Chasing Elysium - March + April 2026 Devlog

These past two months were a little strange! I ended up taking a bit of an extended break while I reorganized a few things in my life. There was some progress at least, so this will be quick. Very quick.

First off, I did work on some graphics! I reworked some character sprites to improve perspective, started adding normal maps, and made a few basic tile maps.

As I am not particularly great at pixel art yet, I intend to somewhat make up for it by leaning into my strengths. I’m a big math nerd with a background in physics. So naturally the best way to use my strengths is to lean into more math-based graphical techniques.

In particular, 2D pixel art games tend not to have a lot of lighting effects. So that is a way I can make my game stand out and if I do it right make it look good as well. Hand made normal maps for most (all?) sprites and tiles, combined with a reasonable amount of lighting. Not too much, I don’t want to overdo it.

Speaking of lighting…

The last few days I worked on an absolutely ridiculous feature that I may end up turning off, but I really want to keep it. A few months back I did some studying on the movement of the sun and moon through the sky, partially because I don’t have a good intuitive grasp of orbital mechanics from the perspective of a planetary surface (despite living on one!), partially because…

well…

how about a day night cycle with realistic sun and moon movement? Where I can integrate these equations and account for latitude and it’s completely pointless but it’s fun.

The joy of hobby game dev is you can do whatever you want! For me, this is fun!

So that’s a feature that exists and is fully developed and works. I think I’ll do a blog post about it soon.