#i'm still preloading... yay...

[genshin-impact-updates]

The Version 4.6 maintenance has concluded. Good luck, and have fun!

[kaizsche]

Hiii, how are u? I hope you're doing well, sooo I wanted to ask you (if it is not a problem) how are your gifs always looking so crisp? like what type of setting you put on them to make them look with a high quality? i'm sorry for bothering, i'm just curious 😭

hey, no worries. i'm happy to help! warning: this is going to be a very long post so sit back and relax...

first you need adobe photoshop. now the sharpen setting won't look good if your source is not HD so you have to really invest on getting a 1080p copy of your chosen video (4k works too, but i found that it takes up a lot of memory and, you know, tumblr only allows us to upload 10mb gifs so yeah. i guess you could still try 4k and use additional apps to optimize the memory, anyways).

now let's say you've gotten all the stuff you need. let's go to the sharpen settings.

there are multiple ways on how to do this step. people use actions but i don't because i have no fucking idea how to do it and after maybe the millionth time of trying to understand how it works, i just gave up so that means my method is time-consuming and gritty...

i usually GIF by frame not on video timeline.

(left is video timeline and the right is by frame)

what's the difference? i honestly have no idea LMFAO??? cause i found editing gifs on video timeline too complicated for my brain + i learned gifing by frames first so it's really the method i'm used to doing.

before you ask, why did i mention giving by video timeline or by frame? and what is actions? actions i think preloads all the commands for you which makes the grueling process of giving easier, avoids consuming your time. if you gifed by frame however... you have to sharpen each fucking layer/frame of your images. so if you have 60 frames, you have to press ctrl + f 60 fucking times HAHAH (and trust me, this process is not fun and i've had a much worse method back then)

anyway before i get sidetracked let's go to the main concern: sharpening.

i want you to select a layer. go to filter and select 'convert to smart filter' and then go back to filter > smart sharpen.

this tab should appear now what i want you to do is to follow this numbers. click enter and repeat the process--btw you do not have to convert to smart filter every layer, yeah? just use ctrl + f--depending on how many layers you have.

now let's say you're done with the first sharpening setting!!! yay!! it's not over yet.

we have a second sharpen setting to go through again. highlight the layer where you've converted it to a smart filter and then filter > smart sharpen (or just use ctrl + f) the tab above will appear again but this time, change the settings to this:

i want you to repeat the process i detailed above for the first sharpening method.

so now you've got your gifs lookin crisp as heck!

for comparison:

additional tips: feel free to play around with the setting. if it's too sharp or crispy for you, you can tone it down by going to the first sharpen setting and lowering the radius from 0.4 to 0.3 and etc. same goes with the second sharpen setting.

i hope you learned something from this. im bad at explaining...

[ironbrandon]

Pitch Black, Devlog #12

I've got a lot to do, but I'm blastin' through!

Yes, although it was quite a struggle to set up the game's page for Steam with it's such high standards, I was still able to make a lot of progress!

Gameplay

The next monster is pretty much finished, I just need to give him sound and get him to appear all around the next puzzle area.

The next thing to work on is a new system for the candle, making the candlestick last for a limited amount of time. Whenever you put out the light, you'll also need to use matches to relight it, making you think more carefully about putting it out when you need to hide. I'm not 100% sure this feature will make the game fairer, but it'll give the player more incentive to search chests.

Atmosphere

Soon I'll also improve, in general, the sounds and ambiance. Currently, most of the time, there is complete silence, but I want a sort of very (and I mean very) subtle whistling wind sound through the caves. And then, on top of that, you would occasionally get a larger gust of wind blowing through in larger areas.

Optimizations

Another big thing I've been working on is improving the game's optimization, like how I recently figured out that Godot (the engine I use for my games) allows both '.wav' and '.ogg' files, but I had no idea how much smaller Ogg files are to Wav. I've now decreased the game's size from over 150 MBs to just under 50 MBs just by turning all of the music files from Wav to Ogg. The best part is that they're almost identical unless, of course, you see it's "songfile.ogg" instead of "songfile.wav." On top of that, I've been improving Memory usage by making some files only load when they're needed, the biggest culprit being (just like with storage) music. This is because I had all the in-game music 'preloaded' when the game started (including The Monsters Wait, Caves I, and Caves II), and I just switched between them. Now they only load when they're played, which will also help when I add the rest of the music.

Game Page + Final Notes

And now, as a reminder, I have set up the game page for Steam. If you use Steam, please wishlist it! I still plan to release the game on GameJolt, but only if my Marketplace Account gets accepted. Since I'm now on Steam I will try to start posting all future devlogs there, too.

One more thing I'd like to mention is that there are now a total of 4 ways to die—yay!

So that's all for this post, it'll be a lot longer till the next Devlog post, and there're mainly two reasons for that. First: the game is still so far from being done, that I'm going to be focusing most of my time on the game itself, with less focus on small improvements, music that I can finish later, and anything that I can put off to the side so I can get this game to a finished state. Second: I have three different platforms to publish these devlogs to; give me a break. Don't worry, though, because I will still let you all experience pitch black very soon...