Hello again! I would like to start by confessing that in the past weeks I didn't work on the game that much. I mean there some changes but most of them were purely cosmetic. So this devlog will be shorter than the previous one.
With that out of the way, I would like share some good news as the next update may be a playable demo, but only time will tell.
The first change I made was regarding the UI, if you remember in the previous devlog I showed some of the plans I had for the UI.
Here's a quick reminder.
Those images were from Figma and as you can see the logo and the panels should cast shadows into the background. Godot already has a system for creating 2D directional shadows, that involves lights (DirectionalLight2D) and shadow casters (LightOccluder2D).
The problem is that the LightOccluder2D node requires a polygon or in other words I would have to manually draw the shape of the object casting the shadows.
For UI panels that was easy as their shape was known and very simple, but for more complex shapes, like the logo, that would be significantly harder, if not impossible, to manually code their shadow caster's shape.
But before I decided to scrap the shadow effect, at least for the game's logo, I found a workaround as the node Sprite2D has a built-in option for building a LightOccluder2D from it's texture.
A little hidden if you ask me.
Now I could put the new logo to the test and modesty aside it looked way better than the previous one.
Yes a new logo means the game may finally have a name.
Now you may be wondering how to pronounce and why the name 4XX:
Another aspect I changed was the in game background, previously the game happened on an endless and boring gray void. Now we have some nice mountains and a beautiful lake.
Took me a while to make and the final result looks quite good.
Again modesty aside the new background looks really good, it even has a parallax effect. I will not explain it in detail as it would require a devlog just by itself.
I found a way to make the transitions between regular movement and the legally distinct rotational action smoother. The only down side is that it introduces a bit of lag to the aim.
So to properly test that lag I will try to put together a small level. I mean there is no point in trying to fix it if it doesn't affect the actual gameplay.
The transitions are smother but I need to work on the timings.
And that's all for today. Maybe next time you will be able to play the game.