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.

finished a couple characters that needed tweaks, though one of em was basically overhauled. I sent them to the 3d studio in charge of bringing them to life and i should be getting the full schedule this monday.

Here’s one of the characters because i really love her.

she’s the boss of the agency in project D, it’s gonna make sense later.

Other than that I finally playtested the first boss without stumbling into weird bugs and glitches, which felt really really really good, as the only things remaining are aesthetic adjustments. Super pumped about this.

Next i need to come up with enemy designs to finally show some gameplay with polished assets. in the meantime i need to take care of the ui overhaul (mostly change up the life and energy bars) and visual effects. I’ll likely take the day to do those two, mostly the vfx stuff.