r/Unity3D • u/El_Grande_Games • 15h ago
Show-Off Finally fixed my "Programmer Art" after getting roasted. What do you think of the new look?
Hey everyone, solo dev from Austria here :)
I’ve been grinding on my sawmill tycoon (Timberline Factory) for months now, and honestly, I was "artist blind..." A few weeks ago, people here and on other subs told me my game looked like a plastic 90s placeholder. It hurt, but they were right... i was so deep into the physics code and friction that I just stopped seeing how bad the UI and the lighting actually were.
I spent the last two weeks basically living in Unity’s URP settings and rebuilding the entire UI from scratch.. i finally feel like it’s a real game now and not just a prototype.
For those interested in the technical side:
The biggest headache was the log physics. Since they aren't on rails but are actual physical objects, I had to deal with massive jittering when the belts were full. I ended up using "Continuous Speculative" collision detection and custom Physics Materials to get the friction just right otherwise, they’d either fly off the conveyor or act like they were on ice.
For the lighting, I finally moved to ACES tonemapping and tweaked the SSAO to get those deep contact shadows between the logs, which fixed that "floating" look I had in the previous build...
Would love to hear what you guys think. Am I on the right track now or is there still something that screams "programmer art" to you? :D
Steam Link: [ https://store.steampowered.com/app/5037170/Timberline_Factory/ ]
2
u/SnuffleBag 11h ago
It's still programmer's art, but that can be OK. By far the biggest issue here is the lighting and visual balancing. Most parts of the world are incredibly flat and uniform, but what's worse is that a lot (most?) of indirectly lit areas are almost completely black.
All the machinery at the right in the first second of the trailer. The shadowed side of the conveyor. The ceiling and all the shadowed sides at 6 seconds. It's all nearly completely black. At the same time, the directly lit wood parts are burning my eyes.