Welcome Back!

Welcome to the 8th Musta̶c̶h̶e Dev Weekly Update, where I share with you the progress I’ve made over the last week and the challenges I’ve encountered.

This week, I made major improvements in ScaleUp‘s UI and implemented rain and lightning for Ryu’s Revenge. let’s bolt through the updates! ⚡

Rainy Weather ⛈️

As usual, let’s start with Ryu’s Revenge.

The settings menu is almost done, so I thought, “Let me just do something else and continue this settings menu later, someday…”
So I looked at my long list of tasks and found these 2 tasks I’d always avoided. I was like, “Agh… Okay, I’ll eat that frog.”

Rain 💧

The rain was pretty straightforward. I just added a particles node with a drop texture.

Lightning ⚡

However, for the lightning, things started to get challenging.

The first thing I knew was that I’d have to draw a line, so I used the Line2D node. Then, the lightning bolt needed a start and end point, so I used vectors.

But what about branching?

Look, the only thing you need to know is that it’s randomized. Other than that, I don’t even understand how it works. It’s just a bunch of vectors, rotations, randomization, offsets, and other stuff…

(Drop a comment below if you need the code.)

I wanted the thunder to be cartoon-ish, just like the rest of the game.
For me, it looks cartoonish with that thick line and slight outline, but I’m not sure if I’ve figured out the animation yet. (I’m pretty sure lightning doesn’t appear and disappear like this, anyway.)

Mouse Cursors and UI 🐁

As I tested ScaleUp with family, I found that they kept struggling when scaling a square.
But I had already planned some UI elements to make scaling crystal-clear for the player.

I first added these awesome mouse cursors by kenney.nl:

But it’s still tedious to hover over every square, so I used Plan B.

Plan B

Plan B is to add an icon for every corner of the square. One of them is the resize icon, and the others are a bunch of these crossed circles 🚫.
For the sake of juiciness, I added a little animation when you hover over them, because it looks nice.

I think it’s now super clear for everyone.
(Btw, I can’t hide the default mouse cursor on my phone, but it’ll be hidden on PC.)

I also kept the mouse cursors. Maybe I shouldn’t do that? Tell me what you think!

Personal Update 🛌

So, I was debugging my life to find the bug that’s making my productivity suffer.
And I may have found it: Sleeping.

There’s no doubt that when I sleep early and wake up early with enough rest, I’m a lot more productive.
So this week, I focused on sleeping. Whenever it’s bedtime, it’s bedtime.

And it really had a huge impact on my productivity this week.
As I got busy with game dev, self-development, and classes, I forgot how crucial sleeping is for maintaining energy.

Workouts

What I also noticed is that I’m not consistent with my workout routine. Even today, I skipped my workout, but I do a little thing that helps me work those muscles a bit.

If you didn’t know, I use the Pomodoro technique: 25 minutes of work, followed by a 5-minute break.
In each break, I do 10 push-ups, and recently I’ve increased the number to 20.
Even though I’m not consistent with my workouts, I still move those muscles.

That’s it, thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Who Am I?

I’m Mohamed, known as Mustache Dev. For the last 4 years (since 2021), I’ve been making games solo using only my mobile phone.

I’m now working on Ryu’s Revenge, my biggest project so far. It’s a 2D action platformer about a ninja slime named Ryu seeking revenge for his family and his entire clan after a brutal betrayal.

If you add Ryu’s Revenge to your collection, you’ll be notified when the free demo is out, and also when the full game is released.

Adding Ryu’s Revenge to your collection is the best way to support me. Thanks ❤️