0.1.17 (Graphics Test) Changelog

• Added bloom and a glow layer (can be toggled in settings)
• Added motion blur (can be toggled in settings)
• Added a stone door that people like way more than I expected
• Reworked how walking works, should be more consistent on moving objects
• Overhauled much of my older code to help improve long-term development

Bug fixes:

• Wall roll no longer cancels when moving onto a different objects with a reversed point format (note - I have observed this behaviour still happening on other objects. May need a little more work)

I would really appreciate feedback on this one, the various overhauls and graphical changes have introduced a lot of bugs, and I'm undecided on whether I like the motion blur.  

So yeah, it's been a little while since I updated last - I get the impression that schedule isn't going to change any time soon! I recently started at my new job, so I'm going to busier than I was before.

That being said, that's not at all the reason why this one took so long - I've been looking into redoing a lot of my older coding style in order to make it easier on me to add new things in the future. Under the hood, I've changed my vector library from my own homebrew one to the batteries library, as well as starting to use Love's inbuilt graphics stack (which let's be honest, I should have been using from the get-go).  

Both of those were a bit of a pain to fully implement, but I didn't stop there! I've been reducing the number of global variables I'm using significantly (for the more technically minded, the last count was 54 global variables eliminated, which is a lot but there's still a bunch left to clear up), as well as restructuring my project structure, which is forcing me to make a lot of my janky code better.  

And if that wasn't enough, for some reason I decided it was time to implement bloom and motion blur to the game, sooooo... yeah, that's why this one took a while.  

There are two main overhauls left on my to-do list, both (should be) far less time consuming - implementing a texture atlas (which thanks to Love’s fantastic autobatching should improve performance), as well as retiring my animation library for a new one.  

All this to say - most of the changes I made recently haven't changed much about the game, and are a result of me starting this project just under two years ago with inflated confidence, zero clue on what I was doing and uncharacteristically persistent motivation. Funnily enough, I did actually try to add bloom to my game ages ago, and it did not run well. I know this probably isn’t really a major milestone at all, but it feels fitting so say this since all of these changes are fairly symbolic of how much I’ve learned and improved since I start, and I have a lot further left to go. I really do want to thank everyone who’s helped me get to this point, especially the Love Community as a whole – I sometimes forget to thank people, and there’s no way I would have got this far without you.