DAY 59

Today I have finished scripting the ledge climbing mechanic. This has definitely been way more complex than I have anticipated and it was riddled with bugs. But it is functional, now. I have showed you the left and right movement, the jump on ledge, can't remember right now if I showed you the climb up ledge, but now I'm showing you the corner ledge movement. Here's how the last part looks:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y5AFX2KuCmygc9xm9XTIq_qGMBOwz1M1/view?usp=shari...

There was a lot (and I mean *a lot*) of work to do on this, but once the hard part was done, parts of the script would get recycled. 

What follows is a pseudo-breakdown of the mechanic. It's not in the order I implemented it and it certainly doesn't have all the nuts and bolts mentioned because I'm brain dead right now and can't think straight:

TRACING THE WALLS AND LEDGES: I had to have the character detect a wall in front of him, how high the wall is, if there was a ledge that could be walk-able left or right, where the player can jump up the ledge and corners that the player can turn on (well, that sounded x-rated and grammatically wrong at the same time). This was fairly easily done with tracer channels. This was the repetitive task. Tracing forward, tracing up, tracing left/right, tracing the jump up and tracing the corners, all of then worked almost exactly the same.

LEDGE MOVEMENT I genuinely thought I could get away with the bare minimum of Set Movement Mode to "Flying" and the adjust the direction of the flight, but sadly that wasn't the case. I tried to cheat my way out of this one, but of course the scripting gods would not allow it, so I had to do the work. And of course I only had a vague idea on how to do it. So after pouring through blogs, tutorials and some UE documentation, I made it work. Minus the animations, those do not work now. And the tracers don't properly work either: they don't detect the edge very well and the player remains stuck when reaching either end of the ledge. This was my first experience with the Animation side of Unreal Engine and there is a whole lot to learn here. This is where things got overwhelming to me and start making a ton of mistakes and lost motivation. But I ploughed through and I got through with it.

LEDGE CLIMB ENTER and DROP: This one was straight forward to do, especially the drop. This is where I used the Set Movement Mode to FLYING in a successful way, with a lot of booleans. The actual ledge climb was a ton of work and had to research extensively, because I had no prior know-how. The way I managed to get it to work is with a lot of vector nodes involving the Wall Normal, the Wall Height and the Wall Location. 

CORNER LEDGE MOVE:  This was surprisingly not a lot of work and involved a lot less movement nodes than I thought I will implement. Basically lots of boolean variables and if statements, with enabling and disabling the player controller and an anim montage. That particular anim montage did the gruntwork for me 

There are some other elements, like the FOV change during the ledge climb and movement and the Camera Clamp, but I got these two working almost instantly. Some bugs regarding the camera clamp: the camera clamp works relative to the world, not to the player. If you want to grab a ledge facing north, the camera clamp works perfectly, but if you want to climb a ledge that is facing east, you would encounter the hilarious glitch of being able to look at the character's face. I'll get on it as soon as I get some proper rest. 

All in all, 90% of the ledge climbing mechanic was new ground for me and got intimidating as hell the more I worked on it. What ended up was a monster of a blueprint script that I can barely fathom how I got it to work. But it works, at least partially.   

To pick myself up from the rut that was the loss of motivation a few days ago, I also implemented the ground pound mechanic. This is an easy mechanic that is quite fun to play around with. Here's how it looks:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xLz4nfhVGcPfT9i3Es2J5tBbwFUNcEJ0/view?usp=shari...

Finally taking my scripting hat off and putting my designer hat on, the ledge climbing feels rather responsive, quite robust and smooth (most of the time, anyway). It's still glitchy as all hell, but it lends itself to a good feel. It's far from perfect (hell, it's far from fully working, what am I talking about?) but it does give you a greater sense of exploration as is. At it's best, it gives the feeling that you can go anywhere, the feeling that somehow (dare I say) you've outsmarted the environment.   

