Important note for devs: Make sure Razer Synapse is up to date, otherwise some SDK features will not work.

For starters, here's a handy link to Unity Chroma SDK.

One of the most powerful features of the Unity Chroma SDK is the ability to record the view of a camera in the scene and convert that to a chroma animation. A lot of creative opportunities lie within this feature, as chroma animations can, therefore, be made from a camera that sees particle systems, canvas, sprites, meshes with materials, and so on.

For our game Log Jammers, I found particle systems achieved the type of effect we were looking for with far less development time than expected. Following is a description of the process to utilize the camera capture feature of the Unity Chroma SDK.

First, set up a camera in the scene which aims at a particle system. Make sure the orientation of the two is such that the camera will see the particle system.

Open the “Chroma Particle Window” which is dedicated to this Chroma SDK feature. This is located in Unity’s toolbar if you have imported the Chroma SDK package.

Next, drag and drop the following references into their corresponding fields in the particle window:

1. Your target chroma animation object. Make this by placing the Chroma SDK animation component of your choice on a GameObject.
2. The camera you just configured to point at your particle system.

With the particle window still open, select your particle system in the scene, and press the “Simulate” button in the scene view. You should see the particles of your system in the preview window.

 

 

To start recording the camera view, press the “Start” button. I recommend timing your capture to start/stop around your particle system beginning and ending, so the transitions in and out of the chroma animation are smooth. Please note that capturing will add to the end of previously saved/recorded frames in the animation. Therefore, if you don’t like a capture, make sure to press the “Reset” button to clear the bad capture before recording again.

This workflow makes for nice looking chroma animations in little time. Below you can see examples with the above-captured chroma animations in the hardware emulator.

The Chroma Hardware Emulator

To test all of our fancy new chroma effects on Razer hardware that I didn’t have available, I used the ChromaEmulator tool.

This tool shows its emulation of Chroma effects in real-time for all types of Chroma hardware, including ChromaLink. This tool works with Unity without extra effort. Just fire it up, select your hardware of choice to emulate, and select show for each of them. These are some examples:

Keyboard

Numberpad

Laptop

Here's a helpful link to information for devs on chroma-link (explains the significance of the color channels).

 

 

Emission Map Guide for Artists

Emission maps are used to describe how much bloom/glow should be emitted from parts of a sprite/texture.

Emission maps are grayscale: black means no emission for that pixel, white means full intensity emission. To start, here’s an example of a sprite with its corresponding emission map:

We don’t want the entire building sprite to be emitting bloom/glow, so we create an emission map in which everything is black except the windows of the building. The result is that only the windows will emit a glow. Most lighting effects should be achieved through programmed lighting and emission, so most art will not need lighting drawn into them.

Example table to describe the relationship between a sprite, its emission map, and the emitted bloom.

Sprite pixel color	Emission map pixel color	Final emitted bloom
White (Full intensity color)	White (Full intensity color)	White, full intensity
White (Full intensity color)	Black (No intensity color)	No emission
White (Full intensity color)	Grey (Half intensity color)	White, half intensity
Yellow (Full intensity color)	Grey (Half intensity color)	Yellow, half intensity
Yellow (Full intensity color)	Black (No intensity color)	No emission
Grey (Half intensity color)	White (Full intensity color)	Grey, full intensity

Unity Bloom Post Processing & Emission Maps

(For Devs)

1. Import this unity package - it will allow us to use post-processing such as bloom
2. In the file manager view within unity: Right-click -> Create -> Post-Processing Profile
3. Select the newly-made profile, and view its contents in the inspector.
4. Check the box next to bloom to enable the following: bloom, chromatic aberration, and vignette. Copy these settings for now:
5. Select your main camera in the scene's hierarchy, and add the script called 'Post Processing Behaviour'. For its 'Profile' element in the inspector, assign the post-processing profile you created earlier.
6. The result should look a bit like this

If you want to directly control how a specific sprite behaves in regards to bloom/emission, you need to make a Sprite Pixel-Lit material just for it with an emission map.

1. Download the shaders from this GitHub: https://github.com/traggett/UnitySpriteShaders
2. Put this folder in your assets folder. It has shaders for the materials we'll be using.

In the file manager again, Right-click -> Create -> Material. Select the material. At the top in the inspector, select Shader -> Sprite (Pixel Lit).

Configure the material as follows:

1. Set 'Blend Mode' to Standard Alpha.
2. Check the "Emission" box. This will enable you to control its bloom output via an emission map
3. When emission is checked, under it is a box with 'Emission' next to it. This is where you will place the artist-provided emission map for the sprite you want to define the bloom for. An emission map will be black and white. See below for an example.
4. The color box is where you can set the hue and intensity of the bloom/glow. I recommend putting it to pure white, which means no hue shift and maximum emission. You can use this to control the bloom intensity for a sprite without having an emission map, but an emission map will control which pixels emit and which don't.
5. Once that's done, select your sprite's game object and set the material component of its sprite renderer to the new material you made.

For emission maps made for sprite sheets that are sliced (such as animations) the emission maps will be automatically sliced/indexed in the same way as a referenced sprite sheet.

