Stayd
@Stayd3D
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Self-taught lighting artist, graphics programmer, and game developer. Very, very tired. He/They Flames of Old | AMNESIA '98 | Skyblivion
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Joined October 2019
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I'm gonna stick around and enjoy the dumpster-fire here a little while longer, but for the foreseeable future you'll be able to find me in the following places:
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Finally another comparison, this time Shaded Woods. Took quite a while to get just this one spot presentable, as this area is one of the roughest in the game.
Of particular note is the addition of more ruins, foliage, and a gap in the trees to frame the Shrine of Winter.
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I think I'm starting to enjoy the pain of editing particle effects. It continues to be arduous but the results are very much worth it.
Here's the Smelter Demon, with fancier particles and dramatic shadow-casting lights.
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DS2 is somewhat infamous for the design of its Hollows, being more like generic green zombies than the grim cadavers of DS1.
In researching the depiction of Hollowing throughout the series, I've found it... well, inconsistently consistent.
A Thread.
1/24
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@ellewasamistake
Not strictly a shitpost, but "Do you think the reason God stays in Heaven is because he's afraid of what he created here on Earth?", a line from Spy Kids 2 delivered by Steve Buscemi in a labcoat, has become a load-bearing pillar of my creative psyche like few things have.
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My favorite thing in any and all From games is when there's a normally hostile enemy just hangin' out. A fucked up rotting dog just sittin' on a rock enjoying the sun, a shrivelled dead guy with no face just lookin' at a cool bug he found. Pastoral scenes, lads vibin' to the end.
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Been cleaning up a lot of old shader code recently, and Dark Souls 2 is trending, so it seems like a good time to show off some ~water~
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I lied when I said I haven't had much to show, I've actually been working on the Giants' Memories.
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Finally getting around to finishing the new resin effects, complete with secondary particles and fancy trails, very much inspired by Bloodborne's fantastic weapon effects.
Charcoal Pine Resin:
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Think it's about time I used this page to show progress on my DS2 lighting mod.
I had wanted my first few posts here to be nice eye-grabbing before/afters of the mod, but inexplicably I can't load the original files to do that, so we're stuck with current-progress shots for now.
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Very inconsiderate of Miyazaki to release Elden Ring right when I moved out. More than ever I need to get work done at a consistent pace, but every time I sit down to work I just go,
"maybe I'll play a bit of Elden Game first :)"
and 15 minutes later I've been playing for 8 hours
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DS2 has a really neat and wildly under-used feature called VolumeFog that lets you fill arbitrary regions of levels with fog. This has allowed me to add some really nice atmospheric effects like you see here.
(with fog volumes <> without)
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Finished something I'm rather proud of today, the first fully custom item I've added to the game: the Brightstone Ring.
Has a unique script, particle effect, description, and icon (repurposed from a cut DS1 icon, might replace with something better in future).
[1/4]
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Apologies for no Screenshot Saturday this week, I literally slept through Saturday.
As recompense:
In working on the Brightstone Ring I finally figured out a way to add lights to weapons. My lifelong dream of making the MLGS/BMGS cast light is at long last realised.
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FAQ for my convenience and yours:
Q: What is this?
A: Graphics mod for DS2.
Q: When is release?
A: Not soon.
Q: Where will release be?
A: Probably Nexus.
Q: Where can I track progress?
A: Here or on Twitch (link in profile).
Q: Are you doing the whole game?
A: Yes.
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Apologies for the relative lack of updates lately, gonna have some very cool stuff to show Soon™️
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Someone on Discord recommended that I post regular screenshots to keep this page alive even when I don't have big comparisons or stuff to show, and I think that's a pretty good idea.
So uh, Screenshot Saturday.
Castle Drangleic.
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It's easy to think of Hollows as zombies by another name, but they're far more than that, at least in DS1.
Less "rotten corpse" and more "emaciated husk," Hollows aren't rotting because they're dead, they're wasting away because they shouldn't be alive anymore.
2/24
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Some long-overdue work on the petrified forest of Things Betwixt.
Really starting to dig the feel of this place.
Before <-> After
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At long last, I've restored From Software's most daring and subversive gameplay innovation, all but forgotten since the bygone era of Demon's Souls (2009).
The slowest fucking ladder climbing imaginable.
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Managed to trim off a few hundred followers total, and actually gained quite a few in the process, so I consider this operation a rousing success.
Happy Pride to all my malewifes, shimbos, gendervoids, Bloodborne worms, HRT Coffin truthers, and all local flavors and varieties.
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fuck it I'm just gonna throw out some small posts about whatever until any part of me starts working correctly again
Found a decent way to mitigate particles bleeding into the lightshaft effect, which caused these really distracting bright streaks. Not a 100% fix, but palatable.
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Working on implementing hit-shake. Grossly exaggerated here for testing purposes, the actual effect will be pretty subtle.
Although there is something compelling about that big beefy rumble.
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Merry Christmas and happy holidays from Majula.
Drangleic sure gets cold this time of year.