The Ground Pound mechanic is a lot of fun and I feel that it can be used in a lot of creative ways. The problem with this is that the mechanic can get old really fast and I must keep this in the front of my head. It does run the risk of the player using the mechanic even when he is not supposed to and that is what might cause the problem of it getting old fast. Spacing it out is not necessarily a solution, because the player can still ground pound even without anything in front of him/her to get out of the way.

I think I'll be taking a break from scripting mechanics for now. The ledge climbing really took a toll on my endurance and stretched my knowledge limits a whole lot. In retrospect, I shouldn't have done it now, but I did. It would've been better if I'd either done it at the very beginning of the project and get the complex stuff out of the way fast or some time later down the line, maybe after I had done all the other mechanics. I'll be focusing on some level design until after the holidays. Maybe I'll add something light like a double jump mechanic, a dash mechanic, something very light script wise. But I certainly won't do anything complex until after the new year. I'll also do the bug fixing after the holidays as well for the ledge climbing mechanic.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today. See ya in the next post, bye.  

DAY 60

So since I've recently stated that I'll be taking a break from the scripting side of things, I've been focused on the level design aspect and started a new cave level, because I already had the placeholder modular assets and I did want to make four levels in this particular vein. At the moment this is WIP (like everything else) and not finished (layout wise) so here's a glimpse of how it looks now:

The intention and direction is to make this level loop on itself, or more precisely have elements akin to a Mobius strip. To be honest, that was the goal for the first cave level, but ultimately went with a different flow, because that's what the level wanted to go.

It's an interesting challenge, this whole looping on itself thing. I first encountered it in AER Memories of Old and was quite intrigued by it because it offered a little bit of spatial awareness challenges, a little bit of orientation challenges and a little bit of freedom by way of choosing your own route to progress through the level.

Though I have not played much of AER, I believe this kind of level can have slightly more looping. So, I've started having a loop that has a Mobius strip-like path. After testing it, it seems like a good start. It gives the sense of progression without the feeling of walking in circles, accomplishing nothing. There are no mechanics or hazards here yet, as is the case with the other cave level. This is because I want the feel of exploring to be as top notch as possible before continuing placing gameplay elements. If the exploring part fails, then the other gameplay elements are nearly worthless ("polish a turd and it's still a turd" kind of thing). So, nail the exploration first, add mechanics and hazards later.

The Mobius thing starts when the player reaches the octagonal-like module. For now, only the left-hand side of the level is done and I'll continue working on it today. All this was implemented yesterday, but it was getting too late to write a devlog at that time.

I'm really curious if a Mobius Strip can be placed within a Mobius Strip. That's a real challenge right there. :))

I'm fairly excited about how this level is going to turn out. I say "fairly" because I'm also concerned about it's quality. Yes, it's an interesting element to add, but is it good? Will it be fun? Will it be challenging but not frustrating? Will the mechanics be the cherry on top of the cake? These questions add to the excitement, but also to the concern. Must treat this with care. Like I said, testing it did give good impressions, but let's see where it goes from here.

That's all I've got for today. See ya in the next post, bye!!

DAY 61

I've continued work on the second cave level and I have to say, I'm liking where this is going. Like I've mentioned before, the intent was to make some sort of a looping on itself level and it was a success.

The Mobius strip like loop works OK as is. Here is a picture of how it looks from a gameplay perspecive. Assets are highlighted strictly for better visibility of the space (it's a dark area).

The green arrows indicate the direction that the player can take. The red arrow with an X indicates that the player will hit a dead end and cannot progress, therefore no go.

Notice that you can only get on the bridge if you complete the left-side part of the level first.

The large opening in the middle of the room will become accessible once the player completes both the left hand side of the level and the right hand side. There is going to be a puzzle of some sort, this part I have not figured out yet.

There is still work to do: I have to cap the open gaps with walls and test the level to see how it feels like it is.

