Planning on keeping a devlog, in part because this is a particularly fun/unique jam (at least for me). So here goes.
Lighting is a big issue, especially with performance in the browser. Killer stealth experiences don't just need awesome level layouts (an issue I'll have to tackle at some point), but the lighting to match it so you can read what a good hiding spot is. This is particularly true where the game is focused on light bulbs, you make your own shadows and recharge in the light.
Sampling pixels off the GPU just isn't going to be an option, so I'm working on some ideas to keep cool visuals but not rely directly on shadows for visibility stats. Thief pulled this off on old hardware, so I'm starting by exploring how they did it. The challenge is it scales by light and by shadowcasting renderers, so clever light placement alone doesn't necessarily fix it if I want some engaging choices of what to extinguish. Raycasting? Swapping light maps? The latter is definitely going to hit some memory constraints unless I bake my own with a different representation than Unity's default.
Still thinking it through, but to make it quick to iterate I'm starting with a calibration hall and a stress field that will let me rapidly test both how well the visuals match the visibility meter and the performance in a WebGL build.
