🌐 Monday Devlog 47: Rendering

Welcome back!

This week.. well, summer online classes AND a very, very long two week road trip started for me. So, it's been difficult to find free time that also has stable internet!! These things compound each other, since classes are online, but enough of that, let's go over some of the new level editor changes.

And just to clarify! We're still waiting on the engine's dev to tackle the crashing and lag-spiking issues that Parse is facing. At this rate 1.3 is going to be merged with 2.0! (please god no)

Smooth Movement!

Using the tech that enabled smoother parser movement back in devlog 31, level editor scrolling was modified to be smoother rather than rigidly teleporting, which it used to do - you notice this same phenomenon when you scroll pretty much any site on your phone or computer - there are subtle things that smooth the vertical scrolling out, to prevent you from feeling like you're "teleporting" up and down.

The main new thing, though, is:

Level Rendering!

Level beatmaps can now be fully rendered and viewed in the level editor! Any beatmaps for the game can practically instantly be examined now in this very editor instead of relying on an Excel document.

Halcyon, seen without needing to survive the error barrage!

There are still some hiccups with the system - like how the way the errors are "sticked" onto the bars means they're delayed a bit, and the dubious, evil notes briefly appearing in the top left, but these are things that are very easy to iron out. I would just prefer to focus on being able to place notes next. It's immense that I was able to get this working on the first try, without failsafes or modifications - something that almost never happens.

As for how it works, it's surprisingly similar to how notes are spawned in-game - each "line", when its number on the list is updated, will read that section of the sheet. Then it'll figure out where to place the note with a bit of math, and then simply spawn it there, attaching it to the bar as it moves. The original, un-optimized note spawning system ingame worked this way, although because we need to scroll backwards and forwards at any speed, the same "most efficient" solution ingame can't work here. Still, the performance metrics are showing good numbers as I test.

There is one thing I'm unsure about though - I noticed that the negative errors were a little hard to spot compared to the positive ones, relatively. So, I tried adding faded outlines of the opposite color for both note types:

Compare this to the original, without the outlines:

Does it look better? I'm not entirely sure - it seems to improve visibility, but it also is just a bit confusing to the brain. At least for me - write in the comments or Discord if you have any thoughts!

Up Next..

As I'm on a trip, and taking summer classes at the same time, it's uncertain what'll be ready by next week's devlog. However, I WOULD like to note that due to trailer shenanigans, 1.3 will not be out anytime before July 13 at the minimum. Around then I'll finally be back home and will be able to make the 1.3 trailer, and hopefully Parse will finally be freed of its bugs and crashes on export!

Working on this level editor, however, has been extremely fun, and I regret not doing it sooner. It was lower on my priority list to other things, and I wasn't too interested in working on Parse at all around a month ago. However, working on the editor and seeing everything come together so neatly is immensely rewarding, honestly way more than something like controller navigation. So, expect the devlogs to be weekly again!

As always, be back in a week!

-Encabulated Games