Rainshade ☂️ July 2020 Progress Report

Though I've been busy with ~other stuff~, Rainshade had some big strides this month!

First, let's talk about YOU, buster. 

Here's a semi final look of all the player bases with all the eye options (using the colors the palette swapper uses)! The way these were rendered was redone, which reduces my workload and made it easier to implement and tweak other core functions, such as the player only having a tail for the applicable options.

Also, due to popular demand, we're bringing back this previously scrapped kemonomimi option!!! Here you go.

More importantly, however, is the tile system. Though prototyped quickly, the raised surfaces started causing more and more problems, such as SEVERAL clipping issues, a lack of visual flexibility, and worst of all, the trick used required the spritesheet for these tiles to be arranged with a ton empty space, making them frustrating to implement. For a couple months, I tried all sorts of solutions involving changing how sprites were sorted, some shader shenanigans, but every hole plugged caused more leaks.

Then there was a breakthrough with the auto-tile system, which I'll get into in a later post. Though requiring a tiny amount more work to put together, it automatically gives wall tiles the correct depth and allows me to manually set the height of walls while still sorting their depth correctly! it rules

Smooth layering like this wasn't even possible before:

And also, literally, just, look at how the whole tile sheets looked compared to the new ones. Yes, that blank space was NECESSARY.

It's very difficult to explain how much this made working on Rainshade genuinely unpleasant and I'm so, so glad to not have to worry about it anymore. Hell, this even allowed me to revert to an older, more efficient rendering method that doesn't require I chop up certain objects like crates and stairs into awful little tilesets.

PLUS, a few smaller changes!

• A considerable chunk of the game was re-written to be more cohesive and flow together better and oh my god I'm excited to share it
• More core gameplay improvements, primarily with the the health system
• UI REDONE

• PAJAMAS

• SECRETS

Thank you all so much for your support, as always! This wouldn't be possible without you~!