Hi guys! We are back with another devlog. Game dev is full of big ideas and even bigger time sinks hiding in the tiniest details. Not every bug is game-breaking. Not every fix is flashy. But sometimes, it's the smallest visual details that demand the most time and care. This week, we dove deep into three deceptively simple tasks: shadows, scaling, and a tiny animation that turned into full-blown mini-projects.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the kind of polish that nobody asks for but everyone feels when it’s done right.
Character Shadow:
This was one of the key polishing tasks that required significant time and effort to resolve.
Initially, we used Unity’s built-in projector shadow, which fades when the character is far from the ground. While it worked well at first, we later faced issues, specifically, it wasn’t casting shadows in the correct direction.
Despite multiple attempts to adjust the projector’s settings, we were unable to achieve the desired result due to limitations in Unity’s projector implementation, which unfortunately still appears to be unresolved.
After researching online, we came across a guy who created a solution that extended Unity’s projector system with custom scripts to better control shadow behavior.
https://nyahoon.com/products/dynamic-shadow-projector/draw-target-object-component
Even after integrating this solution, we spent additional time fine tuning the settings to enhance the visual quality. In the end, we successfully achieved a shadow effect that not only met our expectations but actually looked even better than before.
Pieces scaling down is considerably noticeable in HUB:
While working in the HUB, we implemented scaling of the environment during zoom-in and zoom-out to ensure a smooth and seamless transition. We noticed that some background elements were behaving oddly during the scaling process.
Although it seemed like a minor issue, we spent several hours resolving it by creating local pivots and assigning each element to its respective pivot.
These pivots were carefully positioned at the bottom center of each object to maintain consistent scaling behavior.
This approach allowed the environment to appear as if it was being subtly disabled during transitions. While the user might hardly notice this effect, we ensured that every detail was refined to deliver a polished experience.
Dome Breaking Animation:
From the name alone, it might seem like a simple task that shouldn’t require much development time.
However, we ended up spending several hours resolving the issue. Even this appears for a split seconds but still we wanted to fix this issue.
Our artist created the animation in Maya, and we played it in Unity using the Animator component. It worked perfectly both in the editor and on the target device.
However, during testing in some builds, we noticed occasional performance drops when the dome broke. It was surprising, as everything else functioned smoothly. We adjusted various settings and created multiple builds to identify the cause, but the issue persisted.
Eventually, after some experimentation, we discovered that enabling and then disabling the animation in the Start() function resolved the lag.
While the root cause remains unclear, this workaround proved effective, and we decided to move forward with it. These kinds of fixes rarely make it into patch notes or trailers, but they’re what elevate a game from “functional” to feel-good polished. We know most players will never consciously notice the character shadow behaving perfectly or the HUB scaling seamlessly but that’s exactly the point. Till next time. Best regards,
Playdew Team