« back

The Lost Archives #14: Lightning strikes again

Having finished all my semester 1 exams at the end of January, I had a whole week to start work on the game. The main addition was adding to our ever-growing weather system, with more meaningful lightning strikes. These strikes are a lot better than it used to be – just a frame of pure white when lightning was supposed to happen and a camera shake, which both acted as more of a jump-scare than anything else. The new lightning chooses a specific location to hit and uses a line renderer to make electric bolts (see video below). If a bolt hits a flammable tile (e.g. wooden floor), it will set the surface on fire.

The only aspect which I am not too keen on right now is the RNG aspect – that lightning could hit anywhere and there is not much you can do to stop it. Therefore, a plan could be to have lightning rods that attract lightning away from an area of influence. Meanwhile the only issue with the current system is that it does not currently work with multiple floors. A tldr is that if you have multiple floors, lightning will never hit floors beneath the topmost floor again. This will cause issues such that lightning appears but will just hit “nothing”, when in fact all it is doing is hitting the wrong floor at the correct coordinate.

Whilst I’m working on the weather system, this is the perfect time for suggestions / ideas that YOU think would be a great addition to the game. They may serve a purpose or just be background effects. If so, please just put a weather type (explanation would be nice but not necessary) in our ⁠suggestions area. Our current weathers are as follows:

That is all from myself for this week, again a reiteration that if you have suggestions (or complaints ☹️), please do let us know, there is no downside to asking and we take all feedback on.

The Team,
Plasmarc Studios