The last new level was another one featuring the “cloud” hazards introduced towards the current end of the game, which reminded me just how rough they look. Sometimes the clouds are good, sometimes they’re bad, but they always look pretty bad. So they’re the next asset to get upgraded to “okay,” or maybe at least “better.”
For reference, the originals were just quickly-made polygon blobs, shown here.
Here are the new clouds. They still need work, but they’re getting better.
These clouds are made from Unity’s particle system, one of the key visual effects particles were made for. And the good and bad clouds now have different colors beyond just the shafts of light. The light shafts are still polys, but I’ve added some streaky bits inside. Is it rain? Is it energy? Do you care? Probably not, but I’m glad you’re still reading anyway! (They’re meant to be streaks of energy.)
Beyond more particle and other visual tweaks, there’s still lots to do before the clouds can be considered a fully-upgraded asset, even just to “okay.” They need “real” spawn (appearing) and de-spawn (right before disappearing) animations, with some additional particles and effects just for that, replacing the current, silly scale-up from nothing and squish out. And all that needs sound effects, which a majority of things in the game are also lacking. So it’ll be a little while before the new clouds show up.
As always, more to come.