GPU Effects - 2.3 Launch Week - Day 4

Owlbear Rodeo 2.3 is coming October 9th and to celebrate the release we’ll be posting a new blog post everyday until release. Each post will cover a brand new feature made possible by our new rendering engine we’re calling Warp Core. Warp Core is built from the ground up to provide outstanding speed, cross-platform compatibility and beautiful visuals for a modern VTT experience.

The previous three posts focused on support for larger maps and scenes as well as new dynamic fog options.

For this launch week post we have exciting new options for extensions to create beautiful realtime effects.

Since the launch of Owlbear Rodeo 2.0 and the support for animated maps we’ve seen some great examples of adding a wow factor to your games. With the launch of Warp Core we want to take this to the next level.

While animated maps are great they have some limitations. First, once you upload one you can’t change it in real-time. Because of this you are stuck with a simple looping animation. If you wanted the rain storm to get more intense over time you would have to upload multiple maps and swap them out as the battle went on. Secondly it can be hard to find animated maps, there are some great animated map creators but there are quite a lot more static maps available online.

To help fix this we have a new option available to extensions called Effects. With an Effect an extension can program directly into the Warp Core pipeline using a GPU shader.

To showcase this new functionality we created a new first-party extension called Weather that allows you to add fully customisable weather effects to any map.

Once Weather is installed the GM can select any map and click Add Weather to add a weather effect.

Once this is done you can choose from six different weather conditions. Since these are all being procedurally generated we offer a range of customisation for you to match exactly the feel of your encounter. You can change the direction and how fast the wind is as well as how heavy the current weather is. So if you only need a light shower then set the cover and wind to their minimum but if you want a massive storm you can max them both out. You can even do this as the battle progresses for an even more dynamic encounter.

With these settings the Weather extension has upwards of 600 different visual options which would be impossible to support if we were simply overlaying a transparent video over the canvas.

Below is a showcase of some of our favourites.

The Effects system isn’t just limited to weather either so we can’t wait to see what third-party developers use it for. With the launch of Warp Core the Weather extension will be available for free to all our users. It is also available as open source so third-party developers can also use it as inspiration or a base to add their own functionality.

As we get closer to the release of Warp Core we just want to thank all our supporters. It’s mind boggling to think how far Owlbear Rodeo has come over the last four years. From the three of us on the Owlbear Rodeo team, thanks! Owlbear Rodeo 2.3 will be released tomorrow so stay tuned!