My computer is starting to fall apart, which slows down things. Hopefully I get the version 0.5.2 out before I’m forced to get a new one. For the next release, there are plenty of small things going on that are harder to explain than fix. But fortunately something visual too.
I recently found a suitable asset to replace the previous placeholder lens flares: SRP Lens Flare, a free product in Unity’s asset store that is well worth advertising. With a little customization, I got pretty much what I was after, and now the sun and artificial lights look like they should.
There was also a glitch with the shadows. Hardly noticeable one, but irritating when found. Arena geometry that is never visible in the top-down view was culled from the battle camera by assigning it with a special layer. This geometry included the arena's outer walls. In Unity, only visible layers seem to cast shadows, which made sunlight leak to the arena (see left image below). Fixing was easy: just a change to the geometry's layer. But of course, larger shadows darkened the arena, which had to be compensated by increasing ambient light. Hopefully this doesn’t reintroduce the brightness balancing problems I used to have. Image on the right shows what the shadows should look like.
I also redesigned the crosshair and made it simpler, which I will tell more about in the future. And I created a Twitter-page! As I’ve never been much into social media, the next thing is to figure out what the heck I should do there...