Hello everyone!

Im back to share some updates on the development of Pingbert's Snow Ride! The past two (ish) weeks have been mainly working on feedback from the previous footage showcase but also some nice visual effects to make Pingbert's world more alive.

Physics

To address feedback on movement, there was a big overhaul to the player physics and controls to make the character much easier to slide. Not only that, but velocity is determined much more realistically which was a big issue before. The player vertical velocity wasn't working as expected on ramps which made it seem unnatural, basically the velocity wasn't calculated according to the current player angle on the slope. Now the player is able to rotate and strafe without having too rely too much on the drift mechanic while also making ramps much more fun and realistic. There are of course some parameters to be tuned but can say that this overhaul was worth it and definitely changed the game's feel. To compensate with the player's greater speed and movement terrain generation was also adjusted.

Some new gameplay to demonstrate this!

(sorry about lag spikes, don't know what's up with Windows 11 recently..)

Also, if you are wondering where the background music is from look at the Music section below!

Procedural terrain generation

A big goal these weeks was also updating the procedural generation to have more dynamic levels. Before terrain randomness changed:

• Length
• Rotation (left or right turn)
• Vertical Rotation (the angle that makes it a half pipe or plane)
• Ramp (determines if the segment is a ramp or not)

Now adding to the previous there is now the following new components:

• Width change: Every segment used to be the same width before which made it monotone. Now, the width changes throughout the generation which can make bigger and safer areas while also more narrow segments that are harder to traverse if you aren't careful.
• Vertical change: Using almost the same logic as ramps but without gaps, there is now vertical change both upwards and downards to add more verticality into the levels! Think this is one of the nicer looking changes because it now looks more like actual slopes in a mountain rather than a flat half pipe all the time.
• Gap Distance changes: Minor change but since the player can now go much faster the ramp height is used to add to the gap distance so that the higher the ramp the greater the distance between the gap of two segments so that it's easier for the players to land on the other side.

While it may seem little this already adds much more variety into the level, the next planned short term steps to add to the procedural level generation:

• Mini Ramps: Small ramps that spawn on the terrain, think of Excitebike like ramps. A trail of pickable mail or other items would be spawned in the ramp so players are motivated to take it.
• Trees: With the bigger terrains now, it can feel empty even with all the crates, mail, and mailboxes. Now it's time to start adding more obstacles. And I think nothing would fit more than snow pine trees.
• Score Rings: I am planning to add these "rings" which spawn at random and if you slide through one of them, the next one spawns and so on. They have a timer though so you better go through them in order before the timer is out. Kind of like red coins from Super Mario 64. I am pretty sure there are a ton of games with this exact same idea but I can't seem to remember one specifically lol.

World Environment

Okay maybe this devlog has been too technical so far. Let's change it up with some visual new stuff. To make the world feel much more alive (there are other things to work on with higher priority but it's always fun to work on visual effects lol), the following was added:

• Aurora Borealis: I've always wanted to see one in real life.. so atleast I can now do it ingame! These spawn kind of rarely to make them more outstand more. There are some performance concerns with the shader so hopefully this can be kept in the web version of the game.
• Flags: There are now added to the checkpoint banners to make them more visible from far away. Planning on adding more type of flags across the terrain to have more objects be affected by wind. I've seen flags with knots on snowy mountains but I forgot what they are called and haven't been able to look it up without their name, but the idea is to add those too!
• Wind Particles: Pingbert slides very high up the mountains, so it's only natural that there is alot of wind gusts visible. These were inspired by Wind Waker's.
• Shooting Stars: Also spawn kind of rarely, but if you look up at the night sky you may spot some shooting stars.
• Night Sky: Speaking of the sky, a new shader was created to replace the previous skybox which was a still image. The sky is now procedurally generated, which makes it possible to add effects such as colorful variable galaxies patterns and stars that twinkle overtime. Small details that makes the world feel more alive I feel.

Watch the following video too see these new effects!

Music

I wanted to share a sneek peak of the game's soundtrack! The full soundtrack is a work in progress but I am really happy with how it's coming up. I was able to meet through Newgrounds different musicians that have now added to the game's music! I really think this site is great for meeting talented people open to working together like this, and I am looking foward to do so again in the future. Thank you so much again @CanineLotus, @MYYA, @RyanAvx !!

Please check out their work.

https://caninelotus.newgrounds.com/

https://ryanavx.newgrounds.com/

https://myya.newgrounds.com/

While it feels like the end goal is still far off I am happy with the progress so far. These past weeks were a little busy personally but still think there was a great amount of progress on both visuals and core game mechanics. Excited to expand on this now with new props and mechanics ontop of the terrain generation (especially the trees and score rings mentioned before).

That's it for now! Have a great one!!

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