Welcome to this entry of the devlog. I am Chalcedony, a programmer of Ascender and also an apprentice in devlogging. Today I shall be your host in journeying through the backstage of Ascender, giving glimpses of what happened off-stage.

Let’s get acquainted first with what’s going on in the screen. As you should have known from this post, we have the so-called parallax background (and foreground)…

parallax in action

The day night cycle system…

day and night cycle

And the quest system…

quest system instance

Do you ever wonder what’s really happening outside the camera’s bounds? Well, it’s pretty ugly, I tell you, but here goes anyway…

look at what happens offscreen!

This log wouldn’t be complete without explaining what’s going on! Let’s investigate them one by one, starting with the parallax thingy.

On a 3D world, these are a no-brainer, you just move the camera and parallax effect will naturally happen. On a 2D world, these are conceptually simple, too. You just need to move the background slower, and the foreground faster. Basically, things closer to the camera move faster. It can become a hassle to setup though. For an instance, this messy setup below shows just perfect on the camera.

what a messy structure!

And then we have the day night cycle. Again, in a 3d world, sunlight can be simulated rather easily using Unity. Too bad they don’t provide 2D light! To make darker scene for night time, I just tint things at different rates. Light from lampposts are faked by shooting spotlights into the scene.

spotlight shot from the camera

Quests are supposed to be interesting. I thought of making generic quest template, but then it will only be capable of serving generic tasks (delivering things, getting x items, etc.). It would be dull and boring, right? Hence, I have to make a different script for every quest available in the game. Don’t forget to check the information provided in the pause menu when doing quests later!

map, showing quest hot spots

quest description

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the tour. But your quest isn’t over! Why don’t you stick yourself in the action? Grab a copy of the alpha version now, and let us know what you think!

Ta-ta for now!

Chalcedony