13 July 2024 - The Sky of Numala

One of the playable races in the game is The Kirivans. You can read about them here: Playable Races: Kirivian.

Their home world, called Numala, is perpetually overcast due to some funky space jargon and sci-fi bullshittery (again, check the page linked above).

They are particularly special to me as they capture a very specific feeling and interest of mine, so I put a lot of time into ensuring the atmosphere of their world was just right: Imagine a rainy spring day.

One of the things that can pretty dramatically affect this sensation is the background environment, such as the sky. It is a huge part of the set that makes up the world and so I put a lot of time into it, it has a custom shader designed to render smooth, rolling clouds. I am very proud of how it came out.

A picture of the cloudy sky renderer for their home world. It is a screenshot of the Godot editor's world preview and has a grid on the ground.

Writing shaders has always been one of my hidden passions because it is the good way (i.e. not AI slop) to link art to programming. I am instructing a rock that's really good at math with decimals on how to build the colors needed to draw a sky.

It feels good being a lithomancer.