's the boss that wasn't it that wasn't it okay where is my effin shrine I should have marked it okay it looks like we found the teleporter

are we ready to engage in a boss fight I think we are let's do it okay guys you got to be smart here I'm kind of freaked out holy crap there's two bosses what beetle Queens okay so remember I have that cue weapon I don't care what it was but we're just gonna keep this a shot see what happens now we can't oh come on guys I'm kind of scared I am NOT the best at video games and this seems like a lie this see this seems like more than I can handle if I've bitten off more than I can chew I don't think in any of my devs plays I've actually beaten a level before that's how bad I am at video games are we gonna make it happen please guys cross your fingers for me come on Thomas don't be a stupid person okay actually guys look at me easy modes

pretty easy which is good because it's easy mode what looks like looks like my health isn't actually suffering that much so maybe my panic was not warranted nice okay okay okay okay please tell me I won please tell me how one what Jenny there you get it proceed through the teleport come on Thomas yes I finally beat a level in the devs play are you proud of me because I am proud of me I think I did a good job it's awesome new levels now risk of rain too had a big problem and that was the team wanted to have lighting on all of the projectiles that were coming out of the players and the creatures and the enemies and one of the light the scene and have dynamic lighting through the chaos of this battle well that's really tough on a computer when you have all of

these vertices that you have to find lighting for and calculate every single piece of geometry in the scene so instead of using forward rendering for their lighting and that is finding the lighting for every single vertices in the scene they use something called a deferred rendering and what deferred rendering does is it basically just looks at the resolution of the screen and determines what needs to be lit in that resolution now this is a great option now the only problem is a lot of times you're not able to light transparent objects and it also means that older computers with sort of poor graphics cards aren't able to process this kind of lighting so deferred is probably the best option if you're gonna have a ton of lighting in the scene that's dynamic as opposed to baked to baked meaning that it's just sort of written before the game actually starts and it's sort of painted on the scene wow that was fun that was really really fun thank you for joining me in this episode of devs play if you want to watch more videos please

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