Blue Tengu’s Game Development Show – Season 2, Episode 29

Blue Tengu - Skyring Weather Manager
In this episode of the game development show, we take control of Project Skyring’s weather by setting the weather manager to change weather patterns based on the type of room the player is flying around in.

We began with calculated vector graphics based on a YouTube tutorial, but it doesn’t take long to realize how expensive the calculations are. To test just how bad the performance is, we create a full screen sprite overlay (which, in itself should be quite expensive) and use GameMaker: Studio’s debugging and profiling tool to test the two situations out. The final result: vector version takes 30% of the frame, the sprite overlay takes 0.3%.

Needless to say we’ll be going with the sprite overlay unless we can find a better solution with particles or another less processor expensive solution.

Unfortunately, these sprite overlays will be time-consuming to draw by hand as they would require drawing around 30 frames of rain animation and moving all of the drops closer and closer to the center by hand, while also adding new drops in a way that will produce a looping effect. Add in the fact that we’ll need to do this for snow and other weather patterns, and things are going to take quite a bit of time.

Game Development Show Tasks Worked on This Episode:

  • Performance Test Rain Sprites vs. Coded Rain
  • Vary Weather Pattern Logic based on Room Type

Thank you to everyone who turned out to watch us make some rain!

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