Summary:
In which the collectible view backdrop is tinted; inventory items gain a blue tint in dark regions; a brass bowl is touched-up; inventory items are clipped; combat backdrop elements are blue-tinted; a potential sticking point in level two is fixed; and interior decoration continues.
Greetings and salutations!
This week's screenshot shows a few touch-ups to the close-up view given for collectibles, and to the collectible brass bowl from the prologue level:
The week just past was a bit of a slow one, I fear. Still, some things did get done:
As shown above, I continued to touch up various aesthetic elements in the week just past:
Starting with the inventory, the close-up view of available for collectible items now has a slight blue tint to it, which I find a little more appealing than the dull grey that was previously in place. Further, inventory items now have a customised shader that introduces a similar blueness in darker regions to that used by the player-light shader.
The normal-map for the brass bowl shown in the screenshot was also tweaked--I wasn't happy with it's appearance, given, I think, that it's intended to be seen at such close range, and to be a reward item.
During testing, as I recall, I discovered that one of the collectible items--an open book--could in some orientations poke out of the close-up view. This doesn't look terribly good, and so I set about attempting to fix it.
The most expedient approach seemed to be a change to the inventory shader, as it meant few changes, and changes that I was a little relatively comfortable with.
This wasn't entirely an easy matter, however: To start with, I had to figure out just what transformation to perform in order to get values that would provide a good basis for clipping a given object. And with that done, I found myself a little mystified that the clipping didn't seem consistent: as I rotated an object, the clipping seemed to shift about on the screen. This turned out to result from the object's origin not being centred; to fix it, I ended up re-centring and re-exporting the relevant objects.
With all that done, however, I'm glad to say that this inventory clipping seems to now work! ^_^
As with the inventory, I further adjusted the aesthetics of the combat mechanic by introducing a slight blue tint to the darker parts of the floor and the backdrop. I experimented with something similar for the combat-characters, too, but felt that it didn't really work there.
Turning to level-building, I discovered that there was a point in level two at which the player could become stuck if they failed to take a carriable ladder with them. A simple "staircase" of fallen stone blocks seems to have fixed this problem, allowing the player to backtrack and retrieve a ladder left behind.
I also continued to work on the interior decoration of the level, advancing through two or three more buildings, I believe.
And a number of other changes, tweaks, fixes, and suchlike were made that don't seem worth detailing here!
That then is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^