Currents of War 2025
Engine - Unity
Languages - C#, some Python for tools
A 'NPC Simulator' game made in Unity for the April 2025 itch.io gamejam 'Indie Game Clinic COLLAB JAM '25'
Since then, we've expanded it quite a bit!
You can play the older game jam submission for free in your browser,
Check out the Game Jam Release
If you'd like to support us,
You can find the further developed version released for sale on itch.io
With future plans if we find time/funds to keep working on it!
Buy & Download Currents of War on itch.io
The game jam was a collab jam, primarily consisting of 3 of us doing art and programming for Currents of War.
_ ellipsis9 - Programming; Background-Battle Logic using character/enemy stats like a RPG, end more
_ F2ptach - Programming & some Art assets; Events Handling, Player Input, and more
_ ProcStack(me) - Art & Visual Programming; character state machine shader, shop & item art, ui, and more
I set up the shop, drew the items & most of the shop with help on a couple assets, the adjustable ui, animated cursor, and characters.
I also wrote the code + shaders to handle animation & dynamically coloring the character's faces, hair, & armor.
For the art inspiration, I looked to -
Gameboy Advance games like Zelda Minish Cap,
Everything should be outlined with similar color hues blended!
Super Nintendo games like Secret of Mana & Final Fantasy 3/6,
Fantasy character designs with some reason for details
And Original Nintendo games like River City Ransom.
Character proportions and vibes.
I wanted to create a semi 'tacky' weapons shop for the style.
To give some room for gags & chicanery! I drew up most of the shop assets & many items done in a single night,
Just had some chiptune fusion tunes blasting and my huion screen-table going in photoshop.
Yes... I realize my age, but old habbits!
Felt good getting into pixel art, I've never done much of it before.
Was like my highschool photoshop exploration years all over again,
But a new musician this time.
yeah photoshop for pixel art, pencil & mask layers
use what you know best!
Then I isolated all the limbs & body parts of the characters on different layers in photoshop,
And used the Puppet Tool in After Effects to animate the idle breathe, walking, & talking cycles.
Exporting in Draft mode to keep no anti-aliasing on the pixel art.
Letting me animate & adjust quickly without having to draw out each frame.
One of the challenges was making sure the character's displayed with custom colors for their hair, face, armor, gloves/boots, and leggings.
I wrote a shader to handle the colorization of the character's face, hair, and armor.
Along with the sprite animation system to handle the character's idle, walk, and talk animations.
Running individual animation cycles/clips at their own FPS rates.
Neeing to write a custom editor script to allow the character's colors to be changed in Unity's Editor/Viewport,
And have it update in real-time for easier character creation.
Among other fun things like adding an animated cursor, outlines around items on hover, ui borders that auto size to the text and stay pixel perfect, among other things Give the game a try, it's a little game with some neat mechanics!
Try to make as much money as you can off these heroes coming to your shop!
Play the Game Jam Release in your browser!
Or support us with a purchase, Currents of War!
Engine - Unity
Languages - C#, some Python for tools
A 'NPC Simulator' game made in Unity for the April 2025 itch.io gamejam 'Indie Game Clinic COLLAB JAM '25'
Since then, we've expanded it quite a bit!
You can play the older game jam submission for free in your browser,
Check out the Game Jam Release
If you'd like to support us,
You can find the further developed version released for sale on itch.io
With future plans if we find time/funds to keep working on it!
Buy & Download Currents of War on itch.io
The game jam was a collab jam, primarily consisting of 3 of us doing art and programming for Currents of War.
_ ellipsis9 - Programming; Background-Battle Logic using character/enemy stats like a RPG, end more
_ F2ptach - Programming & some Art assets; Events Handling, Player Input, and more
_ ProcStack(me) - Art & Visual Programming; character state machine shader, shop & item art, ui, and more
I set up the shop, drew the items & most of the shop with help on a couple assets, the adjustable ui, animated cursor, and characters.
I also wrote the code + shaders to handle animation & dynamically coloring the character's faces, hair, & armor.
