This month has been quite a busy one. We have been getting a lot done as we want to release the new demo before October. Most of the levels of Chapter 1 have been created, and most of the enemies have been completed; they just need some tweaking. The bosses are the next things on the list to get done, and after that we should be able to add the cutscenes and battles which should complete Chapter 1. Hopefully the next chapters won't take nearly as much time to create as we won't be needing too many new systems.

We will be attending the Steam Next Fest in October showing off the new Gamma 19 Demo. We will announce the date of when we will be hosting a stream as we get closer to the date. It's very important for us that everyone joins us and plays the demo to help our visibility in the festival. Tell your friends and family, spread the word, and get others to wishlist the game. See you there!

In a previous post I mentioned implementing a player slide mechanic. Sliding will allow the player to dodge enemy attacks and get through tight spots. The final boss of Chapter 1 will require the player to use the slide mechanic throughout the fight. There are also plans to allow the player to unlock a skill to stun enemies with the slide.

I made some big improvements with the Glow Mask shader. Originally, the shader would only get any pixels that were pure white and apply the glow effect to those areas. This works fine in most cases, but the problem comes when we don't want some of the white areas to glow. We used the shader on the player sprite to make his eye glow, but it also made his swing effects also glow. Now the shader has been updated to take a color value to look for and replace with the glow effect. The gif above shows me selecting different colors and the mask shows the area where those colors are at. Now we have more control over our visuals.

In this example I have selected the color of the outline and the shader applies the glow to it.

The visuals of this game are very important to us. We know that people's first impressions of a game are from videos and images. As a challenge to myself, I wanted to create a cool glass/crystal effect. We will be using crystals throughout the game so it's important to make them look like crystals. I was able to achieve the effect above by using Blender to create a normal map from a 3D object and use the color data from the normal map to distort the final image. I'm not sure if my implementation is very accurate, but it looks good and that's all that matters.

While trying to research ways to achieve a certain effect, I discovered how to render 3D objects in the 2D world. This surprisingly looks pretty good with the 2D lighting also affecting it. The way this works is that we have an object that renders a 3D space into a texture and that texture is then applied to a sprite. Now we can do cool stuff like apply the shaders I made onto it.

This is the object that creates this effect. The viewport node allows me to render a 2D/3D scene in a separate texture. The main game itself is being rendered on a viewport called root by default. Any nodes that are children of a viewport node are rendered only in that viewport. I have a 3D camera and 3D mesh that will be rendered in that viewport. Then I created a script to set the texture of the sprite node to that of the viewport's output.

The cube has a material applied that only renders the normals of the mesh. Now we have a normal map in some sense.

We can then apply the crystal shader to it and now we have the cube from the PS2 boot screen. This is a really cool effect that we will be using somewhere in the game.

Problem: We needed a way to apply status effects easily without adding too much code to the enemy code. Solution: Modifiers! I have begun developing a modifier system which will allow us to buff or debuff the player or enemies. This will help add a bit of diversity to the battles. As of now, modifiers only work on enemies, but will later work on the player as well. When an enemy has a modifier an icon will appear above it. This will help the player know what they are dealing with. In the example above, the enemies have a health regen mod and a fire elemental mod. This system will allow us to create a bunch of unique effects without having to touch the enemy code.

Manny is the first boss you will fight in Chapter 1. Manny was once the boxing champion of this world only to be defeated and destroyed by his lifelong rival. A mausoleum was constructed where Manny now rests, but your presence ignites his fighting spirit for one last match. Watch out for his special move, the Manny Maneuver.

Manny will be the first enemy to use the new modifier system. His cheer hypes up the crowd and he will gain some kind of stat boost that we have yet to decide. Manny can also put up his guard which will reduce his damage taken by half.

After his defeat, Manny's body became unstable. Throughout the fight Manny will begin to lose his arms which means he will lose some of his attacks.

Pillow Fort by Pigeon Drop.

Sea Sheep by Zimzagoon.

Madotsuki by Zimzagoon.

OC Portrait By Venom And Mercury.

Bea & Ci by W3Rn1ckz.

Kori by W3Rn1ckz.

Brazilian Cherry Tree Plantsona by Glaciarie.

Uncle Janitor(For the 50th time) by Glaciarie.

Chairman Thel but Cute by 【ｂｏｏｋ】.

Bulby by 【ｂｏｏｋ】.

Still making good progress. Hopefully we can get this next demo done before the Steam Next Fest. If you know any Youtubers or streamers who would be willing to play our game, let us know. If you have any questions, comments, concerns or testimonies let us know in our Discord.