Devblog #7: Damage Numbers Finally Look Like a Real Game (And Lightning Got Its Yellow Glow)

Hey adventurers and code goblins! 👋

Day 7 of actually writing these devblogs instead of just thinking “yeah I’ll do it tomorrow”. Let’s goooo!

Today was “goodbye ugly debug Labels forever” day. I finally built the proper sprite-atlas damage number system I always wanted.

What shipped:

• One texture atlas → five themed rows (Physical, Frost, Poison, Fire, Electric)
• Player crits = big orange pop
• Enemy numbers = red
• Numbers stack vertically on rapid hits, drift slightly, fade smoothly
• Everything driven by a single master_scale export because tweaking is love

IM LOVING IT

Lightning got the full treatment first—every zap now spawns crisp yellow numbers that actually feel like electricity. The frost row is already hooked up and waiting for its mechanics tomorrow.

Also crushed a nasty level-up stat reset bug that only showed up when I was spamming lightning chains like a maniac. Classic.

Dev tip for anyone reading this who’s still using Labels for damage numbers: Never instantiate one Label per digit. It murders performance the moment you have more than a couple hits per frame (font atlas switches + draw calls + garbage). The trick: one Node2D → spawn a few Sprite2D children from an atlas → one tween → done. Result: 5–10× less overhead, zero font thrashing, and you get perfect pixel control + colored rows for free. Highly recommend if you ever want 50+ numbers on screen without crying.

Next on the chopping block (tomorrow, actually this time):

• Frost sword (freeze )
• Fire sword (burn DoT)
• Poison sword (stacking DoT)
• Hook the last three atlas rows so every element has its own color
  

YES SIRR(might give the other damage logs some more juicy look when adding)

Sprite sheet hand-swap still chilling at ~70%, but pretty numbers deserved the spotlight today.

That’s it for today! Short, sweet, and full of violence against bad draw calls.

Tomorrow: elemental completion + full colored number glory.

See you in the next one~ ✌️ (Now back to pretending I know what I’m doing)