Hi!

I’m back with a larger update this time. There are many changes to the overall look of the game and I also added some features and a new achievement.

Here is an overview of the changes:

New features

• added butterflies
• new achievement
• something with a certain flower…
• redesigned Denewood, Frodorf and Aumalia

Visual changes

• new font
• new bridges
• new terrain
• lighter shadows (for characters, monsters, trees…)
• match color of water magic and water terrain

Other changes

• lighter renderer
• some dialogue improvements
• improved achievement descriptions
• changed order of achievements

Let’s talk about some of the features:

Butterflies

Did you ever want to play with butterflies? Now you can. But will the butterflies want to play with you?

On certain maps, there are butterflies now. You can interact with them in a few ways. There is also a new achievement related to butterflies.

New terrain

The previous terrain in this game had a few issues. First, whenever I created a new map, I painted grass on the empty map. Then, I added dirty paths and rivers in separate layers on top of the grass. Now, I paint grass and water on top of the dirt which is much more intuitive. This also meant that I needed to redesign all maps…again…

Another thing that bugged me was the water animation. The water had two frames that basically moved everything except the bottom up by one pixel every second. It worked but it didn’t look that good. Now, there are lighter pixels around the borders of the water. I generated 4 random variations of these water tilemaps with Krita and it turned out quite nicely. You can now feel the flow of the water.

The new terrain also looks much more regular and less noisy. This gives the game an overall cleaner look.

I also cleaned up the cliffs again. I’m still not satisfied with how they look so I might change them again. But for now, they fit to the look of the other terrain.

The beach and road terrain that only appeared on one map each were basically a variation of dirt terrain. For now, I removed them completely.

New font

I didn’t pay much attention to the font I used in this game. However, after an insightful discussion, I realized how important the font is for the feeling of a game. Therefore, I changed the font (see README.md) and added outlines to the letters. At least for me, the game feels much better now.

Lighter renderer

In v1.2.0, I used Vulkan for rendering because this is the default renderer in Godot 4. Vulkan is used for demanding graphics especially 3D. However, this game…well…doesn’t have high graphical demands. Therefore, I’m now using a faster renderer. It turns out that this game now runs smoother and faster and now also works on older computers that have no support for Vulkan. Thanks to the player who made me aware of this issue!

The next weeks will be quite busy for me but I guess I can work on a few features. Thanks for reading and have fun with the butterflies!