I finally got around to figuring out this 60fps GIF business. OK, I knew sites like Gfycat existed, but I just didn't know how to convert my Fraps recordings into GIFs in the first place. But that's all in the past now. No more awkward 25fps GIFs for me, now it's 60 all the way. Unfortunately, I can't embed them directly onto IndieDB, so you'll need to click on the thumbnails below to get the full versions of the GIFs on Gfycat.
Let's start off this high-quality GIF thing with some improvements to the GUI. Until recently, I never focused much on the UI; it was mostly there to show me numbers and junk to tell me my game is working properly and not lagging. In the last week or so, I decided to give it a bit of love.
By adding various transforms to the GUI elements, they now "react" to things happening in the game beyond changing values:
- The health meter shakes upon taking damage; the higher the damage, the more it shakes.
- The score counter goes nuts whenever it gets incremented.
- The timer pulses every second when time is running out.
- The ammo counter also pulses like the timer, but it pulses inward when ammo is being consumed and outward when it is replenished.
The following GIF shows changes I made to the walls:
I redid the wall sprite because for a long time I didn’t like the old rough stone texture I generated in Photoshop; it was too detailed to fit in with the art style. In addition to that, I added in some wall lamps to help modestly pierce through the darkness. I haven’t made any animations for the lamp’s flame yet; that will come next week.
The lighting engine which Feast for the Senses grew out of has two different types of lights: regular and simple. Regular lights cause walls, enemies and other obstacles to cast shadows and are relatively computationally expensive, while simple lights don’t cause objects to cast shadows and are cheap to process. Simple lights were only used for muzzle flashes and grenade explosions before, but then I figured I so get more mileage out of them and uses them for other purposes.
Oh right, I almost forgot. I also added a dialog box to the GUI. Now Réiltín can now speak her mind about what she encounters:
OK, now it’s movie time. Here is how all the changes look in the context of gameplay.
