WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:July 22, 2026July 22, 2026July 22, 2026

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Hey, everyone- I’m here once again for another installment of Work-In-Progress Wednesday! This one’s all about the progress on Atmocopter.

New Feature: Animated Tilesets

It’s finally here! I’ve been working on this for a while. I drew several new animated tiles, and after wrestling with the engine and editor a little bit, got them in the game just fine.

Click “Continue Reading” to see more awesome GIFs and read about a tricky bug I encountered!

Super Pixel Effects GigapackSuper Pixel Effects GigapackSuper Pixel Effects Gigapackv2.7.0v2.7.0v2.7.0

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Hey, everyone! I’m here tonight with Super Pixel Effects Gigapack version 2.7.0! This update includes 10 new text effects with a brand new font:

Above, you can see the small versions of all the text effects. The big ones won’t all fit in the same GIF! An example of one of the large versions is below:

This batch of effects features a different intro and outro animation than the previous batch, matching its sleek, sci-fi flair.

Aside from a lot of last-minute bug fixing, I was able to add a sort of 3D-ish depth effect to the text this time, and I also got the kerning editor working! There turned out to be a lot more valid bigrams (character pairs) in English than I expected, so I narrowed it down to only the ones I actually use in these text effects.

I also wanted to do text for multipliers or combos, like “x2”, “x3”, and so on… But I realized I forgot to draw numbers for both this font as well as the font used in the other effects! So I added more non-multiplier text effects instead, and we’ll have to save those for a future text update. I’m happy with the variety of text we have in this update- There’s sure to be one or two you can use for your game, no matter what kind of game you’re making!

Ready to get it for your game?

Not into Patreon? Never fear- The Gigapack can also be purchased below!

That’s all for today- I’ll be hard at work on Atmocopter this coming week! I picked up a new mini PC to demo the game at 2D Con, but it turned out to be underpowered for the game. I knew I should’ve picked up a second one in 2024, when I got my other one! Then I got really sidetracked figuring out why Atmocopter was not only running slowly, but running incorrectly on that new mini PC. It seems to be a hardware/graphics driver/SFML bug, but the way the game was failing was so novel I couldn’t help but go down the rabbit hole. See you next WIP Wednesday!

-Will

Mini-WIP Wednesday:Mini-WIP Wednesday:Mini-WIP Wednesday:July 15, 2026July 15, 2026July 15, 2026

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Hey, everyone! I’m here for a mini-edition of Work-In-Progress Wednesday!

I’ve been working on a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, including SparkBolt Studio. Here’s the latest!

I whipped up a small new tileset for Atmocopter:

This tileset is a blend of sci-fi and industrial themes, and is going to be used for one of the hub areas in the game. I’m excited to finally put the hub together!

Since I’ll be working with multiple tilesets, I wanted to make sure SparkBolt Studio was ready for it. After some improvements and a lot of bug fixes, multiple tilesets in the same tilemap are finally working correctly. Above, you can see a nice quality-of-life improvement: When you select a tile, the tileset view window switches to that tileset automatically.

Tile stamps also now support tiles from multiple tilesets in the same stamp! I was kind of surprised I designed it without that capability in the first place…

This week I’ll be bringing you new text effects, with a brand new font! This sci-fi font is named “Roboglyph,” and features angular, thick letters with heavier weight on the bottom and right strokes of each character. As you can see, because the letters are slanted, the kerning (space between letters) needs some work…

…So I’ve been working on a kerning editor to go along with it! Right now, it just displays every combination of characters and lets you browse them. I’ve narrowed it down to only character pairs which appear in English, but I’d like to narrow it down further to just pairs that appear in common English words. Reducing the number of pairs is important because I’ll be adjusting the kerning manually for each pair! If there are still too many in the end, I’ll just focus on the ones I need for the effects. Long story short, fonts are tough.

That’s all for today- I’ll see you later this week with text effects for the Gigapack! I might take an extra day to polish it up, so stay tuned.

-Will

WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:July 8, 2026July 8, 2026July 8, 2026

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Hey, everyone! I’m here tonight with a brand new installment of Work-In-Progress Wednesday! Today, we’ll be checking out a couple new features in Atmocopter since last time.

New Object: Propellervator

The propellervator is, as you’d expect, an elevator with propellers! If you look closely, you can see that it’s also an object partially using the terrain’s 3D effect and partially using 2D for the turbines in back. When the player hops aboard, control is taken away and Atmocopter automatically moves to the center of the propellervator. The device’s turbines spin up, and Atmocopter is quickly whisked away to another area! In the above GIF, you can also see updated transition effects since last time. The direction of the transition corresponds to the direction in which the player left the screen.

The propellervator is mostly a set piece for now, but it’s going to be useful in level design when I’d like to break up a level into a couple distinct parts. There’s also a double-size version of propellervator which I’m hoping to use in some auto-scrolling sections!

New Visual Effect: Glow Behind Clouds

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while! Certain objects hidden by clouds now “glow through” a little bit, showing a hint of what’s underneath. In the below screenshot, you can see a little of how it’s put together.

I used debug cheats to move next to the clouds and then fired Atmocopter’s eye beams, pushing the clouds away for a moment. You can see that the glow is only drawn over the clouds, and that underneath are deadly electraps!

Hit “Continue Reading” for more GIFs and screenshots!

Super Pixel Effects GigapackSuper Pixel Effects GigapackSuper Pixel Effects Gigapackv2.6.0v2.6.0v2.6.0

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Hey, everyone! I’m here today with Super Pixel Effects Gigapack version 2.6.0! Today is a big fireworks day here, so I have a fireworks and explosion-themed update for you:

We skipped Work-In-Progress Wednesday this week because I was super busy working on these and Atmocopter, so these animations are all brand new to you guys! I really tried to pull out all the stops and make them the best they could be.
Included are an epic explosion, two stylized explosions, and two different styles of fireworks. As always, all effects come in a large and small size, so you can pick out the right blast for your game! My favorite is the one with the lightning. It’s really dynamic!

Ready to get it for your game?

Not into Patreon? Never fear- The Gigapack can also be purchased below!

What’s Next?

I’ll be continuing Gigapack updates and working on Atmocopter throughout the month as I get the game ready for 2D Con in August. Here’s my tentative schedule for July:

Enjoy the fireworks tonight! (Or if you’re outside the US, enjoy the pixel fireworks!)
Zeph and I will be hunkering down and chilling tonight, since she’s a little scared of the big fireworks. We’ll have a fun night in together!

See you next week on Work-In-Progress Wednesday. I won’t miss the next one- Lots of progress to share on Atmocopter!

-Will

WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:June 24, 2026June 24, 2026June 24, 2026

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Hey, everyone! I’m here today with a fresh Work-In-Progress Wednesday!

This is just a quick one today. I finished a new feature in Atmocopter earlier this week: Transitions!

It might not seem like much, but these are no ordinary transitions like the ones between screens. These transitions are set up to be able to warp Atmocopter to any spot in the level, or (eventually) even to other levels!

Above is a peek at how it looks in my editor. The normal screen transitions are marked in green (right edge of the room), and special transitions are marked in blue (bottom and left edges). The blue “entrance_XYZ” points indicate an entrance from a special transition, and the blue point marked “exits” holds the data to hook it all up. You can see that data in the properties list in the left pane, which lets the game know that the bottom exit should lead to entrance_001 and the left exit should lead to entrance_002.

Hit “Continue Reading” for more pics and GIFs!

Super Pixel Effects GigapackSuper Pixel Effects GigapackSuper Pixel Effects Gigapackv2.5.0v2.5.0v2.5.0

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Hey, everyone! I’m here tonight with Super Pixel Effects Gigapack version 2.5.0! This update includes new fantasy effects and text symbols:

New since the work-in-progress post are the text effects and a friendly-looking heal animation! I also made sure to add a silver (gray) color variant of the crown, so you can do a first/second place kind of thing. The impact effect I’m working on needs a little more time in the oven, so I shuffled it around to the next update. The next update is going to be a blast!

Ready to get it for your game?

Not into Patreon? Never fear- The Gigapack can also be purchased below!

Thank you for your support- See you next week on Work-In-Progress Wednesday!

-Will

WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:June 17, 2026June 17, 2026June 17, 2026

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Hey, everyone! I’m here tonight with another installment of Work-In-Progress Wednesday!

Upcoming Gigapack Effects

Here’s what’s on the way for Super Pixel Effects Gigapack this week:

Above are two new effects coming in the next update: A “forge” spell, and a crown symbol! The forge animation is a stylized 3-hit impact designed to power up a player, card, or ability… But it would also be great as an attack! The crown symbol is all-around useful- Use it as a UI element in a menu to indicate 100% completion, or show the crown over the head of the player currently in the lead in your game. Like some other symbols, it’s informally divisible into three segments- Appear, loop (the shining part), and disappear. Feel free to change the pacing of it to fit your game!

Next up, let’s take a look at a work-in-progress effect:

Phew, that really puts the “WIP” in “WIP Wednesday!” This rough animation is the start of a stylized impact. I wanted to share this so you can see a bit of the process. I started just by blocking out each frame of the projectile, and you can see some of the stretching and squashing of it as it impacts. I thought it would be fun if the impact projectiles turned into some kind of sparks, so I tried it out over on the left side of the impact, leaving the right side unfinished for now. Aside from finishing off the sparks and shading it, there are a couple different directions I could take here- Add lightning to make it a bit more epic and unique, add an impact ring to emphasize the hit…. Maybe both, we’ll see!

Atmocopter Progress

Over the weekend, I implemented one-way platforms!

As you would expect, they only allow Atmocopter to pass through in one direction. They’re supported in four different directions, to act as floors, ceilings, or walls. I wasn’t sure how they’d end up looking with the 3D terrain effect, but I kind of like it a lot.

Above, you can see how one might be placed in a level. This jump while carrying the crate was previously a little hard for some players, and now it should be a piece of cake. The one-way platforms even work correctly while Atmocopter’s grabbing an object, which was a lot harder to get working than it sounds!

Obviously that situation wouldn’t occur in the game, but it was fun to test!

That’s all for today! I’ll see you Friday with the new Gigapack effects. Thank you for your support!

-Will

WIP… Friday?!WIP… Friday?!WIP… Friday?!June 12, 2026June 12, 2026June 12, 2026

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Hey, everyone! I’m here with another work-in-progress post! I’ve been programming all week on Atmocopter, so there’s not a whole lot to show off visually, hence the later-in-the-week WIP post.

Here’s everything I got done!

• Made the player’s and enemy’s shots have a larger cloud displacer, and made clouds displace longer on projectile impact. This gives the player a little boost to help figure out what’s behind the clouds.
  
• Rebalanced timing of the Hopbot-L enemy. It now stays in the idle-closed state for less time and in the idle-open state for a little longer so you can hit it more, but I also decreased the time between its attacks. The GIF below isn’t representative of the new timing, but I wanted to share him again because he’s so dang cute.
  

• Fixed Cyclopter’s lightning attack knocking away hover platforms, which was pretty unfair.
  
• Made Sentry missiles destructible. (Thanks to the player at VGM Con who suggested that!)
• Made fan switch object always stop on first frame when deactivated. Some players were finding it hard to read what the object was if they had spun it a bit with wind from a fan and then pulled the fan away.
  Here’s the first frame…
  
  Versus one of the middle frames:
  
  The middle frames are much harder to read and also aren’t representative of the object’s collision!
• And the biggest change: Bringing objects from previous rooms is now disallowed! While players found it fun to figure out they could grab and bring objects like hover platforms to the next room, it really ended up breaking the game flow too much. Now that this is disallowed, I feel much more comfortable having puzzles remain complete when the player dies and respawns. All the puzzle objects will still be there, but you won’t be able to take them with you!

I was hoping to get an in-game GIF of an animated tileset in action this week, but I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole of refactoring. The engine technically supports animated tilesets and would just need a few small changes to make them work, but I wanted to make sure my editor could also handle it. That lead to realizing that the asset importing code is really complicated and that the external asset refreshing code can’t make use of the asset importing code, so I’m currently working on changing it up.

So, let’s instead look at some animated tiles for the tileset via Aseprite!

Above, you can see some tiles with simple animated flashing lights. I don’t want to overdo the animated tiles! I’ve also redesigned some of the alternate tiles for this tileset. In the top left you can also check out a few tiles that are used in the editor! The green arrows are transition tiles that I use to mark room exits, and the skull is used to mark bottomless pits.

Above are a few more interesting animated tiles. This world is “Propulsion Lab,” so I figured it needed some fans and turbines! There are still a few tiles left to draw, so I’ll be working on that soon.

Long story short- Lots of cool stuff in the works for Atmocopter as I gear up for 2D Con later this summer! See you next week with our regularly-scheduled pixel art assets.

-Will

Super Pixel Effects GigapackSuper Pixel Effects GigapackSuper Pixel Effects Gigapackv2.4.0v2.4.0v2.4.0

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Hey, everyone! I’m here on this wonderful Friday night to present Super Pixel Effects Gigapack version 2.4.0! This time, we’re focusing on some straightforward fantasy effects, plus the biggest and bounciest “?” you’ve ever seen!

In addition to the buff/debuff you saw on WIP Wednesday, this update features two looping status effect animations: poison, and sparkling (great for indicating a rare item!). Finally, the last newcomer is an expressive giant question mark! It’d make a great help icon, or perhaps the visual flair for a pivotal story moment in your game. The question mark pauses in the middle of the animation- Feel free to hang on that frame as long as you want, before playing the rest to have it disappear. I really love the buff/debuff, but I think the question mark is my favorite of the bunch this time!

Ready to get it for your game?

Not into Patreon? Never fear- The Gigapack can also be purchased below!

Thank you for your support- See you next week on Work-In-Progress Wednesday!

-Will