#game devlog

A Proper Main Menu

One of the most noticeable (to me) art shortcoming of the game jam version was the lack of an actual logo.

Well, no more! Say hello to our new and improved game title! 

Fancy! 

It’s a small improvement but it makes DR feel more like an actual game. 

Better Card UX:

One of the critiques of the original game jam version of the game was how, while it was easy to distinguish cards on the left side of your hand, it was hard to do the same for the cards on the right side of the hand. It’s rather difficult to understand without a picture, so here’s one:

In retrospect, it was very foolish to only put the number + element sigil on two corners, and not four. This was easy enough to fix by adjusting the art. I also took this as an opportunity to fix little mistakes in the cards  - not fully aligned numbers/drawings, stuff like that.

The player hand’s now looks like this:

And you can tell in a glance exactly which cards you have in your hands. 

Sometimes, the best alterations are the simplest ones.

Animated cards:

Cards are now animated! Each element now has a tiny animation loop that plays when you hover over the card. This helps the card to stand out even more and brings more life into the (admittingly intentionally) dead world of DIMINISHING RETURNS. 

SHADERS 1 - CRT:

Now this one’s just for fun. I added a overall CRT shader to give the game a more “lost media” feel.

Of course, not everyone would enjoy this addition, so the option to toggle the filter on and off.

(fun fact!!! Options are now saved between game sessions, using a very simple save-and-load function)

The shader used is VHS and CRT monitor effect by pend00 on Godot Shader Library, and I used the given parameters to adjust it for the game.  Godot’s shader language is a bit different than what is used in most engines - so if you use GODOT (good choice!) and need a shader, the Godot shader library is your friend.

Which actually brings us to-

SHADERS 2 - Transition Screen:

Do to time limitations, I did not add transition screens to the Jam Version of DIMINISHING RETURNS.  This bothered me, and since it is an easy fix, it was one of the first things I set out to improve in the full version of the game.

Once again I used a shader from the godot library, this time Line Screen Transition by Exuin. This one required more work than just adjustments of uniform parameters.

I wanted the lines to be horizontal, which required a few changes to the original shader code, which yielded, um, interesting results:

I did figure it out eventually, and along with some tweaking of the parameters, I got the shader to its current form, which looks like this:

Exciting!

An important note is that the shader’s “animation” is created by changing a parameters during runtime using a function outside the shader itself, which is used not only to control WHEN the transition is triggered, but the speed in which it occurs.

Overall:

A first step of many. In truth, I am currently much ahead in development, but it was good to look back and see all the little - and not so little - changes I already implemented. Next Devlog we’ll talk about the SPECIAL CARDS I added to the game - a whole new special mechanic!!! And perhaps even more.