For the art inspiration, I looked to -
Gameboy Advance games like Zelda Minish Cap,
Everything should be outlined with similar color hues blended!
Super Nintendo games like Secret of Mana & Final Fantasy 3/6,
Fantasy character designs with some reason for details
And Original Nintendo games like River City Ransom.
Character proportions and vibes.
I wanted to create a semi 'tacky' weapons shop for the style.
To give some room for gags & chicanery! I drew up most of the shop assets & many items done in a single night,
Just had some chiptune fusion tunes blasting and my huion screen-table going in photoshop.
Yes... I realize my age, but old habbits!
Felt good getting into pixel art, I've never done much of it before.
Was like my highschool photoshop exploration years all over again,
But a new musician this time.
yeah photoshop for pixel art, pencil & mask layers
use what you know best!
Then I isolated all the limbs & body parts of the characters on different layers in photoshop,
And used the Puppet Tool in After Effects to animate the idle breathe, walking, & talking cycles.
Exporting in Draft mode to keep no anti-aliasing on the pixel art.
Letting me animate & adjust quickly without having to draw out each frame.
One of the challenges was making sure the character's displayed with custom colors for their hair, face, armor, gloves/boots, and leggings.
I wrote a shader to handle the colorization of the character's face, hair, and armor.
Along with the sprite animation system to handle the character's idle, walk, and talk animations.
Running individual animation cycles/clips at their own FPS rates.
Neeing to write a custom editor script to allow the character's colors to be changed in Unity's Editor/Viewport,
And have it update in real-time for easier character creation.
Among other fun things like adding an animated cursor, outlines around items on hover, ui borders that auto size to the text and stay pixel perfect, among other things Give the game a try, it's a little game with some neat mechanics!
Try to make as much money as you can off these heroes coming to your shop!
Play the Game Jam Release in your browser!
Or support us with a purchase, Currents of War!
procPromo Shader Pack 2022-2025
A Minecraft shader pack for Optifine & Iris
Languages - GLSL 1.2, 3.3, & 4.5 I started writing procPromo in the spring of 2022 to learn GLSL.
Figured, if I was already playing minecraft, might as well make it look cool too!
Like, while I built the sky villa and alien spore in the images.
I decided on a style inspired by the Minecraft Key or Promo art,
Writing a Texture Blur similar to Smart Blur in photoshop; smoothing regions of similar colors.
Then added block "edges" using Depth + Normals,
Created a 2-Pass Blur/Glow in post-processing.
And a Shadow Distortion system with biasing based on per-axis (X,Y) from player.
Shadows are fun to figure out in games,
But they are all circular or 'radial distance' from the player. But this is a block game!
How about 90-degree angle shadows??
Distorting the objects in space by their X & Y axis distance to the player/camera, instead of radial shadow maps,
Let me get much sharper shadows from blocks, similar to the shadows in Minecraft's promo art.
It was a fun experiment for shadowing,
But it has it's time and place;
Like in a block game.
A Minecraft shader pack for Optifine & Iris
Languages - GLSL 1.2, 3.3, & 4.5 I started writing procPromo in the spring of 2022 to learn GLSL.
Figured, if I was already playing minecraft, might as well make it look cool too!
Like, while I built the sky villa and alien spore in the images.
I decided on a style inspired by the Minecraft Key or Promo art,
Writing a Texture Blur similar to Smart Blur in photoshop; smoothing regions of similar colors.
Then added block "edges" using Depth + Normals,
Created a 2-Pass Blur/Glow in post-processing.
And a Shadow Distortion system with biasing based on per-axis (X,Y) from player.
Shadows are fun to figure out in games,
But they are all circular or 'radial distance' from the player. But this is a block game!
How about 90-degree angle shadows??
Distorting the objects in space by their X & Y axis distance to the player/camera, instead of radial shadow maps,
Let me get much sharper shadows from blocks, similar to the shadows in Minecraft's promo art.
It was a fun experiment for shadowing,
But it has it's time and place;
Like in a block game.