I have to toy around with the large straight strip of rooms that follows the mobius strip section. The intention with this section is to be in complete antithesis with what the first section of the level is. Whereas the mobius strip section is full of ups and downs, left and right, this straight section would be one (almost) continuous line of hazards. I had to break up the continuous line strictly for the player to have a sense of surprise when entering the next room.

This entire section would have tons of hazards for the player to deal with. What hazards, I don't fully know yet.

Also, I'll toy around with the sizes of the 4 big rooms in the straight strip. There may yet be some value in diversifying the size, to allow for more complex gameplay. But this also remains to be seen when I will reach the documentation phase.

I didn't notice when I made this level, but from a top-down perspective, the entire level looks like a key. Very neat and totally not intended. Maybe I'll do something cool with this info. Maybe have a treasure hunt here, or a collectible. Look:

The plan for this level is for it to be the first cave level the player encounters, right after the player climbs up the dam. This will look something like this:

The green arrow represents the entrance to the cave and the purple arrow represents the exit. At the exit, there will be something that the player can see from the position shown in the screenshot. Something like a big landline with a light on top of it.

It may not be visible, but the cave is on the left side of the dam. On the right side, I do have in plan to implement an exploration area with some sort of a tourist attraction thing going on, with a big statue and a tower of some sort. It's still vague in gameplay and in a layout, the exploration area, but the visuals and elements to be placed are pretty much set in stone.

On the other side of the dam there will be a lake. Surrounding the lake will be peaks and valleys and forest with the peak of the mountain visible in the distance.

Well, that's all I've got for today. See ya in the next post. Bye.

DAY 62

Hey, all. I wanted to start off this post by wishing you a Happy New Year and may all your endeavors come to fruition. And I also hope you guys had a great holiday.

I know I did, but sadly, the holiday season is over. Which means that  now it's time to get back into the thick of things. And back into the thick of things I went. 

Today I continued work on level design. Since I did enjoy my holidays and don't want to get back to working on the game aggressively, I felt that I should be continuing what I had done prior the break. Ease your way back in to work, guys, don't go full gung-ho on it.

Here's how the level looks now:

NOTE: The arrow shows the entrance to the level. The screenshots where the player character is present show the entrance.

So up until now, I've made 2 levels with modular pieces that serve as "cave" levels. For the player, it provides a break in pace, mood and feel. It also provides contrast: up until now, you had big, lush and wide open spaces and now you have tight, but expansive passageways. For me as the developer, it provides a showcase for level design and (hopefully) in 3D modelling. But what's more important, for the project It means a breather when it comes to assets population. This would allow the project to "throw out" any previous areas. 

So I figured it's time to both "do the same old song and dance" (doing a cave level) and mix things up just a tiny bit (it's not actually a cave level). And I present to you... the mines.

What you see before you is (hopefully) a showcase of "restricted use of modules". I only used 4 different modules out of a total of 9 in the construction of this level: the L shape, the T shape, the square shape and the + shape. There are one-offs of the octagon shape and of the C-shape because of necessity, but that is pretty much it.

What is not "pretty much it" is the level itself. What you see here is about half of the level. And I'm beginning to think these levels are getting out of control, dimension-wise. For the 4th and final cave level, I'll have to restrain myself and not make the level so big. Big does not always mean good, design-wise.

Speaking of "design wise", the mines feel pretty disorienting, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it challenges your sense of space and orientation and it's bad because if you (as a player) generally lack a sense of space and orientation, it has a lot of potential to be a frustrating experience. Then again, it's just the empty layout with no gameplay to speak of...that comes later. Even so, precautions must be taken when set dressing and making the puzzles for this level. I'll simply have stripe decals of varying colors on the walls to guide the player, for now. Maybe these will evolve into something different, but having decals...it's a start.

All in all, 2022 started great for the project. Tomorrow I'll tackle some cloud materials and a monkey bar mechanic.

That's all I have for today. See ya in the next post. Bye.

