Shattered Pixel
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Title Archs and Hole Punches | Patreon Weekly #327
🕑 Added 2025-09-07 14:39:32 +0000 UTCHey Patrons, in this weekly I’m going to share more full details about what’s coming in v3.2.4 very very soon! Expect most of this to show up in a blog post when v3.2.4 releases.
New Title Screen!
As I shared three weeks ago, Aleks and I have been working on a new background for the title screen!
Since I last showed it off, the title screen has now been pixellated and fully implemented into the game. You can take a look at the attached video to see it!
The new title screen makes use of several layers of fully rendered chunks of dungeon, floating in front of a classic arch layer (also now fully rendered). This should both feel like an extension of the old arch design, and better tie the title screen into the region and hero splash arts. This first release has objects that relate mostly to the sewers, but we have plans for new object sets for each of the other regions too!
Note that there are still a few smaller tweaks I plan to make before releasing the new title screen to beta (density, object positioning, etc), but the video communicates the general idea. There are already some improvements over last time, such as a bit more of an emphasis on sewers-specific terrain like wooden boards and poles.
This title screen has a lot of moving parts (both literally and in terms of code), and so I expect I’ll be making little tweaks and refinements to it after launch. Let me know what you think!
New In-game UI!
As I shared a couple weeks ago, I’ve been investigating getting Shattered working in true fullscreen on mobile devices with hole punch display cutouts.
Shattered’s current UI was largely designed for phones without any kind of cutout. Currently it renders below display cutouts, putting a big black bar above itself.
If I let the UI render up into display cutouts, it sorta works in some cases, but falls apart with larger cutouts like the iPhone dynamic island:
There isn’t room to make this work on displays with larger notches, but most modern hole punches leave a decent bit of room above and around, which has led me to this changed up UI for mobile users:
A few elements have been moved around here:
The XP bar has been moved to under the hero portrait, which both gives it a bit more screen space and lets the entire UI move a couple of pixels up.
The version info has been moved to the top and the menu buttons brought down a bit, this prevents them from being cut off on rounded display corners.
The boss HP bar and hero level have moved out of the way a bit, which gives the buff bar enough space to exist on two rows. It now dynamically skips spots that are obscured behind display cutouts.
Here’s how that looks with hole punches of varying size: (Galaxy S24, Pixel 9, and iPhone 16)
This leads to a nice big fullscreen display for the majority of mobile phones! In lots of cases, with a black backdrop, the hole punch is hardly noticeable, even big ones like the dynamic island. Here's a typical earlygame scene on an iPhone 16:
There are literally hundreds of different phones with slightly varying cutout sizes, so I’m sure there will be a few hiccups here for some users. If you run into issues please let me know!
Comments
Shattered Pixel
For now I don't plan to add an option to return the status bar I'm afraid, even for devices with older notches not having the system UI is just more immersive. Although with an iPhone 15 you will get to play the game in true fullscreen! I agree of course that having a big black bar infront of the UI is going to be a bit jarring at first, but try giving a shot for a bit first, in my testing it stops being noticeable very quickly now that the game properly compensates for it. EDIT: also hopefully the cutouts on iPhones will just continue getting smaller =S, wonder what the iPhone 17 will look like...
Nicholas
The new title screen looks great! I'll be interested to see how the UI changes work in practice, but the game's (amazing) squared/pixel style is such a contrast to modern device "round-ness", that any UI being cutoff looks weird IMO. I'm sure lots of folks will appreciate your work on this update, but thanks for keeping the non-fullscreen option for those like me! I think 3.2.3 started hiding the clock and device info even with the fullscreen option disabled (I have an iPhone 15). I know it's possible to check those by pulling down notifications, but I still prefer how it looked in older versions, with an OLED black bar on top showing iOS info. Would you consider a setting where that's possible again somehow?
