ProjectDragonfly Update Dec2023

Happy new year!
Definitely aiming to put way more focus onto the game this year, and with a public announcement coming sooner than I would think it's giving me the motivation I need to push through development.

Now to start things off with a bang, I will say I completed nothing that I originally set out to finish this month, but I have made some big progress nonetheless.

Firstly, a proper 3d background! I explored a few 3d libraries and found a simple one that I've altered slightly to fit my art style perfectly. Ended up learning a good deal more about how shaders work especially in 3d which is always fun and now it's all set up, making new ones shouldn't be too bad at all as long as I have a good idea going in.

Next big development was player sprites, which I was dreading until I actually tackled them. At first I expected I would be animating the sprites frame by frame but ended up trying interpolated animation because it was easier and it ended up looking pretty good. I think I will still need to hand animate some things like Flytrap's wings or some hair and Roach's cloak etc, but this is far more manageable than having to deal with different angles like what Touhou and the like do. Best one to come out of this is definitely Voiceless since everything could be handled with interpolation and the kinda stiffness really works for them being a doll.

You may also notice I sprited most of the weapons and some more item effects. You can see Voiceless' parasite from Desecration Doll above which I'm super proud of. That link between them is doesn't utilize physics at all, it's all handled with a single particle system, which was frankly a fluke on my part I don't know how I got it to work but it ended up really good somehow.

Other than that I added a controls rebinding menu finally, it was simple but I just really hate working with menus. I also worked on the rendering since it was still being a bottleneck on performance, not sure if what I did improved a whole lot but it's worth a shot. That combined with the last mini-update full of a bunch of efficiencies should mean the game will run super smooth for the most part.

All in all, a pretty positive update for both visuals and performance. After making a list of what needs to be done before I can make an announcement it's honestly pretty short, definitely gonna be able to make it happen this year, and possibly even release a public demo if I can manage to get all the necessary gameplay in. The biggest thing remains to be the music of course, perhaps if I can finish the other stuff I can focus on it with a clear head. But now that the game is starting to look super nice I feel really good about it. I won't make any predictions for what I'll do next month since I almost never follow them but I do have that list and I plan to follow it in whatever order I feel best about at the time (I put the list in the changelog file in case you wanna know what's on the horizon). I have high hopes for this next year, I hope I can make some good things happen.