DAY 63

Hey, guys. How's it going? Today I have finished up the greyboxing for the mine level and let me tell ya, it's another monstrosity of a level. Here's how it looks now:

This is the view from the entrance of the level (south is towards the bottom of the SS)

This view is from the left side of the level

This view is from the right side of the level

This view is from the east wing

This view is from the west wing (I'll explain what's with the enormous looping shaft later)

This view is from the level exit (north is towards the bottom of the SS)

This view is from the bottom of the exit area

As I've continued to work on it, I realized that I might have gone a bit overboard on the whole twisting-turning layout of the level. I made a conscious decision to simplify the exit area as much as possible, so instead of going intricate, I went bigger shaft size. So the shafts at the exit area are double in size compared to the entrance of the level. The exit area will feature 2-3 blockades (I don't know if I used the word correctly) where the straightforward path is blocked (obviously!) so the player must resort to using the side shafts. 

It goes without saying that the whole vibe to this particular level is "disorientation". I mean just look at it, how could you not be disoriented? :D So far, it felt like "good" disorientation (if such a thing ever exists) but I'm very reserved about this feeling. A very accurate representation would be made by the people who will playtest it.

OK, so in the screenshot with the west wing, you might have noticed a ridiculously long shaft that starts from the bottom and ends at the top. Well, that would be the shaft to the elevator that will send the player near the octogonal shape room (which is near the beginning of the level and "coincidentally" is also where the west wing part of the level begins. This was made to avoid making the player backtrack the entire way up. Instead, the player will have a feeling of progression and he/she will be sent near the beginning of the level without the need to backtrack. I just remembered that the east wing does not have this feature, so I'll update it as soon as possible.

Speaking of updates, I promised you guys an update on the cloud material and the monkey bar mechanic.

Cloud Material: Scouring Youtube for tutorials for me to learn about Arrays and whatnot, I came across a tutorial that taught Cloud materials. It looked super-awesome in the thumbnail and said to myself "I've gotta do this". And so I did. Luckily, it was an easy tutorial that yielded great results. See for yourself:  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QMcL9tG2WRS8iSe143TX4frd0l37rVtD/view?usp=shari...

Pretty cool, right? There's one tiny little problem, though. It's a little bit on the expensive side. The base shader has about 150 instructions, but other parts of the shader (2 other parts, if I remember correctly) have almost the same amount of instructions. Having a big number of clouds like this might get super expensive on the GPU, so there's room for optimization to reduce the amount of instructions. Otherwise, it's damn cool and has a lot of detail due to the post-process that is in the project.

Monkey Bar: This one was sort of made on a whim some time ago. I figured "If I can make the player character jump slightly up as well as jump forward a lot, I could replicate the Monkey Bar thing from Doom Eternal and the branch jump from the recent Tomb Raider series". And so I did. Check it out:  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b1OqHMsPtkkOBUff-gubaGdFu8RZLRs3/view?usp=shari...

It's slightly exaggerated but it feels OK. I exaggerated the intensity of the jump because it felt too much like the jump pad (which is what the monkey bar script is based off of, like an extra connection from the character movement, but to the X axis AND the Z axis....seriously, that simple). What it does great is that it contributes greatly to player momentum. And since it's rather small in size, it can fit in all kinds of tight places.

So, that's it for today, guys. See ya in the next post. Bye!

DAY 64

Hey, guys and gals. How's it going? Hope y'all having a great time. As for me and Against The Mountain...well, more work has been done on the level design department. And surprise surprise, I've been dabbling into the story a bit. Well, more specifically the main villain. And even more specific, the main villain's motivation. Let me tell you about this first

Now, I've written dialogue in the past for a previous project, so this is not new territory for me. What is new territory is the complete freedom I have to take the story wherever I can fall in love with. And what's also new is that I have the opportunity to create a villain. As a bonus I do not have a time-frame for completing it, which is amazing. In the previous project that I did, I did not have the luxury of time nor having villain. Imagine having one week to work on dialogue for about 10-15 missions and you can figure how that turned out (spoiler alert: bad). But not here!

