Until now, the game was looking quite bland and boring, with that default blue background. But not anymore! I've added a background and particles to the game!

Background camera

Since each level differs in size, I wasn't sure how to go around putting them inside a tower.

I could have drawn the inner walls of a tower, and put that in a plane far in the distance. But then I would have to actually draw those walls (which I wasn't even sure where to start from), and I didn't like the idea all that much. I wanted the player to feel like they are actually inside a tower.

When I tried to simply add a basic tower model around the level, I quickly realized that the different dimensions of the levels would force the tower to either be too wide or to be scaled according to the level. Not doing so would cause either the level or the camera to clip through the tower.

Eventually, I noticed that I could have more than one camera on the level scene:

This allowed me to have the background be rendered separately from the level and then merge these two separated images. This creates the illusion of being inside the tower, without having to worry whether or not the level will clip into the background.

Changelog

• Add a background to the level scene
• Create a separated "Graphics" tab in the options menu
• Add particle quality control to the graphics options