Everything is rings now!
I wasn’t too happy with using the x-ray effect for pretty much every item that you can collect in the game. It looked visually cluttered and could make the game a bit confusing if you constantly hat colorful shapes superimposed on your character.
After some pretty good feedback over at the Newgrounds forums, I decided to change the collectable items to be ring shaped.
I was a bit hesitant at first, since I feel that “flying through rings” is a bit of a flying game cliché, but I suppose there is a good reason why they are used so often.
With the new item design, I can turn off the x-ray shader and still have the player see where the item is, even if the character is flying in front of it.
So, coins and wrench items are now golden hula hoops and turning cogs, respectively.
And the hearts are now heart silhouettes:
I was also able to solve some of the environment rendering issues mentioned in the last post, though I am still working on that part of the game.