Star Child News

Kyle aka Anthrocarbon - music and sfx

MUSICAL CHAIRS!
(Silence is vital.)

Months after my previous log, the stars have aligned and some more music has reached Jay for review. I’ve had multiple long sessions keenly tweaking sliders and knobs, until the growing song turned into a distortion-dependent facsimile of any other nameless four-to-the-floor demo track, sitting in a paper sleeve on a dusty shelf, in whatever local CD store still stocks physical media and didn’t notice the ‘DJ’ leave it there. Despite those stepping stones, though, the song I recently sent to Jay had most of what we needed. It only took something like 6 months to break the drought. *kappa emote*

That success may be thanks to my chair. No this is not a sponsor spot for G-string C7, Battle Bucket, or Nipplechairs.

You see, I have this ongoing ‘bet’ with humankind, that it is not possible for any person ever, to design and manufacture a comfortable chair. I bought this current chair from a salvage shop, and because IT LIED TO ME, my apparent comfort morphed into aches after only 48 hours, and that resulted in me half leaning forward, which left me feeling urgent and attentive, thus, able to focus on getting at least one track done. (Sorry for the delay, Jay. At least we might be able to make an ‘all the failed cuts’ album as a standalone gag gift.)



I wish all my chairs were broken in just the right way to make something usable happen, but the truth is that although much of my time is spent on partial songs nobody ever gets to hear, mistakes are terribly important - especially in creative pursuits. The faster I fail, and the more skilful I become at learning something beneficial from the exercise, and the clearer my understanding of how to juice my brainfruits. A huge part of the process is good old experimentation. I’ve probably oozed praise for the “Arcade” plugin in FL Studio before, but in addition, I have a special place in my heart for the Distructor and LuxeVerb plugins. The way they expand the sound stage and mutate vanilla synth sounds is delightful, and they make the process of experimentation an aurally fulfilling little narrative.

However, on the topic of experimentation and process, I still wouldn’t be caught dead using AI generative tools. Slop-machines make ‘prototyping’ easy for some, but the easier the skill floor is, the more I need my creative process to make it hard! It’s dangerous to be lazy when authenticity is the only currency that matters. So whether it’s a pretty butterfly, a horse’s tail, or a reductive relationship with chairs that provides the seed for your internal randomiser, always lean into it. The brain is incredible at abstracting thought from irrational stimuli, and elevating our arts will always depend on us leaning into that mysterious and oft frustrating mechanism. Essentially, you do you. (This is why I’m not heard from most of the time.)

FOLEY MOLEY!
(I’ll rhyme better next time, I promise.)

We’ve managed to find a navigable hill to climb in our most recent approach in the SFX department, focusing on the organic sounds instead of my entertaining my fixation on lofi-ing the crap out of samples to make them more ‘retro’ and tastefully glitchy. Further in that direction, I resolved to reduce filtering and enhancements, and record more takes of the source samples. Although compression is great for compliance with game engine needs and file size control, short SFX samples at higher fidelity are not resource hogs like musical tracks. So, in the pursuit of creating more apt noises, I have reached for more interesting objects to smack, drop, and squish. Here are some of the latest helpers.









I’m not a hoarder, but I’m far from austere and tidy. There have been countless uses for random bits and pieces I’ve held on to over the decades, and although many have been shortlisted for use as Foley tools, the way sounds are created from them are far more influential than an object’s shape or material. Those physical properties govern what is possible to extract from the object, but the experimentation is by far the most critical part of the process. I’m obsessed with my metal Slinky because as once had something metallic to my ear that sounded like power lines snapping (sci fi pew pew sort of thing,) and I’ve chased that noise ever since. I recently started looking at cryoseisms which have similar aural profundity to cable jolts, but here in Australia, there’s virtually no chance of going out to record samples of them - lacking ice, glaciers and all that.

Where I’m going with this, is that I love the variety such a ‘hoard’ offers, but the imagination and creativity of the craft are best spent on discovering how to manipulate and combine these object. A skilled Foley artist can score a film with a fry pan, a cardboard box, and a cup of rice. I think maybe I’m just greedy. Or perhaps, the ‘fun’ aspect motivates the necessary experimentation, and my mind can be adequately juiced when it imagines an object looks like it should sound interesting. Maybe the abundant variety in shape and material is crucial after all.

- Anthrocarbon

Jay Ingle - lead developer, designer, and artist:

I recently took some placeholder animations, and made em look nice.

Here is the original, placeholder animation:



And how it looked in-game:



So I created a replacement animation:





Certainly an improvement, but it still isn't quite right. This is because to make the flame disappear, we are just reversing the animation. This makes it look like the flame is being sucked back into the ground. It looks kind of odd, kind of alien, and sometimes that is what I am looking for. It looks more like a flame being, than actual real flame. But let us see what it looks like, with a more realistic approach:





I'm gonna have to say that this final animation looks the best. I just need to keep in mind that what looks the "best" doesn't always evoke the feeling that I am looking for. But in this case, natural feels better than alien jank.