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New firestorm vfx because I finally got something resembling a convenient workflow together for making comparison clips relatively painlessly.
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Editing particle effects is very arduous, but I managed to add lights to the boss flames that appear on the map of Drangleic. So, as you make progress on your journey this dark abandoned basement gradually fills with a pleasant warm light.
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Sorry for the silence, was hoping to have something big to show soon but everything cool is taking ages to finish.
So, a small thing: most corpses in FoFG are now royal soldiers, complete with proper weapons/shields.
Adds context to the area and humanizes the enemies you fight.
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Well except for Hollow Soldiers, who for some reason have these goof-ass googly eyes going on, which someone probably meant to black out at some point but never did.
What wonders must lie behind those eyes;
what realms of imagination and splendor.
9/24
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Haven't had much to show lately because I've mostly been figuring out gameplay-related params, so here's some zero-context screenshots I took while testing various things.
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Posting late to inform you that the Undead Crypt wall-ghosts are fully textured, and mildly terrifying, without the ghost effect.
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can you tell I've completely lost my sense of time yet
Screenshot Saturday.
Flexile Sentry fight.
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Showed this briefly on stream the other day, but I managed to restore the spell aiming feature from the Network Test.
Functionally it's the same as aiming with binoculars, but slightly more convenient, and has the neat magic reticle.
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In my unintended quest to eliminate pointless L2's, I've added a new shoulder-check move to crossbows.
Not terribly strong, but pretty fun to use and a good way to conserve bolts.
Looking forward to extreme crossbow-only runs.
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New MLGS blade effect, because I wasn't satisfied with just having it flicker to differentiate it from BMGS.
This uses yet another underused rendering feature called EmissiveFlow, where the glow texture is animated according to a vector map, which allows for really nice movement.
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Figured out how to add sfx to NPCs, so now Benhart's version of the BMGS glows too. This actually turned out to be quite a bit easier than doing the same for the player version, since NPC weapons are just part of their model.
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Another effect that was borked in Scholar is the Old Iron King's glowy bits, which used emissive flow in the original release but were puzzlingly static in Scholar. Material was still set up for it, the flow speed was just set to 0 by mistake. I've since fixed it, of course.
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Noticing a few undesirables skulking about, and it's high-time I flush out the ol' woodworks, so for your consideration:
Black lives matter.
Trans rights are human rights, and love is love.
Fuck fascists, capitalists, cops, and TERFs.
There will be no tolerance for intolerance.
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Further adventures in adding lights to particle systems, feat. messages, bloodstains, and Warmth.
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This time last year I released a mod called AMNESIA '98, which makes Amnesia: The Dark Descent look and sound like a PS1 game. I'm quite proud of it, and the soundtrack was done by a friend of mine, so check it out if you want some nostalgic spooks:
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Here's a quick and unexpected thing I found:
Seems someone forgot to make the MLGS glow. Had a glow texture and everything, the material just wasn't set up to use it. Especially weird since the BMGS glows already, and that's a fake.
1. MLGS - 2. Fixed MLGS - 3. BMGS
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It may not look like it, but the state of these pauldrons marks a momentous occasion.
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I could delve deeper into the thematic and borderline-existential significance of this distinction, but honestly even DS1 played pretty loose with the exact mechanics of Undeath depending on what they were going for at any given moment, so the distinction itself will do.
3/24
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(Hopefully) last major update on Heide.
Went back and looked at original DS2's Heide and found the old dusk vibe very nice (albeit not very striking). So I've reworked it again, now trying to keep the best of both versions.
1. Current Heide - 2. Original Heide - 3. SotFS Heide
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As per tradition I wandered off and started messing with other things before explaining what these "promising developments" actually are, so here's that:
I can now fully configure rendering parameters for new map pieces, which allows for sophisticated setups like this room here.
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I finally caved and made the lock-on reticle smaller, in the style of BB/DS3.
In the past I'd been adamant that the DS1/2 circular reticle is fine and doesn't need to be changed, but recently I found myself quite annoyed by just how much it covers enemies. Now, I can't go back.
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I managed to only sleep through most of Saturday this time.
Fire Keepers' Dwelling
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DS2 has a neat system for creating visual variants of the same enemy by disabling and tinting different parts of their mesh, supporting up to 8 configurable variants. This means you don't need a different set of params for each variant, you just set a 0–7 index per-enemy.
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Happy to report that I am already having fun making new special attacks :)
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Newly reworked fog gate vfx. I've restored the refraction effect from the Network Test version, added z-feathering so there's no hard seams along the edge, changed particle blending mode so there's no sorting artifacts, and added a gentle downward motion to the entire thing.
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A mood for the evening, and a small preview of something I'm working on.
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Thank you.
You've helped me to understand why it's so important that we continue to struggle, even when it feels like fate would prefer otherwise.
I only wish I could have told you that in person.
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Digressing~
We can look for consistent features among DS1's Hollows to get some sort of "core" to their design.
First: their skin, sunken against bone and corded with veins. This is what I mean when I say "wasting away," they're practically shriveling into skeletons.
