Greetings and salutations!
This week's screenshot shows some changes to the "Bright Realm":
The week just past was a somewhat varied one! There was work on technical matters, on polish, on UI elements, and more besides:
Monday, January 17. 2022
A Realm of Heat and Light
Summary: In which the implementation of saving-and-loading is begun; an enemy gains more shots; weapons see some polish; the "Bright Realm" is updated; a message-box is added; the key-binding UI is (hopefully) completed; and an in-game menu is implemented.
Greetings and salutations!
This week's screenshot shows some changes to the "Bright Realm":
The week just past was a somewhat varied one! There was work on technical matters, on polish, on UI elements, and more besides:
Greetings and salutations!
This week's screenshot shows some changes to the "Bright Realm":
The week just past was a somewhat varied one! There was work on technical matters, on polish, on UI elements, and more besides:
To start with, the technical: I have begun work on saving and loading!
It's still very much a work-in-progress, but I can now at least save and restore a number of elements, such as enemies and the player's state, with the latter including the various "inventories".
Thus far the process has proven somewhat tricky, I'll confess, and indeed, has involved a variety of (fairly minor) internal changes.
Conversely, my "GameSaver" module--initially written ages ago, albeit with many changes over time--has continued to prove invaluable, I daresay. I do think that it makes these matters rather easier than I fear that they might otherwise be!
Moving on to matters of gameplay, in the week just past I applied some "upgrades" to the previously-shown "skeletal spike-shooter" enemy: it now produces more spikes when shooting, and even more on death! >:D
On the polish side, in the week just past I implemented some simple changes to some of the "weapons" in the game.
For one, I updated the effects used by the "lightning flail" spell, specifically those that occur when it impacts something.
More broadly than that, I implemented "firing effects" for weapons. For now I've added them only to certain of the player-spells (as far as I recall), although I may well add further to various enemy attacks, too.
Here, for one, is the effect applied to the player's baseline "spreadfire" spell:
Another element that saw changes in the week just past was the "Bright Realm". This is, essentially, the game's equivalent of "hyperspace": it's the plane of heat and light onto which suns open in the game's setting--and it thus allows one to skip from one solar-system to another via their suns.
Previously, this was depicted as being bounded by darkness, and the player on approaching the edge of the play-area was wrapped around to the opposite side, with a white-out effect.
However, this didn't fit well with my intentions for the place: it's not a little pocket-dimension, but a vast universe.
So, in the week just past I changed its depiction: now, as shown in the first screenshot above, it renders as white from edge to edge.
However, as it's still useful for the player to know where the boundary of exploration lies, there's now a dashed line indicating that limit.
Further, on approaching the boundary, the player is now met with a short message indicating a reason for their character to not go flying beyond it.
And that border-message is displayed via a new bit of UI: a simple popup that is now used to display such messages.
Remaining with UI elements, in the week just past I implemented a simple in-game menu:
And furthermore, I finished (I think) the key-binding UI: there are now proper buttons for all elements, I believe!
And there were a variety of things done in the week just past that don't seem worth detailing here: the ability to fade to a colour in the post-process shader; design-doc work; even a list of sound effects that I intend be added; and more besides!
That, then, is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^
It's still very much a work-in-progress, but I can now at least save and restore a number of elements, such as enemies and the player's state, with the latter including the various "inventories".
Thus far the process has proven somewhat tricky, I'll confess, and indeed, has involved a variety of (fairly minor) internal changes.
Conversely, my "GameSaver" module--initially written ages ago, albeit with many changes over time--has continued to prove invaluable, I daresay. I do think that it makes these matters rather easier than I fear that they might otherwise be!
Moving on to matters of gameplay, in the week just past I applied some "upgrades" to the previously-shown "skeletal spike-shooter" enemy: it now produces more spikes when shooting, and even more on death! >:D
On the polish side, in the week just past I implemented some simple changes to some of the "weapons" in the game.
For one, I updated the effects used by the "lightning flail" spell, specifically those that occur when it impacts something.
More broadly than that, I implemented "firing effects" for weapons. For now I've added them only to certain of the player-spells (as far as I recall), although I may well add further to various enemy attacks, too.
Here, for one, is the effect applied to the player's baseline "spreadfire" spell:
Another element that saw changes in the week just past was the "Bright Realm". This is, essentially, the game's equivalent of "hyperspace": it's the plane of heat and light onto which suns open in the game's setting--and it thus allows one to skip from one solar-system to another via their suns.
Previously, this was depicted as being bounded by darkness, and the player on approaching the edge of the play-area was wrapped around to the opposite side, with a white-out effect.
However, this didn't fit well with my intentions for the place: it's not a little pocket-dimension, but a vast universe.
So, in the week just past I changed its depiction: now, as shown in the first screenshot above, it renders as white from edge to edge.
However, as it's still useful for the player to know where the boundary of exploration lies, there's now a dashed line indicating that limit.
Further, on approaching the boundary, the player is now met with a short message indicating a reason for their character to not go flying beyond it.
And that border-message is displayed via a new bit of UI: a simple popup that is now used to display such messages.
Remaining with UI elements, in the week just past I implemented a simple in-game menu:
And furthermore, I finished (I think) the key-binding UI: there are now proper buttons for all elements, I believe!
And there were a variety of things done in the week just past that don't seem worth detailing here: the ability to fade to a colour in the post-process shader; design-doc work; even a list of sound effects that I intend be added; and more besides!
That, then, is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^
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