A new feature we just got in is these sweet tron/snake trails. Right now they’re on all the time for really long, but they’ll get toned down and used for some of Max’s attacks. Unfortunately it’s killed productivity because I’ve spent the last hour trying to draw things.

Warp speed! Here’s an early shot of one of our cutscenes, as Max travels to another galaxy in search of enemy Dredge miners. It’s pretty hypnotizing in motion.

This week we’ve got something a little more behind-the-scenes: the game with some debug data. While developing, having these features turned on helps us see what’s happening behind the curtain. All the lines mean different things… the tri-colored axis-looking things are matrices. They help identify orientations of items, from enemies to planet objects. The green curved line with all the red spikes is the path that Max takes when he blasts into Orbit. It helps give Max a more fluid look when he transitions to space. The sharp tan line on the bottom left is a path for one of the spaceships in the background. It only uses a few data points, but the ships know to form a round path through them. The long red lines are the shooting directions of the enemies. They’re all shooting to the right because they’re either really stupid or they were shooting where the player last was. Probably the latter.
On the right side of the image are three of the game’s frame buffers. The top is bloom, which represents the higher values of the image, isolated and blurred. The middle image is the god rays, which is a stencil image blurred along the direction of the sun’s rays. These are both added to the main image. The bottom is the shadow map (blue because we only use one channel of the render target).

We’ve got a few updates in this week’s image! Most apparent is one of the newest enemies, complete with flamethrower. He’s trying to burn our hero, who just ran out of the way (you can barely see the top of his little helmet). The background galaxy is the Dredge Faction’s home base. Pollution is everywhere, oil clouds block the sun, and Dredge refineries are mining in what few planets remain. This is where Max Blastronaut nears the end of his long journey defending the universe*…

*spoiler alert, sorry

A hovercraft appears! On one of the planets the Dredge use this hovercraft to get around. Its powerful fan blades can blow back any enemies approaching from the rear. And just in case, player 2 can drop mines to get any leftovers. This 4-seater Dredge hovercraft can accommodate all available Blastronauts. Something about it makes Max look like a movie star…