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 Been quietly waiting for this one since first stumbling across the demo years ago. Figured the creator was keeping the lights on maybe working on other projects. Artists gotta eat, nothing wrong with that. That demo's gone now though. Gonna have to treasure my copy of V0.3 until my Steam wishlist has something good to tell me. Even in it's former state, it scratches that very specific itch with surgical precision, so I can only imagine what the latest plays like. The old demo and Prison City are two of my go-to inspiration games.  Installed on every computer in the house. 

That said, I cannot find anywhere an explanation for how the lighting system works in the cave. It's a beautiful effect I would love to try recreating in godot. I think it's swapping palettes or remaps on the fly, but that can't be all its doing. May i ask for a little help in my own dev learning journey? What is the technique called?  Are there any breakdowns or pipeline videos for how to do it?

Thank you for the kind words!


I ended up pulling the demo from here because it was confusing people a bit since I've rebuilt the game completely and the old demo just doesn't reflect how it is now! A new one is coming SOON though~

As for the lighting system- it's not too complicated! I'm effectively drawing a pure white canvas, and every lit object draws itself on that canvas in pure black, and then for gradient lighting it'll draw black at different opacities. Then when I draw that canvas ontop of the game canvas, I do it with subtractive blending- since the game clamps all of the colors to the NES palette, it makes a really nice effect~

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Dude, you're a legit Rock Star in this house. My wife and i have been sitting on the floor and sharing 1 controller with Prison City on the weekends. It's like getting another chance at '89, but appreciating it's value. I showed her Power Blade 1 & 2, Vice Project Doom , and the difference between Shatterhand & Solbrain. The gateway was THIS DEMO, and the crash course in classic-vania it lead to.  Simon Quest is a DAY ONE BUY for us both.  

That said, I can't thank you enough for the information. The closest i ever got to an answer for something like this was a gif in a long ago lost random blog post for something else entirely. Genuinely Thank You. We eagerly look forward to your successes.