Greetings, Taernians!
In the September DevBlog, we’re covering a topic Broken Ranks players have been eagerly waiting for for a long time, and those of you who remember The Pride of Taern (or “2D”, if you prefer) know exactly what we’re talking about. It’s time for pigments and gear dyeing.
Before you start wondering what color you’ll dye your favorite armor, we want to tell you how the system works under the hood, what we already have, what we don’t have yet, and what we still need to decide.
How Does It Actually Work?
For dyeing to work properly, it isn’t enough to simply “repaint” the model with the selected color. That would look terrible—all the surface details would disappear, and the equipment would turn into a flat, uniformly colored blob. That’s why our shader works differently: it changes the hue without altering the brightness of the texels (texture pixels). This preserves the texture detail, shadows, gloss—everything. Only the color itself changes.
That’s only the beginning, because to make dyeing truly interesting, we’ve initially divided the models into separate areas, each of which can be colored independently. How does it work? We use an additional texture called an ID map, which tells the shader: “color this part purple, that one gray, and this one gold.” The boundaries between the areas are defined by the texture itself, giving us a lot of freedom in how precisely they can be mapped out.
There’s also some potential in an additional property of the system: black on the color map acts as a kind of “mute” for the effect—it darkens the texels and reduces the pigment’s influence in that area. This does give us more possibilities, but it needs to be used carefully, as this kind of texture simply takes up much more device memory.
Technically speaking, we have four texture channels at our disposal—R, G, and B, giving us three color segments, plus the Alpha channel, which we’re keeping in reserve for now. At the moment, we’re considering using it for a fourth area or for another parameter modifying the dyeing effect—perhaps selective brightening or darkening. We haven’t made a final decision yet.
Diffuse map: [screen - diffuse map]
ID map: [screen - color map]
We also use the same dyeing system to change character skin color. This allows us to reduce the game’s size and speed up gear production. Two problems solved with a single tool.
What We Already Have and What We’re Still Testing
We’re currently testing the solutions we’ve implemented. We’re checking whether the results achievable with this method are satisfactory enough and, for example, whether we’ll be able to recreate some of the equipment color variants that already exist in the game. And to be completely upfront, not everything will be possible. Take the Plague Doctor Armor, for example—it contains too many differently colored elements to reproduce them using this method. There may be more cases like this.
An attempt to replace an existing color variant using the shader:
General System Assumptions
As for the item used to change colors and the dyeing mechanic itself, we already have a few preliminary ideas. At the moment, we’re considering making Pigments available for purchase and/or as rewards. In short, the item will allow you to change the color of a specific element or the entire piece of equipment, with a predefined color palette presented as swatches—at this stage, we’re considering 2–5 options.
We’re also considering dividing equipment into 2–3 dyeable areas—for example, textiles, metal fittings, decorative elements, and similar components. Each of them could be colored separately, which should provide quite a lot of customization options. There is one limitation worth keeping in mind: equipment that includes parts of the character’s body has one channel reserved for skin color, so the number of available color segments is reduced by one.
What Do We Still Need to Decide?
We don’t want to pretend that everything is already completely finalized. There are still several open questions. For example, we need to decide what to do with the existing equipment color variants—or, more precisely, how the new system should interact with them. We’re also considering whether the number of channels available for a given item should be fixed or variable. And finally, there’s the gameplay side of the system: how players will interact with equipment dyeing, what the interface will look like, and where the whole feature will fit within the game.
What About Work in Other Areas?
Of course, gear dyeing isn’t the only thing we’re working on. To give you a broader picture:
- Guilds are nearing completion. They’ll arrive with a full package of changes and permissions, including those based on your suggestions.
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The new low-level boss—Goblin—is almost ready. Something for those who remember what it’s like to start from scratch.
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The refreshed Alaril—the area around the Inn will be given new life. We’re nearing completion here as well.
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At the same time, we’re continuing work on a new region with a boss instance for level 100+ characters.
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The Party Finder, which we discussed in the July DevBlog, is already starting to take shape.
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FTUE (First-Time User Experience)—we’re stepping up work on the activity system for new players to make getting into the game’s meta more engaging and rewarding.
- Infrastructure and game analytics for the Android version of Broken Ranks—technical preparations for the global mobile launch are continuing behind the scenes.
- New skins—we’re working on more sets. We hope they’ll not only suit your tastes but also pleasantly surprise you.
One thing will have to wait a little longer—the potion rework. We’ve identified enough complexity and potential risks in this area that we can’t afford to take shortcuts.
That’s all for today :) Gear dyeing still has some way to go, but the foundations are already in place and, from our perspective, things are looking promising. Until next time!
