Lighting, Music, & Flying Updates

Lighting

I've been dipping my toes in shader-land. Shaders have intimidated me for basically the whole time I've been making games but I've at least gotten a lighting shader running and even modified it a little for the echolocation. The lighting is a simple implementation of Phong lighting. Unfortunately it doesn't react to materials so everything has a plasticky sheen to it. I'll someday add that in, undead skin shouldn't be THAT shiny!!

Relevant to Light: Color

I was planning on making BATTY VAMPS a black and white game to pay homage to old monster movies. But I came to realize limiting the pallet like that doesn't make the job easier, it makes it harder. There's a lot more that needs to be done to differentiate different things on screen when you just have black and white and shades of gray. I decided to bail because I didn't feel up to the task, so color has been breathed back into the world of BATTY VAMPS.

Music

I bought some new studio monitors for my office and was compelled to produce a new track to test them out. Since I was playing a lot of acoustic guitar at the time, I decided to lay down an acoustic version of Little Circles I'd been arranging. I liked the way it came out and decided I might as well make the soundtrack for BATTY VAMPS acoustic since it's what I've been having fun playing in real life.

Relevant to the music choice, I took out the death metal font. I can't really justify that anymore if I'm going in an acoustic direction.

Flying Updates

After getting some more play testing I couldn't ignore how difficult the flying was any longer. So I took another pass at making it more responsive and was able to make a nice breakthrough in getting tighter turns while balancing a little bit of drift. Right now on the eve of getting another round of playtesting, I'm starting to worry I didn't do enough and it's still too tough. I might tweak it more tomorrow for responsiveness. But it should at least be better than it was last devlog.

Also the flap button can be held down now, which really makes the flying feel more satisfying. (Although some skilled play testers still prefer tapping and never hold it? As long as you're having fun do what feels good for you.)

Alongside these updates, I've tried to make the game easier in general. Health drain and echolocation cooldown are far more forgiving - especially at first. And there are more humans to feed upon. 

The bug where the window couldn't be closed with the X button is fixed.

Those are the highlights since my last devlog, thanks for reading!