Some notes about emission:

• Unless you want all of a sprite to emit bloom, you should use an emission map. Without an emission map, the intensity of bloom from a specific pixel will be based on the intensity of the RGB color of that pixel. As a result, sprites which are a bright color will emit a lot of bloom, which may be undesirable.

• An emission map won't decide the final color - it just describes how much bloom emission happens per pixel. The hue part of the emission material’s configuration will affect the color, otherwise, when left white, it will use each pixel’s color for emission color.
• The final emission intensity appears to be (RGB Intensity of pixel * Corresponding Pixel intensity in Emission map), where the pixel emission map intensity is 0 to 1.
• Example emission map and base. Here, only the windows will emit any bloom.

 

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Run & Gun, and...eat? Saw through flesh a new-fashioned way or drill through enemies with fast-paced gunslinging with Bite the Bullet. This game combines some of our favorite game elements, ever, with some fun platforming, skill shots, power-ups, and fast gameplay. Also, cannibalism.

Story

In the 2Xth century, urbanization and pollution caused food and resource shortages. Humanity was able to adopt through technology, devising biologically-implanted nodes which allowed them to consume and metabolize any material, living, or inorganic.

This necessity sparked a trend in biological manipulation, and soon mankind split itself into two species – the Celestials, who embraced bio-mods and expanded across the stars from their new lunar home; and the Ghouls, descendants of humans who never utilized the consumption nodes and remained behind on earth, poisoned and twisted by the conditions there.

The strife between these species has caused mistrust, suspicion, even war, and their planetary conflict has attracted the attention, and ire, of a being that is beyond all mortal Flesh.

Now, two champions - half-caste offspring with parents from both species - will attempt to save humanity’s future by fighting through its past on a desolate and perilous world.

Features

Bite the Bullet is a biopunk run and gun action platformer featuring:

• The choice to destroy or consume enemies, turning their biological matter into many upgrades.
• 10 levels infested with bladed drones, flame turrets, lightning geckos, blimp rats, and helmet squids.
• Turn enemies into defenses or weapons, like the Gurtha swarm blowgun, lightning gecko on a stick, or turtle shell plate armor
• Save up all that consumed flesh and metal in the bio-meter to activate Zombro mode, and pound your foes into smoking ash and bone dust.

Characters

Vill and Dart

Two soldiers of the Lunarian forces who have a shared Purebread and Ghoul ancestry. They manage to keep their Ghoul genes hidden but still carry the bio-implants which enable them to consume all manner of organic and inorganic material

Garands

Most Ghouls are content with eking out a meager existence on the husk of a planet Earth has become. Others intend to take out their human cousins by force, joining ranks under the Ghoul revolutionary leaders.

Lightning Geckos

Reptiles that have evolved bio-electric survival mechanisms. They are often hunted by Ghouls as both a source of power and for designer leather boots.

28s

Sometimes, consumption nodes decay over time and infect other organs of the host. These speedy Ghouls have significant brain damage, which affects their higher cognitive functions.

Dire Puffer Fish

Before the great lunar migration, many animals were developed for sports activities. Mechanically altered pufferfish was one of them, as they provided a deadly challenge to typically peaceful activity.

Sappys

The Purebreds left plenty of explosives behind on their journey to the Moon. Sappys intend to make this refuse into the instrument of the Purebreds demise.

Mega Mind

The consumption nodes were created in a bioware lab which was the bleeding edge of technology for its time. Long abandoned, the dispossessed bio-material and implants in the facility begin to cohere. Now, a central, seething mass looms at the core of the laboratory, and its tendrils can be felt throughout the building like a pulsing nervous system.

Chunks

These large ghouls have several bio-modifications which provide them with superhuman strength, allowing them to wield suppressive fire weapons which are normally mounted on vehicles

Blimp Rats

Inflatable sacs in these creatures enable them to float into low hanging trees to gather fruit and leaves. Breathing in the gases stored in these sacs can cause nausea and hallucinations, making these animals short on natural predators.

Eltons

Hand-picked by Ghoul forces for leg strength and bone density, these individuals were given special implants that allow them to control tiny muscles, allowing them to stabilize and withstand the recoil of their mighty weapons.

Hamster Squirrel

Mutant rodents with acidic saliva, teeth as hard as granite, and a dangerous nether region. If they were not so volatile, some say that they could be domesticated…

Buckshots

Internal filtration membranes keep these Ghouls safe from the harmful effects of the drug of choice but do little to protect their enemies from the spread of their deadly weapons.

Here are some updates from the last two weeks:

Early Ham-Ham implementation: https://gyazo.com/86f0f62dd2460b52b0a423cd3764f47c

Ghoul Character: https://gyazo.com/852336a8db44009c8c8ce66a0d898dfd

Implementing rockets: https://gyazo.com/489bb48cd932bdca397bed9dee592a1b

Kill cam: https://gyazo.com/d37b717d2f0ba6ae493e040fefdefb0a

Critter cannon: https://gyazo.com/760e9934598ebee44e35cc1b72aa4646

 

 

Wow, we've come a long way! See more and wishlist Bite the Bullet on Steam!

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