Realm system / what's taking so long?
The game was initially designed with just one "dimension" in mind, meaning that one savefile only had one primary world.
The chaos rifts and the pineapple altar, under the hood, actually took place in the same realm, but in a small enclosed area that's normally inaccessible to players.
As the development progressed, it became clear that having many realms as part of one world will become a core part of the game someday.
Think of it as every biome having its own realm, where you can visit newly-added biomes without having to start over, and can even create multiple "instances" of a specific biome within the same world.
Although this feature won't be noticeable right away (besides an extra-fancy teleporation effect), it will eventually allow me to add more dimensions and proper instanced content.
Other changes
- The size of player bullets and the intensity of their hit effects have been reduced for the sake of visibility.
- Added a trail to player's character.
- More of the game's code was rewritten in C++, which may or may not lead to some performance gain.