4/24
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After literal months of head-scratching I've finally managed to fix the Hollow torch vfx, which was one of the few visual regressions in Scholar. In the original release they cast light like you would expect, but in Scholar the light was absent, which of course looked pretty bad.
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That thing that I was working on: DS1-style bonfire flames, recreated to the best of my ability with the resources available.
Couldn't get trails on the orbiting embers or recreate the flame curls at the base, but otherwise very happy with it.
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Making a separate post from the previous one for the singular purpose of informing you that holy fuck Wellager looks so fucking good with the new ghost effect
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It's often said the eyes are the window to the soul, as humans read emotion from even extremely subtle movements in and around the eyes.
The significance of Hollows having black eyes should be obvious: there's nothing to read, nothing to feel. Nothing human left inside.
8/24
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Note as well how often the teeth are exposed. These guys aren't snarling, their skin is just so shriveled that their lips have receded to nothing.
Just imagine that breath- one shudders to think.
5/24
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I believe I have found The Most Cursed Bevel In Dark Souls 2. I can't stop looking at it, it's like a knot you can't figure out how to untangle.
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And... that's pretty much it.
This probably didn't need to be a 24-tweet thread.
DARK SOULS II: LESS GREEN, MORE GOTH
I may post some more comparisons as I get to them, but not if they're boring due to me being Literally Too Good At My Job.
24/24
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Next is, to me, a most important detail: the eyes, or lack thereof.
The eye sockets are either completely empty or made ambiguously dark with heavy shadowing. Usually there's a small red glow burning in the sockets- though not always, and it isn't exclusive to Hollows.
7/24
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Unsurprisingly, DS3's Hollows retain largely the same features as DS1's, with slight alterations.
Veins are far less exaggerated, skin is either chalk-white or dark grey, and eye sockets are explicitly empty instead of shaded. Otherwise, a familiarly Hollow face.
12/24
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I figured it out, the problem was I was dumb the whole time.
Now I can swap back to unmodified files at will, so expect a lot of comparisons in the near future.
Starting with my current favorite, Shrine of Amana.
(Left is before, right is after)
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In honour of pride month I would like to present to you something very near and dear to my heart.
The Official DS2 Himbo (+ lads) Appreciation Thread.
(only includes NPCs, not bosses or enemies)
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Crystal lizards now glow and emit light, similar to how they looked in DS3.
In DS1 there was no glow system and dynamic lights were very limited, but they still had a sparkly particle effect, meaning up until now DS2 has had The Most Boring Crystal Lizards.
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Dark Souls 2 has a completely unused visual effect called Star Glare which, to my knowledge, has never been seen before. My guess is it was only ever intended for use in cutscenes, as it's pretty distracting otherwise.
Below are some (bad) examples of how it could be used.
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In terms of color, their skin ranges from warm-grey up to a dull red. One gets the impression any natural pigment has faded, as what warmth does remain is heavily desaturated, not unlike meat drained of blood and left to age horribly.
You may notice that they aren't green.
6/24
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Screenshot Saturday is really making it painfully clear just how infrequently I normally post here.
Grave of Saints.
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Something that is equal parts reassuring and vexing is seeing item or spell ideas I've had for DS2 show up in Elden Ring.
On the one hand, it's nice to know that I'm on the right wavelength. On the other, when people see them in my mod they'll think I just copied Elden Ring :V
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There are some inexplicable outliers in DS1 though, notably in Blighttown. These big boys have little white triangle eyes, and the other boys are just... I dunno fuckin' weird, in general? Never been sure what their deal is, just nasty dudes.
11/24
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...because DS2 also has Hollows that look like this:
Chalky or desaturated skin?
Receding lips and exposed teeth?
Dark, empty eye sockets?
Sometimes all of these at once!?
In MY Dark Souls 2???
15/24
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Some of you may know that Cale is depicted in concept art as having a rather dapper mustache, which is mysteriously absent in-game. Turns out, it was on his model the whole time, it just wasn't set to render.
He looks a good deal more respectable with it, methinks.
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Just the other day we hit $200/month on my Patreon, and I would like to take this moment to thank all of you for your continued support on this weird and massive endeavor of mine. It is genuinely humbling, and I'm glad to see people still care about this busted-ass game.
Cheers.
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Of particular note, all of this applies to the player character as well. Not only does your skin texture change when Hollow, but your character is made physically thinner to look more skeletal, and your eyes are blacked out completely.
10/24
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To summarize, the "core" aesthetic features of Hollowing in DS1/3 (by my reckoning) are as follows:
- Sunken/shriveled skin, desaturated or pallid
- Skeletal features, nose & lips diminished or gone
- Eyes either shadowed or missing entirely
Easy, right?
13/24
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So, what about DS2, then?
If you ask just about anyone what Hollows look like in DS2, this is what they'll be picturing:
Green, zombie-lookin' dudes with blank white eyes, sometimes bony but nowhere near the shriveled skeletons of yore.
That isn't the whole story though,
14/24
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