Terminal Burn

25fps and getting there. My goal is a solid 30hz on the Durango, and 60hz on One S, and 60hz 4k on Series X|S. This work also means it runs on lower spec PCs - it's already a solid 60hz on the Steamdeck!

After some extremely low-level faffing, Terminal Burn is working on the Xbox. It's about... 4... frames per second on the 2013 Xbox One, so I have quite some optimisation to achieve still!

Picked up a secondhand AverMedia capture box for 45 quid to record the #TerminalBurn trailer without killing the main rig. Quality is "fine, if not outstanding." There is screen tear. This is where we are. #indiegames #gamedev

Stat tracking on a post-run results screen — something that always gets bolted on too late. Here's what that looks like in #TerminalBurn: cargo delivered, ship used, performance logged. Basic stuff we wish we'd wired in from day one. #indiegames #gamedev

The new engine thrust is in. Cyan and magenta exhaust plumes, distance-based emission, attached to the interpolated renderer — messy to get right, but it looks like this now. #TerminalBurn #indiegames #gamedev

Same rover, same pad, four completely different skies — because our skybox settings were bleeding across scene transitions and we hadn't caught it yet. That's the bug staring back at us in #TerminalBurn. #indiegames #gamedev

Heat shimmer used to be a headline feature. Now it's just noise in the render pipeline for #TerminalBurn — and yeah, we're old enough to remember when that meant something printed on a box. #indiegames #gamedev

https://i.gyazo.com/f90eae882bd2ef15bd41b6a550e82b2c.mp4

The heavy cargo in Terminal Burn has proper weight to it. Not just visual, but physical — it lands, it scatters, it *smacks* into everything around it. That screenshot is what that looks like. #TerminalBurn #indiegames #gamedev

Glancing impact clips the stabilisers, ship goes full chaos. Assists come back online just as it's upside-down over water, completely unsure what to do about that. Same as us, honestly. #TerminalBurn #indiegames #gamedev

The clouds in Terminal Burn are now tied to both rain and wind states. You can see what that looks like in the video — four distinct weather conditions, all driven by the same system. No, you cannot fly up to them. #TerminalBurn #indiegames #gamedev

Tiny audio drop just landed in #TerminalBurn — nearly 100k lines of sound assets in one go. It's the small stuff that quietly makes a game feel real. #indiedev #indiegames #gamedev

Timed cargo takes progressive damage in #TerminalBurn now. The holes appearing in the geometry are not intentional, the landing was a mess, and the thrust effects still need work. Showing it anyway. #indiegames #gamedev

Showing off the new timed cargo damage in #TerminalBurn while actively ignoring the geometry dissolving, a landing I immediately regretted, thrust effects that aren't right, and a heat shimmer pass I haven't started. Progress. #indiegames #gamedev #indiedev

That circular sphere of sky you're looking at (5.7GB of GPU later) is the Horizon Zero Dawn cloud trick — rendered onto a flat plane, projected spherically. We suspect it's calculating every pixel outside that boundary too. So we froze it on Performance mode. #TerminalBurn #indie

Cloud speed now reacts to the gusty wind mutator in #TerminalBurn. Nobody will probably notice, but that's sort of the point. The weather video shows what it looks like when the sky actually believes the storm is happening. #indiegames #gamedev

Showing off the new timed cargo damage in #TerminalBurn while actively pretending not to notice the geometry falling apart, the dodgy landing, and the thrust effects that aren't done yet. It's fine. It's fine. #indiegames #gamedev

The clouds in #TerminalBurn now actually read the weather mutators. Oppressive storm rolling in? The sky knows. What you're seeing in the video is that same scene, same camera, just the atmosphere doing its job. #indiegames #gamedev

Cloud density now talks to the weather mutators in Terminal Burn. What you're seeing in the video is that exact hookup — the sky going from oppressive storm ceiling to full volumetric chaos, all driven by the same difficulty settings that make your landing harder. #TerminalBurn #

Clouds move faster when the gusty wind mutator kicks in. Nobody asked for that, nobody will probably clock it, but it's in #TerminalBurn now because it should be. That's the whole job, really. #indiegames #gamedev

The cheap 2D cloud fallback exists so older hardware still gets a sky worth looking at. Volumetric layers for those who can run it, a flat 2D sheet underneath for everyone else. Weather mutators hook into both. #TerminalBurn #indiegames #gamedev

Cloud density and oppressiveness tied directly to the weather mutators now — same scene, different sky, completely different feeling. That's the whole thing in #TerminalBurn. The world just gets heavier when the conditions say so. #indiegames #gamedev

Clouds now move faster when the gusty wind mutator kicks in. Nobody will notice, probably. That's the video — #TerminalBurn weather reacting to difficulty in real time, quietly, no fanfare. #indiegames #gamedev

Clouds in #TerminalBurn now move with the wind mutator. That video is the gusty setting doing its thing — no-one was supposed to notice the velocity was hooked up, but here we are. #indiegames #gamedev

Cloud density tied directly to weather mutators now — watch it go from hammering rain to dead-calm overcast to something genuinely threatening rolling back in. That's the sky in #TerminalBurn doing actual work, not just sitting there looking pretty. #indiegames #gamedev