Woke up way better today but still didn’t wanna take any chances of making it worse.

>Finished the layout of the map
>puzzle tool should be ready to be integrated tomorrow (newprgrammer stuff)

things to do short term

>playtest the level once the puzzles are ready
>enemy placement
>more enemy types
>button/analogue-based movement integration
>maybe probably look into making interactive objects be triggered both by cursor and by proximity, for easier gamepad support in the future

I don’t have a clear idea when we’ll be able to fully get into this but i plan to make the level look at least somewhat textured fully in the meantime.

I also got the basic geometry for a new character, gotta review that.

tried to work just a bit today due to on going health quirks.

button-based movement is done, in a pretty clean manner too thanks to those blessed blend trees from unity.

puzzle tool is working too and we’ve been using this neat render made by june who can apparently do these super quick, so expect a lot of pre rendered puzzle screens!

gonna leave the integration of the new control scheme for way later, for now it’s back to building the last bit of the current level and hopefully playtest this baby super soon.

I had a pretty neat, yet rudimentary camera system based on colision volumes, then i read about cinemachine and saw that it does the same but faster, so i spent most of the day learning and adjusting to that tool. Sure, this led to setting up cameras faster than with the old method but… man, i shouldn’t have taken the whole day just fiddling with the settings. This is one area that’s oddly under documened, both in regards to unity resources and third party tutorials. I was pretty much on my own here.

Pretty cool results though, and it’s gonna help so much in future projects too.

More vfx stuff, more level design, the usual. EXCEPT i think i might die or something, still feeling lightheaded and I should probably rest instead of working as soon as i see a slight improvement in my health. Already came up with some puzzle ideas. I love how the biggest hurdle right now is coming up with ideas instead of wrestling with the tech stuff.

A friend says she looks like Sans, so here’s a close up so you can at least attempt to unsee it.

I finally set aside some time for VFX studies and I managed to make some really cool muzzles, gonna post a comparison one of these days between the old one and the new one (as soon as i implement them). I’m really excited for this because I’m also having fun with the sound libraries i got the other day and can’t wait to see all the vfx and sfx working together.

Did slight adjustments to the dialogue system, and some more level design too, mostly assigning textures and stuff. The basics for the puzzle tool is ready so it’s time to sit down and design a couple of em’, plus more enemy types.

This is the exciting part of making games!!

Today I was mostly sorting the new set of sound effects to be used and laying out a new room in the level. Had to stop working though because I might have gotten korone virus but hopefully it ain’t the case and i can keep working tomorrow. But for now, I shall sip hot soup and rest.

Other than that I went knee deep into puzzle design research and found a bunch of interesting things i can’t wait to actually try on this thing.

Today I took the chance to explore what texture set is gonna be the most common for a cohesive look and mood. I realized I didn’t really have a concrete theme for what i wanted to do, something something The Zone from the movie Stalker and an abandoned power plant. It doesn’t look a lot like The Zone right now but that’s gonna come with more polish.

As for the actual layout of the level, I’m one or two more puzzles away from completing this, but i’ll likely add a couple more rooms and hallways to explore. I’m yet to learn what could be the sweet spot when it comes to length, just like when you write something and a certain word count nets you an average reading speed. Same applies here, and I don’t know yet the right amount of real estate for 1-2 hours of gameplay.

Maybe I’m looking at it in the wrong way?

Life got in the way a bit as well as lazyness, but I did manage to crack the code for a fun level and i’m currently blocking out the insides of the rooms. The idea being that i can grayblock everything while the puzzle tools are finished. If these take longer than expected i will simply sketch more levels, so we have a bunch of them to polish when the time is right. It’s very important to keep moving forward instead of getting hung up on a single thing.

I spent the day tackling level design and some experimentation with more organic shapes using pro builder.

This one took longer than I’d like but now i know what to do and what not to do. For this I used polybrush to give it the rocky shape. The trick is apparently to really plan the shape around quads, then subdivide and then bake the transformations with the polybrush tool.

The rest was me struggling with laying out the map itself. I… never really designed levels before, at least not in literal decades, as the last time I remember creating levels was back in highschool fiddling with rpg maker and drawing maps for my tabletop rpg’s. Research has been super fun though, as i stumble upon great and bad examples of level design, as well as interesting reading on game design in general. I’m basically hitting the books for a bunch of things in this project.

Currently only half the map is interesting and the other one needs a bit more oomph to it, but i’m pretty close. Newprogrammer needs to do a toggle for random battle triggers.

Pretty excited for tomorrow.

might need to fix my sleep cycle since i can’t keep writing these on the wrong day.

not a lot happened but a lot still happened. i basically began sketching our first level! and it’s going pretty well, i can easily set battles up with our tools, and even made the boss appear at a room, plus all the work made with fixed camera angle tools paid off as well. in short the game is finally coming together, all pieces are falling in place and i couldn’t be happier.

for level design i’m using pro builder which can be found in the package manager inside unity, as well as pro grids to keep everything tidy.

massive props to newprogrammer who keeps getting better and better at this programming thing and all his contributions have been a huge part on why i’m able to just start sketching levels.

the next part would be to integrate the inventory system with the puzzles and that should be easy enough. after we are done with level sketching we’ll work on other pending things such as upgrade systems and gamepad support. there’s going to be 6 levels in total, which should make it a fairly short experience but a tight one, i don’t wanna spend a lifetime making this.