A Game Dev Journal — 19/08/2026

It’s halfway through my planned features week and I’m both further ahead than I thought I would be but behind where I wanted to be. Which I guess means I’m right where I am?

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Particle systems and lighting

The first thing on my list from last time was to pick “a couple” of the mining tools and implement so simple particle and lighting effects to give them a bit more presence in the world.

Rather than just a couple, I ended up doing this for almost all of the current mining tools. Mainly because I kept to the intent of “keeping it simple.”

Simple as such, the effects are quite subtle and you can see where I’ve reused some between elements. But it gives each of the mining tools more of an impact on the world (quite literally for some) and also makes it clearer how some of them are actually doing some mining. I hope.

I find particle systems intimidating. Probably because they are — any tutorial that goes through them makes a point of just how many settings there are and how any of them could be the…