Hi! Just a quick update - I've been able to make lots of good progress over the last couple of months. A brief summary:

• Load some game assets directly from .kra files. This speeds up development by a bunch, and includes support for hotloading changes during runtime
  • Library backgrounds
  • Palettes
  • Overworld main area
  • House
• Fixes for GIF recording
  • Support for changing palettes
  • Encode over multiple frames to avoid laggy frames
  • Example of a GIF encoded by OTS:
    
• Fix moneypits not always raising enough
• Level Editor improvements
  • Moneypits now have collision in editor for immediate testing
  • Extra shortcuts for moving between level editor / main campaign
  • "Escape" now works more consistently across all editor actions
• Ensure hoverboard appears in overworld
• Fix rat spawns sometimes getting calcualted to NaN
• Add physics-based cables to overworld, affected by gravity and wind (this could probably be a separate devlog)
• Push throwables away from screen edge (so player doesn't accidentally move to a different area when they just wanted to pick up the throwables)
• Consistent bouncing / sliding physics for throwables on walls vs. shelves
• Rework seeds - don't pass through shelves, and grow only after a delay to give the player a chance to pick back up if wanted
• Fix beanstalk not growing close enough to the centre of the seed, causing issues when growing near a wall
• Fix bad house scrolling behaviour in certain load situations
• Split overworld into multiple areas that the camera will "snap" to. These can have separate palettes applied to them too.
• Rework the transitions code. Now transitions can appear between main menu and overworld, overworld and house, etc.
• Rework thief graphic generation - now future thieves will have varied height, on top of clothing / hair colours
• Coin splashes now appear when interacting with skeletons and money bags, not just "stashes" in libraries

Keeping in mind that the "next steps" from last update haven't been touched... the focus will continue to be on improvements to the overworld area for now. Next areas:

• Rehaul of overworld area layout
• Waterfall animation
• Water drips animation in caves area
• Nice foliage graphics
• Outer house graphic rework

Until next time!