I've been digging into the actual game-y parts of this project lately... in my notebook.

In the meantime, I've been working on improving my shader skills, and have employed a few of them in the existing parts of this project, which means - you guessed it - another update to my background imagery.

You can't really tell from the GIF, but I'm employing a shader to blur the entire background, since it's not meant to interfere much with the water, which is where the game takes place.

I've also re-worked the clouds once more, adjusting the way the blending works (which is still a procedural surface, created from a few layers of cloud noise adding/multiplying), so it now relies on a shader to blend the alpha, which gives me more control over the thickness and edge definition.

I'd like to add some more functionality to that later, so I can change the cloud coverage on the fly, and maybe add some sort of fakey depth effect. We'll see.

One final note: the speed changes in the simulation shown in the GIF are being done in-game, and not as a post edit. I added a debug button that, when pressed, speeds up virtually everything in the game (save for a few un-pictured elements). I might leave that in as a feature, if it proves useful (and practical to keep) in the final game.