Hey y'all! I took another day off last night—it was already late by the time I got free time and was in the mood for level editing, and I decided to catch up on sleep instead of trying to burn past my deadline again. While I didn't exactly make up for my missing submissions today, I still played with some new things and learned a bit!

Tonight was the first time I actually tried to set up a particle system in the Distance editor, so I basically took a crash course through the numerous options to get what I wanted. This guide to particle properties by Galen (snowstate) was quite helpful, once I remembered it existed. It especially helped me untangle the "quantize" and "repeater" settings. Fortunately, it only took 10 minutes or so of tweaking to reach the desired effect!

I created a field of lightly-colored arrows moving upward (derived from the ThisWay preset). I needed it to indicate the zone in which the car would be forced upward towards the off-ramp. If you read my notebook, you know that the on- and off-ramps on this "highway" are suspended above it, meaning you have to jump to reach the off-ramp. To make this easier (and make more sense in-universe?), I just set a ForceZone to push the car upward, that you have to jump into to activate.

The other neat thing I got to do was use a point light on an object that wasn't explicitly a light. In this case, I placed a big detour sign to indicate the off-ramp is the only route to take (the sign even points towards it!). If you place an emissive sign in pitch darkness, however, it looks pretty odd. Adding a simple light to the center of the poster really sets the scene properly, complementing the poster itself and making the surrounding area more visible at the same time. You can see the difference below; it's really impressive how far one light goes!

Unfortunately, I fear this off-ramp is hard to identify on approach, obscured by the highway arches among other things. But I'll have to confirm that in testing, as I really should keep moving through the rest of the track at this point. Lay down, light up, move on.

I'm submitting on time this time! This only took like, what, 15 minutes to write? Sweet. I'm proud of myself, and excited to keep this going!! See you next time~