Creative Guide

Luna Replay allows you to change any visual element in a game to create unlimited variations and video experiences.

This guide highlights some of the most impactful changes you can make, in order to improve performance, but keep in mind, every game is different, and every game will have unique opportunities to be creative!

Tip: Looks for elements in the game that can have the biggest change on the user experience whilst not influencing the concept i.e the flow of events.

• Resolution
• Language
  • System Language - Automatic
  • Text overrides - Manual
• Camera Angle
• UI
• Colours
• Themes
• Characters and Objects
• Visual FX
• Combining Videos

Resolution

Luna Replay allows you to quickly create videos in any resolution. This means that you can create a single capture on a device of your choice, and have various outputs in any size for ad networks and platforms, without needed to re-record or make concessions in the output.

No development steps are required to unlock this feature. See more information in our guide on video and input scaling.

Language

You can quickly change the language of your video using Luna Replay with no need for editing. Not only does this reduce the time taken to create localised videos, but the quality of the video is maintained. Instead of changing language during the editing phase, the text is changed at the time of recording, and rendered the text natively in a game.

In order to change the language of the video, there are two main options. replay-videos/playground/create-video-set#system-language

System Language - Automatic

Luna supports the use of Unity's SystemLanguage (API reference). This means that if your game uses this API, you can change the language using a built-in drop down menu (see more for Unity and Creative Suite controls).

If you use another internal language system, then it is likely you can map this to SystemLanguage with relative ease.

Text overrides - Manual

If your game doesn't use any internal system to change language based on the user's device, then you can simply use Creative Suite Attributes to manually change the language of the text in your Replay videos.

Camera Angle

Replay allows you to create video captures that can be replayed with an identical sequence of events. One visual change that can have high impact on performance is camera angle.

We recommend creating several pre-arranged camera settings in Unity that can be quickly changed in Creative Suite to show the same gameplay sequence, from a different point of view.

Pro tip: You can take a selection of Replay videos with different camera angles and stich them together into one final edit. The transitions will be seamless, and it's a great way to engage the user.

Example

Code Sample

[LunaPlaygroundField("Camera Angle", 0, "Camera Settings")]
public CameraAngle camAngle;

public enum CameraAngle
{
    Default,
    BirdsEyeView
}

void Awake(){

    //Awake code
    SetCameraAngle();
}

public void SetCameraAngle()
{
    if (camAngle == CameraAngle.Default)
    {
        // Do Nothing
    }
    else if (camAngle == CameraAngle.BirdsEyeView)
    {

        // Implement changes to camera position and rotation
        // for birds eye view camera

    }
}

UI

Adding in UI elements such as a top banner or challenge text can allow you to quickly change the look and feel of your video and the audience you attract.

Adding in a marketing banner is a common use case, which allows you to quickly test captions.

Pro tip: You can test various fonts and emojis in your UI.

Example

Code Sample

[LunaPlaygroundField("Top Banner", 0, "UI")]
public GameObject topBanner;

[LunaPlaygroundField("Banner Text", 1, "UI")]
public String bannerText;


void Awake(){

    //Awake code
    if(topBanner){
    topBanner.SetActive(true);
    topBanner.GetComponent<Text>().text = bannerText;
    }
}

Colours

Changing the colours of elements in your game can enable you to create a visually new experience, without needing to re-record a capture. The ability to test colour with an identical video also allows you to measure performance and evaluate the market feedback, further influencing your launch process.

Below is a simple example of changing colours in a game.

Example

Code Sample

[LunaPlaygroundField("Main Colour", 0, "Character")]
public Color mainColor;

void Awake(){

    //Awake code
    mainCharacter.GetComponent<Renderer>().material.SetColor("_Color", mainColor);
}

Themes

Similar to colours, themes can have a large impact on your video experience and performance.

With themes, we recommend that you group together similar Colours/Objects/Visual FX to quickly change between them.

Example

Code Sample

[LunaPlaygroundField("Themes", 0, "General")]
public GameTheme theme;

public enum GameTheme
{
    Default,
    Blue
}

void Awake(){

    //Awake code
    SetTheme();
}

public void SetTheme()
{
    if (theme == GameTheme.Default)
    {
        // Do Nothing
    }
    else if (theme == GameTheme.Blue)
    {

        // Implement changes to colours and objects
        // for a blue theme

    }
}

Characters and Objects

Most games are written in such a way that characters and objects can be easily changed out without needing to rewrite any game logic.

If these objects don't impact the timeline of events in your game i.e. an animation doesn't impact the speed of a character, then they can be changed in a replay with great visual impact.

Example: Wheels

Example: Props

Example: Trails

Visual FX

With Replay, it's extremely easy to add Visual FX such as lighting, particle systems and UI elements to your videos. You will need to set these up in Unity and expose a control using Creative Suite attributes to enable and disable them.

Example

Code Sample

[LunaPlaygroundField("End Game Particles", 0, "VFX")]
public GameObject particlesActive;


void Awake(){

    //Awake code
    if(particlesActive){
    particles.SetActive(true);
    }
}

Combining Videos

As each replay video created from a capture shares a common timeline and series of events, combining several videos into one sequence is very simple, and can create new experiences for your videos!

In the example below, the character is changing hats.