Greetings all. It's time for
development diary #14. ;-)---~~~~Changelist~~~~---
- Significantly improved the graphics for kitchen and stable to bring them up to the standard of the rest of the inn.
- Added fireplace and table to the kitchen.
- Added stalls to the stable. Can be entered.
- New cutout style has been added for all bedrooms.
- Same new cutout style added for when fading stable and kitchen walls.
- New fog-of-war fading for all cut-outs. Leave a pixel wide lighter outline that looks great.
- Updated main floor sprite, and integrated it with the cellar.
- Updated the way the cellar is shown when you enter it. More seamless, and visually a lot better.
- New time keeping GUI at the top of the screen. Can show if it is daytime, sunset, or night.
- Integration of start of the game with the new time keeping GUI.
You walk up to the inn for the first time, go inside, and then it becomes the GUI. It's a nice touch.
- As the time of day passes, the windows of the inn will now also change, slowly changing from day, to sunset, to night. Looks very nice.
- New lighting system! Details:
The old system used back at the time of the game prototype was very basic, and really only appropriate for more
of a pure 2D space, like a platformer. Using shaders it drew a black sheet over the screen, adjusted its transparency based on the time of day, and then cut out
holes where the 'light' was. The new system is very simple, but also more powerful, and more suitable for the kind of playspace used in Innkeep. Every single
sprite drawn on the screen has a value tied to the object which draws it, and which controls the brightness of the sprite. This makes it possible to do stuff
like make a single object such as a table remain unaffected by the general darkness of the room, because, for example, a lit candle is on it. Meanwhile, a player
passing in front of the table would not automatically be half-drawn as bright, as would have been the case in the previous system. Furthermore, this system uses
light maps for determining how bright a character should be. These can be used to make nice effects, such has having characters be brighter when standing near
light sources. Because the number of light sources in the game is pre-determined (the two fireplaces, a number of candles, and a single candle held by the player
late at night), the simpleness of this system is not a big problem. Meanwhile, it is extremely easy to granularly add finishing touches to the look of lit areas.
- Rigged up all sprites drawn in game to the new light system.
- Added light maps to all twelve bedrooms for the influence of the windows.
- Walkway on right side of the inn now has a cut-away effect for when standing under it, the same as the walkway on the left side.
- Added shadow to some of the walkways, with dynamic light maps.