Hey everyone,

Welcome to the first post in my new, regular update series! I'm excited to kick things off by talking about a feature I'm passionate about: polishing the game's visuals.

As you can see in the video, I'm currently working on version 0.3.1, and a big part of that is upgrading the backgrounds for the main menu, vault, and arena scenes. While core gameplay is always the top priority, I believe that adding a high level of polish early on is what makes an indie game truly stand out. Players notice and appreciate it, and it’s a signature part of my development style.

To achieve this, I spent a bunch of time researching the best approach — I looked into complex particle systems, shaders, and video overlays. I was shocked to find that simple video overlays were by far the most performant option! Many of the assets I experimented with are freely available from places like Vecteezy, Pixabay, etc.

I initially assumed video would be too demanding, but I was completely wrong. Godot Engine handles them beautifully, especially since you can push video decoding to a separate thread, making it incredibly lightweight.

The main challenge was that Godot doesn't natively support video with alpha (transparency) channels. To solve this, I crafted a custom blend mode shader based on this fantastic article from Godot Shaders. It allows me to blend the videos just like you would in Photoshop, creating semi-transparent overlays where you can still see the scene behind them.

I hope you love the refreshed, more dynamic look as much as I do! Let me know what you think in the comments.

(P.S. For my supporters on Patreon, I've made all my custom video files and the shader code available to download!)