Summary:
In which the Autumn Moon section of the demo begins to see "walls"; particle systems can have independent emission sources; a trail is added to the Autumn Moon section of the demo; leaf-pile spawners are, I think, complete; Centipedes become smaller and faster; spore-clouds slow the player more; and Spitting Snakes gain a status effect.
Greetings and salutations!
This week's screenshot shows a start to some "walls" for the Autumn Moon:
The week just past was perhaps largely a visual one, but with some gameplay stuff done too:
As shown above, work continued in the week just past on the Autumn Moon.
In that screenshot you can see a few bare trees, and it's of such as these that I intend to build the "walls" of the Autumn Moon--or at least within the section that's represented in the new demo.
That said, this is still a work-in-progress--hence there being only a few, and only in a single rank.
Remaining with the appearance of this region, in the week just past I set in place a player-trail for the area.
Now, amongst the drifts of fallen leaves it doesn't make much sense to me to have a trail of dust or other such particulate. Instead, it makes sense to me to have a trail of leaves, kicked up by the player's passage. And the obvious way to do this (to my mind) is via a particle system.
... Except that my particle class didn't support particle systems that "left particles behind" as they moved.
In short, it emitted particles relative to its parent-node, and updated them relative to the same node. Thus offsetting the parent-node would offset all particles with it.
So, in the week just past I set about implementing a way of "leaving particles behind"!
Specifically, the particle class can now take an optional node that, if given, is used as the emission source for the system--while particle updating remains relative to the parent-node. Thus the parent-node can remain stationary while the emission-node is moved--thus resulting in particles that emit from a moving point, but that aren't offset with it!
And indeed, with that I now have a simple "trail of leaves" effect for the Autumn Moon!
And shading now from visual to gameplay changes, in the week just past I finished off (I believe) the leaf-pile spawners that I recall that I mentioned last week.
Some of this addressed their appearance: they're now a little brighter, and skewed to suggest three-dimensionality, and furthermore load their models from the level-file.
And some of this addressed their gameplay mechanics: they now have time-based spawning, and apply a limit to that spawning based on the number of centipedes present.
Speaking of gameplay, I made a few changes to the creatures of the Autumn Moon in the week just past: the Centipedes are now smaller and faster, while the spore-clouds applied by the Spore Mushrooms slow the player a bit more.
On a similar note, but moving away from the Autumn Moon, the Spitting Snakes of the Serpent Moon now apply a "blinding" effect to the player when their venom strikes, and have had a small update to their aiming (a simplification of it, in fact).
And finally, there were a few changes made in the week just past that don't seem worth detailing here: line of sight for the Autumn Moon section of the demo; some updates to room-trails; and some experimentation--not kept in the end--with normal-mapping in the "basic game-object" shader.
That, then, is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^