Skyfall, milestone 3: torches, rain and the replay (May 2026)

May was the month Skyfall got its atmosphere. The plan from the notes said “add lights (torch)” and “create a rain effect, because I can’t get it out of my head”. Both made it in, along with a replay that became the signature of the game.

Torches and shadows

Torches are map objects, placed in the editor on their own layer. At runtime each one casts light into the arena, and walls block it, so the shadows are real and recomputed as the camera moves. The overlay in the screenshot shows the cost: the in-game profiler and a memory graph were built in the same month to keep an eye on it.

A first test with a platform and light was recorded to check the shadow edges before the map art was done.

Rain, clouds and thunder

Rain falls over the whole arena, and a thunder flash lights the scene for a frame. Layered clouds drift behind the walls and move with the camera, so an ultra-wide screen does not reveal the edge of the sky. The same month fixed a cloud rendering bug that only appeared with camera zoom on ultra-wide screens.

The replay

Every round-ending kill now plays back in slow motion, with a rewind and a VHS effect. It needed a declarative network sync, because the replay has to be rebuilt from the same state on the server and on each client. It is the feature people talk about most when they describe Skyfall, and it was built on the same engine code that runs the match.

Options, profile and languages

The month also brought an options screen with saved settings, a player profile, gamepad shortcuts, English and French translations and a map selection scene. Skyfall stopped being a prototype and started having menus.

Next

Light made the arena readable, and the replay made the rounds memorable. The next question was the economy: what do players do between rounds?