WARBIRDS.IO Dev Log

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A sun to squint at

The clouds went soft, the tracers went round, the storm grew real thunderheads — and all the while a big yellow crate hung over the island, the last box left in a sky that had outgrown them. Today the sun rises round.

White-hot at noon

Look up at midday and there's a small, blinding disc in a halo of glare, just as the real thing looks when you glance at it too long. Look closely and it's brighter in the middle than at the rim. Its glare hangs round it so it reads as the brightest thing in the sky wherever it is in your view.

It's also the same size everywhere. The old crate grew and shrank as you flew across the map; the new sun sits fixed in the sky however far you fly, the way the real one does.

An ember on the horizon

As the day wears on the sun changes colour. The lower it sinks, the more air its light crosses, and it burns down from white to gold, from gold to orange, and at the waterline to a deep red ember you can look straight at. In its last minutes it squashes a little on the horizon, wider than it is tall, and a golden glow spreads out along the skyline around it.

Two Spitfires in silhouette crossing a low orange sun in a salmon sunset sky, a wide golden glow spreading along the hazy horizon
The last of the day: a Spitfire pair crosses the setting sun.

And it goes down *behind* things now. On the Brick Sea it sinks into the water, half a disc on the horizon and then gone. Over the island it drops behind the ridges. Clouds drift across it too.

A grey destroyer on a glittering path of sunlight across a rippled sea, a round sun hanging low between two green islands
Golden hour on the Brick Sea, the sun's road running out to a Tachi.

Storm days

On storm rounds the overcast veils it: the clean disc goes soft and dim, a pale smudge behind the cloud, for as long as the storm lasts.

Fighting into the sunset

At golden hour, look toward the sun: anything flying between you and it turns into a black silhouette on the glow, wings, tail and all.

Written by Cameron Sima, who builds Warbirds.io — about the game · get in touch

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