Dev Blog
Hi, this is the Stranded III development blog (see also Forum Thread, Comment Thread).
Entry 119 - Random Update - October 26, 2025
Whoops! I'm STILL working on the game!
Tweening/Animation Library
In Unity I used a lot DOTween for animations so I searched for a replacement in Godot. Turns out that there's GTweens-Godot which I started to use. DOTween feels a bit more powerful but GTweens is fine for most things and I can easily add stuff I need on top. Nice library!
And yes, I know that Godot comes with its own tweening features and I'm even using it in some places but for some cases GTweens-Godot is simply more convenient and also closer to what I'm used to from DOTween.
Shake Shader
I like the bouncy Fortnite shake effect that plays when you hit anything static in the world e.g. a tree or a wall. I remade that shader for Stranded III to have better feedback when hitting stuff. Actually.. to be honest: AI remade it for me. I only tweaked it. Maybe some will dislike it because it gives a toony look and feel but I like it and I think it's much better than only having some particles as feedback for hits.
The downside is that each shader which is used for objects in the world needs to have the logic for this shake effect. Luckily it's a fancy shader include and very easy to add. Hooray!
Lock Screen
I replicated the lock screen that I already made for the Unity version but made it even jucier with more small animations (using GTweens-Godot).
Watch lockscreen video
No worries! I've put the lock menu on the editor button for testing purposes only. You won't have to complete an unlock sequence to access the editor
UI Shine Effect
Wasting time with useless details is one of my biggest strength. lol. So I developed a component which allows me to show shine effects which follow a Godot Path2D component. It comes with many settings. e.g. size scaling, random duration and delay ranges, random ranges of how much of the actual path should be used etc. This allows to make the effect look more dynamic and less boring.
Here's a little example what the setup looks like in Godot. The green arrow line thingy is the Path2D which defines the path for the effect:
And this is the in-game effect:
Note that it doesn't use the full path in this case because I defined a random range for the path start and end points. So it randomly uses a bigger or smaller part of the full path.
In-Game Asset Preview
There's now a new menu which is accessible from the main menu and helps preparing assets for the game. E.g. configuring collision behavior or defining the rotation/scaling/offset for creation of icons.
In Stranded II an entire object was either solid (tree) or non-solid (bush). Now a single object can have parts which are solid and parts which are non-solid, allowing more complex setups. The screenshot shows an example of this. The red outlines show solid colliders, the yellow ones non-solid colliders. On the bottom right you can see the related definition which filters all textures starting with "palmfrond" and removes their collision (aka makes them non-solid).
Asset preview menu, click to enlarge
Other Stuff
I also worked on some other things.
E.g. placing building parts. This is nearly done but not fully finalized. I tweaked player movement so walking looks fancier now (head bob) and swimming as well as diving with oxygen meter is supported. Shooting projectiles like arrows is also prepared and I'm currently adding wildlife aka "AI" controlled animals.
Tweening/Animation Library
In Unity I used a lot DOTween for animations so I searched for a replacement in Godot. Turns out that there's GTweens-Godot which I started to use. DOTween feels a bit more powerful but GTweens is fine for most things and I can easily add stuff I need on top. Nice library!
And yes, I know that Godot comes with its own tweening features and I'm even using it in some places but for some cases GTweens-Godot is simply more convenient and also closer to what I'm used to from DOTween.
Shake Shader
I like the bouncy Fortnite shake effect that plays when you hit anything static in the world e.g. a tree or a wall. I remade that shader for Stranded III to have better feedback when hitting stuff. Actually.. to be honest: AI remade it for me. I only tweaked it. Maybe some will dislike it because it gives a toony look and feel but I like it and I think it's much better than only having some particles as feedback for hits.
The downside is that each shader which is used for objects in the world needs to have the logic for this shake effect. Luckily it's a fancy shader include and very easy to add. Hooray!
Lock Screen
I replicated the lock screen that I already made for the Unity version but made it even jucier with more small animations (using GTweens-Godot).
Watch lockscreen videoNo worries! I've put the lock menu on the editor button for testing purposes only. You won't have to complete an unlock sequence to access the editor
UI Shine Effect
Wasting time with useless details is one of my biggest strength. lol. So I developed a component which allows me to show shine effects which follow a Godot Path2D component. It comes with many settings. e.g. size scaling, random duration and delay ranges, random ranges of how much of the actual path should be used etc. This allows to make the effect look more dynamic and less boring.
Here's a little example what the setup looks like in Godot. The green arrow line thingy is the Path2D which defines the path for the effect:
And this is the in-game effect:
Note that it doesn't use the full path in this case because I defined a random range for the path start and end points. So it randomly uses a bigger or smaller part of the full path.
In-Game Asset Preview
There's now a new menu which is accessible from the main menu and helps preparing assets for the game. E.g. configuring collision behavior or defining the rotation/scaling/offset for creation of icons.
In Stranded II an entire object was either solid (tree) or non-solid (bush). Now a single object can have parts which are solid and parts which are non-solid, allowing more complex setups. The screenshot shows an example of this. The red outlines show solid colliders, the yellow ones non-solid colliders. On the bottom right you can see the related definition which filters all textures starting with "palmfrond" and removes their collision (aka makes them non-solid).
Asset preview menu, click to enlargeOther Stuff
I also worked on some other things.
E.g. placing building parts. This is nearly done but not fully finalized. I tweaked player movement so walking looks fancier now (head bob) and swimming as well as diving with oxygen meter is supported. Shooting projectiles like arrows is also prepared and I'm currently adding wildlife aka "AI" controlled animals.