Recent Development Update (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

I thought I'd write a little development diary today. I've been working on shader development for Shoost's next update recently, and the base shader is coming along nicely, so I wanted to share an update.

It's nothing that'll make you go "wow!" but it should be quite versatile and user-friendly! I'm planning to make "circles," "gradients," and "fill" functions available.

I've only created the shader so far, so there's still a lot of work ahead - making it UI-operable, optimization, and so on. This is where the tedious and challenging work begins... Let's do our best!

I've also been doing some experimental expression tests.

This is something I tried where the lighting changes according to 360-degree rotation.

In 3D, there's a method called IBL (Image Based Lighting) that uses HDRI images as environment lighting, and I tried applying that concept. The IBL setup itself isn't too difficult, but adjusting it for 2D use turned out to be surprisingly challenging.

The reason I was experimenting with this is because I've been considering adding lighting functionality to Shoost.

When you simply use 3D lighting functions, characters can get overexposed or become too dark. So I thought I'd create a lighting design specifically tailored for 2D and started experimenting with various approaches.

And here's the result!

I think I've managed to create a pretty good lighting design. It looks like it'll work well for lighting that adapts to backgrounds too.

It's still in the prototype stage, so there's still a lot of testing to do, including optimization, so it'll probably take a while to complete.

Creating new features like this is fun and can be done relatively quickly, but polishing them for practical use is the real challenge. A ton of previously unseen problems and tasks emerge, making it sooooo tedious! It doesn't feel like creating something new or moving forward - it's just a series of mundane tasks that can be mentally exhausting.

But it won't get finished unless I do the work, so I have to keep pushing forward!

Anyway, I'll continue working hard on this!!!