Updating the decal demo

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been hard at work on some exciting improvements to the course.

The Decal level has been updated to no longer just give the player sprays and set them loose applying decals on a watermill, instead being a proper gameplay example of decals in use!

This coincides with updating the course to support the latest Godot version: Beta 5!

Now the level is more structured with objectives to complete, and the groundwork has been laid for in game unlockable too.

The level begins in front of a glowing paintbrush and palette, walking nearby will unlock the tool to be used in any level. When equipped the player can click on surfaces to paint a big splat on whatever surface they are in front of thanks to the power of the Decal node.

The player is set free to complete the objective of the level, painting the four canvases scattered across the map.

Gamifying this demo scene has a lot of benefits! Primarily users will get access to code for a bunch of new features, such as respawn points, item unlocks and objectives.

This has involved adding some terrific new sounds which as always I have Flangeworthy over on soundcloud to thank for including some great audio for the item unlocked music, painting sounds and the fun noise checkpoints make when activated!

Outside of this Decal level I have added more settings to let users better control the performance of the demo. At present these are just options for MSAA and SSAA, but the groundwork is there for me to better support older hardware with more complete settings options.

What is left to do for the decal level

This level needs a few more things before it is completely finished:

The red blocked out assets the player jumps on like the bridges and steppingstones need some actual assets, then I need to finish the code block unlocks, adding a dedicated tab to the menu where the player can view nay educational material they have unlocked in the demo.

Anyway that is it for this week, hope you enjoy the content and see you in the next one.