Jay Ingle - lead developer, designer, and artist:

Great news! You will be able to play Star Child, 2 months from now!

Steam Next Fest begins February 23rd, 2026, showcasing many new indie games. Star Child will have a playable demo for this event. We will also have an updated store page, and a new gameplay trailer.

What can you expect from the Star Child demo?

The Star Child demo will be a short, self-contained gameplay episode. A short story. A small journey.

We discussed a few possibilities for this demo. One idea was for the gameplay to be the actual start of the game, just less polished, and you would be able to resume your save, when the full game is released. But not for this demo. This will be a separate, self-contained mini-episode, where you will get to experience a few different pieces of the overall game, arranged into a bit of a side story. There will be no spoilers for the full game, so enjoy.

Now what do I need to do to design and complete this demo?

Plenty! This week I was working on implementing a plugin for control management. I have converted all player controls into using the plugin instead of Godot's built-in input system. Next week I will be setting up auto-switching between keyboard and controller, and control rebinding.

This leads into finishing the options menu, and the main menu. I also need to design the visuals for the automap.

I need another enemy or two, for the demo scenario. And level design. And a bit of story that is thematically similar to the full game. And a bit of polish to as many graphical effects as I can.

I need to work with our audio man Anthrocarbon to get the sound effects and music perfected.

Will there be a boss fight in this demo? I really want there to be! This is a time constraint. If this demo does not have a boss fight, I will work to get a boss fight demo out soon after.

I've got 2 months and I have started mapping out this journey. I can do it! Stay tuned.

Hello. This week I made some plants, and I animated them, and I created particle effects for them.

This is Pyxel Edit, which I use for most of the art in Star Child (and I used for all of the art in Toleo).



Let's take a closer look at one of these plants.



The most important aspect of this animation, and most animation, is how different things animate with different timings. Some things animation first, then other things follow. Even the pixel art tutorial books I read have trouble expressing this perfectly, so let's look at it directly.



We imagine the player walking into the plant, coming from the right side. The first thing that happens, on frame 01 is the furthest-right leaf moves to the left. Then on frame 02, the middle leaf moves left. On frame 03, the furthest-left leaf moves to the right, but also, the right leaf moves back to its original position. On frame 04, the middle leaf moves back to original position. And the next frame is the original frame 00, which also means the furthest-left leaf has returned to original position.

What I want is a wave-effect with the leaves. Here is how it looks in-game, with a little particle effect for some falling leaves.



I like it! I think it fits in our game.

Another thing I did this week was improve our rocket explosion particle effect. Here is what it used to look like:



Here is a new and improved version. Better color ramp, and a secondary explosive effect that lasts a little longer and shoots out a little further:



Better, I think.

That's all for now, see you next week!

Jay Ingle - lead developer, designer, and artist:

Let us take a look at the process of animating some plants. In the world of Star Child, we don't always have a lot of scrolling/parallax going on, so we need to find ways to make things move, to provide pleasing visual interest.

We want all plants to move a little when you touch them, or when a rocket flies past them. This looks neat, but also makes you feel like you are IN this world, a part of this world, affecting things with your actions and movements.

We also want plants to sway in the correct direction. Some plants are small enough where we can just give them a little dip, and not have to animate and code them to work in two different directions. Such as these little bell plants:





Just a little animation for the little plants. Here is what is interesting: the closer the size of the plant to the player, the more animation is needed. Small plants only need small animations. BIG plants, since they are heavier, are less affected by our movement, and thus they don't move a whole lot when we touch them.





However, animation speed should be faster for the smaller plants, and slower for the big plants. When we combine several of these plants, the effect can be quite nice, and seem natural. Notice that the middle-sized plant has the most frames of animation, and moves the most when we touch it.



Here is the bit of code that runs whenever something touches a plant:



We check if the animation is already playing, because we don't want to skip back to the first frame to start the animation over, if it is already in the middle, that looks quite strange.

We then randomize the speed of the animation, from 0.8 (80% speed) to 1.2 (120% speed). This is per-plant, so each plant will animate at a slightly different rate, even if they are the same size.

Next we check the relative location of the "body" that has interacted with the plant. "body" is gdscript terminology, it generally refers to things that exist in the physics simulation, and move around in the world. A physics body. Could be the player, could be a rocket, could be an enemy, etc.

If the body's horizontal (x) position is greater than the plant's position (global_position.x in this case), that means the body is further to the right than the plant (and must be moving left into the plant's hitbox), and thus, we sway the plant to the left.

These plants that I have shown have been limited in their animation techniques. This is due to the small size, or their solid-ish nature. Tune in next week and we will go thru the entire process of creating some plant animations, for plants that bend and move a lot more.