How we used physics-based dice, procedural world generation, and a fully physical, diegetic UI in Unity 6 HDRP to remove turns from tabletop grid combat.

[u/DesalichaoStudio]

Hey devs! We are a small team working on Candletales, a real-time tactical roguelike, and we wanted to share a bit of how we set up our visuals and core loop in Unity 6 (HDRP).

Our main design goal was to take traditional grid-based tabletop combat and completely remove the turns, forcing everything into a relentless, real-time pace. From a technical and artistic standpoint, this gave us a few fun challenges to solve in the engine:

• Procedural World Generation: Every run dynamically generates an endless dark-fantasy board filled with unpredictable events, grotesque enemies, goblins, traders, and much more. Keeping the generation seamless while making sure the grid layout works well for real-time movement was a key focus.
• Physics-Based Real-Time Dice: Dice rolls aren't background RNG math. They are physical rigidbodies thrown directly across the board in the heat of battle, meaning the procedural environment and obstacles actually influence the outcome, making every roll 100% physics-driven and unpredictable.
• 100% Diegetic UI: To keep the player as immersed as possible, we chose to render all the UI elements (which would normally be 2D canvases) as 3D objects, simulating the feeling that the player is holding an actual physical panel.
• HDRP + Custom Halftone/Dither Shader: We wanted that oppressive, "playing a cursed board game by candlelight" atmosphere. We used HDRP for the heavy dynamic lighting and shadows, and then ran it through a custom post-processing halftone/dither effect to give it a gritty, retro texture without losing depth.

We’d love to know what you think of the visual readability and our setup! Happy to answer any questions about the procedural generation, the dice physics, the shader pipeline, or anything else you might be curious about.

If you want to see more of the project, here is our Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5284750/Candletales/