Short and simple tonight. Three GIFs showing off the latest rework of some particle systems. I won't win any art awards, but, I think I've made things look much better :)

Asteroid Hits:

The Jelly now spews multi-colored jelly bits when he gets hit that basically match the trail he leaves while flying around. The asteroids spew out a smaller collection of asteroid bits. No more 'default particles' for these guys.

Off Screen Warning:

Probably still to subtle, but, the ugly gray 'default particles' that sprayed when you used to go off screen have been replaced with shades of cyan jelly. Not sure if this will be the 'final' version of these particles, but, I needed something less ugly. And, ultimately, regardless of what the particle effect is, I think I also want to introduce some camera shake into the mix to make sure that the player really knows he's doing something bad.

Almost Dead Warning:

This one used to be just some red 'default particles' (yes, that's basically all I used to use). Now, the spewing is mostly the same, but, the particles have gotten a visual upgrade thanks to various shades of red as well as varying sizes

After the save system rewrite that I've been concentrating on over the last few days, I decided tonight was a good night to give my mind a break and simply work on updating some artwork.

Tonight's task was to revamp the loading and main menu screens. In a previous post, I was toying with some different mock-ups for the main menu. Tonight, I decided to keep those on the back burner and simply tried to spruce up the original screen. My goal was to make the selection scroll window look more like it's something encased under glass hurling through space. I'm not sure I've completely nailed the 'under glass' part, but, I feel that what I have at least looks better than the previous revision.

I'm also toying with the font style on the main menu and loading screens. Instead of the gray that they once were, they're now black outlined in white. At the moment, I think they look cooler. Time will tell if I continue to think that ;-) What are your thoughts?

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Didn't have a whole lot of time to dedicate to the cause today so I opted to take a stab at creating art for the new Gravity Well obstacle. The goal was to try making a simple ever shrinking ring-type thing. There's surely several ways to accomplish this effect. I decided to try generating it via Unity's particle system. The results are in the GIF below. Certainly still nothing special, but, I think it looks much better than the big pink blob from a couple days ago :)