Summoning system

I’ve finally put in the game the summoning system as a whole… It still needs some work (specially the effect, but I’ll leave that to the polish phase), but the system itself is 100% functional now!

Had to add a dissolve shader so I could fade in/out “solid” objects (instead of using alpha values)… It uses an improved Perlin noise shader (as seen in here, using just one octave), and a filter to clip the rendering on some places according to a threshold. This threshold is then driven by the effect system to change with time.

It’s pretty neat, actually, and there’s the big temptation of playing around with the system to get it looking better and better, but I have more important things to do, namely the hard work of balancing the upkeeps for maintaining control over the creatures…

The idea is that the lifeshaped creatures can only be kept under Grey’s control if he has enough “Resolve” to keep them that way… If Grey runs out of “Resolve”, he’ll lose control of the creatures and they’ll attack him… Not nice, specially during a battle!

Anyway, I’m having some difficulty balancing the equations on this, but fear not, I’ll get there… Upkeeps are trickier to manage than gear stats or creature power… it’s not as “direct”…

Anyway, back to work!