Have no fear internet! Dan, Panya, and I are still alive and well. However, this week we said our final farewell to the Coin App Xbox 360. We had a good run. Remember that time we had a bunch of local game developers over to hang out and play Max Blastronaut? Yeah, that was awesome.
Hard to believe it’s come to this. Our final memory of you will be this photo, taken minutes before we took you to the UPS store to be sent back to your mothership.
Thank you, Xbox 360. You’ve been a good friend. You will be missed.
This might give you a headache, but it’s worth it. Cross your eyes until each pair of images forms another one in the middle. If you survive the eye strain, you’ll be treated to a 3D view of Max Blastronaut! It’s like those magic eye images, except instead of something lame like a dolphin or a bell, it’s space carnage.
Today we’ve got a few new things to show off! The main update is crepuscular rays - there are many terms used to describe the phenomenon (I chose that one because it sounds fancy), but it’s commonly known as light shafts or god rays. In GPU Gems 3, Kenny Mitchell from EA has an article performing the technique as a post-process effect. It’s a very smart method, so we implemented it to see how it looks and performs. We’ve included a sun glow and flares to complement it (all exaggerated for effect right now). The full scene as seen below includes god rays, SSAO, a lens flare, some new AI flocking behavior, and background battle elements:
