UPDATE 082026.10.12Lighting, weather, game feel and audio

Day and night, real weather, and the wasteland finally makes noise

The world now has a full day and night cycle with real lights and shadows, a seeded weather system with rain, storms, fog, dust storms and snow, punchier combat feel, and its first sound: 154 effects, ambience beds and a music track for every zone.

The camp by day: full daylight, with soft cloud shadows drifting over the ground.

What's new

Day and night: dawn, day, dusk and night roll by over a 10-minute day. Campfires, lamps and turrets cast warm light, and walls throw real shadows.
Flashlight: a cone of light from the player's gun hand that follows your aim and casts wall shadows. It comes on by itself at dusk, and F (L3 on PS5) toggles it.
Weather: clear, overcast, fog, light and heavy rain, thunderstorms, wind, dust storms and snow. It is seeded per region and biome (no snow in the desert), and changes blend in over about 30 seconds.
Rain soaks the ground with puddles and ripples, snow builds up on the ground and on rocks, fog veils the distance in pale mist, and dust storms blow ochre sand across the screen.
Thunderstorms have lightning bolts with a flash, and thunder that arrives later the further away the strike is.
Weather matters: fog and storms shrink how far you and the mechs can see, and rain and wind help cover the noise you make.
Mechs on alert pulse red, with a glowing sensor and a shaped scan cone that fades with distance.
Game feel: hit stop, screen shake (with a settings toggle), knockback, squash and stretch, muzzle flashes, shell casings, sparks and debris, damage flashes, footstep dust, blood and oil splats that stay on the ground, and a smooth pixel-perfect camera that looks ahead where you aim.
Sound: footsteps that change with the surface, gunshots, hits, building, crafting, mech alerts, raids, rain, wind and thunder, plus an ambience bed and a looping music track for every zone. Raids switch to combat music.
Separate volume buses for master, effects, ambience, music and UI. Music and ambience dip briefly under big moments.
PS5 and gamepad rumble for hits, explosions, heavy mech footsteps and thunder (it can be switched off).

How it was made

Every sound started as a line in a written sound list (name, length, bus and a short description), and a script turned the whole list into audio with ElevenLabs.
The weather is a pure function of the world seed, the region and the time, so the same world always gets the same weather, and the tests can check that exactly.
An art review rejected the first lighting pass: daytime had come out half as bright as before, and the rain, snow and dust were too faint to see. The fix pass restored daylight, made every weather type clearly visible, lightened the fog and redrew the mech scan cone. Then all nine shots were re-taken and checked again.
The full test suite (18 suites) was re-run, along with a timed performance run on the main map at night in a thunderstorm with 36 lights. It averaged about 218 fps.

Screens

Dusk: a warm grade, the campfire lit, and the flashlight on.

Night: cool blue darkness, warm firelight, and the flashlight cone throwing wall shadows.

Heavy rain: streaks across the screen, with puddles and ripples on the soaked ground.

A heavy mech on alert: a red glowing sensor and a scan cone fanning out over the forest.

A thunderstorm, caught on the frame a lightning bolt hits the grass.

Swamp fog: clear around the player, fading into pale mist further out.

A desert dust storm: wind streaks, blowing sand and drifting ochre haze.

Mountain snow: falling flakes, snow lying on the ground, and snow-capped rocks.

Tools used

ElevenLabs	Generated every sound in the game: 126 effects, 20 looping ambience beds and 8 music tracks, all from a written sound list.
Godot 4.7	2D lights with shadows, the day/night colour grade, weather particles, and shaders for wet ground, snow cover, swaying foliage, fog haze and the mech scan cone.
Claude Code + Hermes	Built the systems in a separate branch, then several review rounds checked every screenshot against the art standard and fixed what didn't hold up.

How to try it

Start the game. A full day takes 10 minutes, so stay out until dusk to see the campfire and lamp light and the flashlight switching on (toggle it with F, or L3 on PS5).
Build a campfire (B / Triangle) to light up your base at night.
Weather follows a seeded forecast for each region, about every 2 in-game minutes. Walk into the swamp for fog, the desert for dust storms and the mountains for snow.
Fire near a mech in the ruins, about 55 tiles north-east of the start, to set off its red alert and scan cone.
Play with sound on, and with a PS5 controller if you have one, to feel the rumble.

Known issues

The lightning flash is mostly local to the strike. The whole screen only brightens a little.
The dusk grade leans warm orange, with not much purple yet.
Snowflakes are simple round dots.
Weather can't be picked by hand yet. It follows the forecast.
Settings like screen shake, rumble and the volume sliders exist, but the settings menu that shows them comes in a later update.

Ironfall dev log · Update 8 of 18 · All updates