Hey everyone!

A large portion of this week’s work was dedicated to adding textures to various objects that needed them. However, I still made some nice mechanical changes that I’m pretty excited to show off, so let’s get rolling!

Right off the bat, we have a triple-whammy of new textures! I actually added one of them a few weeks ago, the water texture, but the other two (technically 3) are new in this update! Both the spherefriend ground and the Fightyplace trees have now been properly textured, greatly helping the visual quality of the level. The red will likely remain untextured, but I plan to add some sort of texture to the pink spherefriend walls (as seen on the left).

(full size here)

(full size here)

Also, the Shamrock Walls have a new texture as well! I figured that they’d have upgraded their architecture since the days of LFG, so now they have a much more interesting brickwork pattern – size still subject to change!

(full size here)

Moving on from textures (kind of), Shamrock paint cans have now been added with a WIP texture! I still need to add a lot of details, but I mostly made this to unwind and relax with some simple art, hence the lowish quality.

(full size here)

Gron is actually not a typo, but actually the name of the Shamrocks’ preferred paint company! They specify in all shades of green paint…and only shades of green. It’s for patriotism.



As for what the paint cans will actually DO, currently, I have no effect implemented for them. It’s very possible that they’ll simply end up being decorative, to explain why wooden Shamrock constructions are green despite the trees being brown, but it’s not out of the question for them to have a combat effect at some point (blinding enemies, perhaps?)

(full size here)

Now, I’d like to talk about one of the more interesting mechanical additions so far. There’s now 3 different poses for the effigies! But that’s not all..

As talked about before, Effigies transport you to the skill tree so that you can spend your sausage points and make Capboy stronger. It’d be super inconvenient to only have one effigy to use, so the natural solution is to have more than one! But then it seemed silly to have effigies warp to the same skill tree but not be connected, which led to the natural solution…

(animated)

Capboy can use the effigies to fast travel within a given level! Once he finds an effigy and uses it to access the skill tree, it will then be unlocked for fast travel on all future visits to the level, even if you quit and restart the game! The warp locations are distinguished by the effigy’s platform color and pose, so it’s important to pay attention to which ones are where. Also, as one can see in the video above, Capboy now emits a small amount of light, especially noticable in the skill tree. This is so that he can’t get lost in the dark depths of the non-started skill tree – the lights may remain even when he’s outside of the skill tree, but that could also look weird or interfere with puzzles, so it’s still up in the air.

(animated)

The last thing I’d like to talk about is the existence of river physics! There’s some animation/texturing glitches in this video, as the river is in a very unfinished part of the level, but I’ve figured out a way to satisfactorily simulate the physics of a river – though it still needs tweaking, the system is super dynamic and adaptable, letting me declare ANY body of water to be a river! Also, though not easy to show off, I’ve reprogrammed Capboy’s water detection to allow him to go immediately from one body of water into another without glitching out – what this means is that rivers can transition into ponds seamlessly, while before Capboy would count it as exiting the water and then start to walk around underwater.

That’s just about it for this MU! I’d also like to announce that I’m going to begin using the Trello again, but I’m gonna change the format of it. Whereas before I would set long-term goals that take a couple of weeks to do, I’m now going to create weekly goals – ranging from simple things like “make textures for shamrock interior” to more complex ones like “design phase 1 of the fightyplace boss.” This way, I’ll be able to keep track of what I get done for MUs, and also have a solid gameplan and set of goals to shoot for every week! Speaking of which…

This week, I’m hoping to design a system to switch between interior and exterior scenes while maintaining Capboy’s position, level ID, carried items, and other such things. I’d also like to get a rough draft done of the first floor of the Shamrock mountain base, which Capboy can visit in order to unlock the ability to collect dogs! Lastly, time permitting, I’d like to design some Shamrock Artillery enemies to harass Capboy from afar during the level. You can keep an eye on the Trello to see how these are coming along, but otherwise, I’ll see you guys next time!