After a rather long holiday (felt forever for me, dunno why as it wasn’t even bad), i’m back to action and ohhh boy, do i have a bad feeling of the good kind…
What i mean to say is that i’m not very happy with the current level design and i’m thinking really hard of tossing everything again and begin from scratch using the knowledge i gained around the end of the year. Note that this kind of environments aren’t that hard to map in ps1 fidelity, and the props, systems and set pieces are already made, it’s just that this map doesn’t make any fucking sense and i’m basically going insane. I’m now looking at this more as a sandbox level for testing rather than a finished one.
That said, I’m not gonna waste time redoing stuff right now as we need to keep spearing ahead, THEN if there’s time, i’ll change it, so no worries about reading more blogs about me being in a constant state of “almost done with this map”
Aside from these musings i began the day doing the interface for a piece of side content we’ll properly code later when we finish more pressing matters, and spent the rest of the day doing concept art and blocking the topology for a model i’ll be using as a sort of humanoid template for generic enemies. The plan is making enough parts and unwrap the model in such a way that i just have to change textures, hair and weapons to have completely different dudes to kill or go non lethal on their asses, without spending a fuckload of money outsourcing or precious time grinding.
There are some things that need some serious planning to avoid bloating the shit out of the project, putting that here as a reminder. Namely how long we want it to be and the structure of the main story so we can establish once and for all how levels will load, what menus will be used for for chapter selection… it’s a lotta stuff i didn’t consider early on, but better late than never. Right now my mind is set on a structure similar to that of Killer7 where you chose a target and the chapter begins, but it’s currently at odds with some stuff we wanna include.
Frankly speaking, i’m a bit scared! but it’s nothing i can’t solve.