What I did accomplish was to crystallize the main villain's motivation for doing the things that he did. Because I do not want to give you any kind of spoiler, I'll keep it both specific enough and vague enough. I hate vagueness with all my being and I don't like telling you guys anything remotely vague, but it's the story we're talking about here and I need to keep as closed of a lid as possible.

Anyway, so the villain's gripe is that he essentially despises people who destroy things others have built and will go out of his way to get rid of people like this. In his main motivation monologue, he will reference an event that happened in his youth about how people enjoy destroying things and how people generally revel in any sort of destruction. This, coupled with the fact that he considers himself a builder and anyone who interferes with his work is automatically labeled a destroyer makes for a grounded, believable and dare I say relatable villain.  

This is as much as I can say without spoiling anything. Told you guys it's going to be vague.

Anyway, moving on to the level design progress. To give you some context, I am in awe with sequoia trees. I've never seen one in real life and it's on my bucket list to see one with my own eyes. They also make a great subject for any artistic medium, whether it be film or photography. But I haven't seen many games that have sequoia trees. Maybe there are some out there, but haven't really seen them. So with this in mind, I've started to build a level based on a sequoia tree. More specifically, inside the tree and outside/around it. Here's the scale of things:

Now, I've done my research and found out that the tallest tree is about 95 meters / ~310 feet tall. There were bigger trees, but this one would be the tallest tree still standing. Well, the tree in the game (which actually has a name, "Father of the Forest") is 200 meters / ~650 feet tall. The tree's bark thickness is 4 meters / ~13 feet thick and I did not calculate the circumference/girth, all I know that the radius is 20 m/65 feet. I intend to give it a backstory as well, when the time comes.

Anyway, so the gameplay implemented is inside the tree and here's how it looks like:

While testing it, I found that it's both very fun and absolutely infuriating at the same time. There are a lot of places where you can near miss the jump and (because of the wall-run mechanic) accidentally start to wall run again. Now this is technically an issue, but as you might remember, the wall run will always work on exactly 90 degree angles, which is what the cylinder placeholder currently has. Now it occured to me that I could've used a cone BPS, chop it's top and make it so that the base and the top are not equal in size (top must be slightly smaller).

With the restrained space, I found that I can vary the mechanics a lot and it would create a desire in the player to chain these traversal mechanics. Evidently, this is something I want to explore further. Also evident is that I should keep this in mind for all levels, like DUH!

Though I haven't spent that much time on it, I did have a blast figuring out the gameplay. If it's as fun to play this level as it was working on it (even though I barely started) then by all means, Gods Of Computer Games, bless this level.

Here's some more shots:

Anyway, that's all I have for today. See ya in the next post, bye! 

DAY 65

Hey, guys and gals, how's it going? Here, things are going well. Continued work on the tree level and here's how it looks:

It went the same as yesterday: quite fun to make and fun to try out different paths and scenarios. In my testing, I have also timed how much gameplay is here as well. So far, with all that you see in this level, there is exactly one minute of gameplay if you know what you are doing. 

Now, I'll have to give you guys some context for this level. This tree serves as one of the villain's "well hidden" makeshift facility. And quite possibly the first that the player will encounter. There will be some desks, some laptops, some desktop computers, some desks, some beat-up sci-fi looking, some  machineries and stationery and so on. Also, there will be items that can be inspected as well as notes, documents and letters as well.

While playtesting, I've discovered a bug with the monkeybar in that it only throws you on the positive X axis, no matter where you approach it from. It's supposed to throw you in the direction that you are walking. I'll look into this, it should be a quick fix (though it usually never is). 

Well, that's it for today. See you guys and gals in the next post, buh-bye! 

DAY 66

Eyooo, what's up guys and gals? Hope you are having a great day.

As you have noticed, I took a break from updating the devlog because of a lot of various IRL stuff I had to tend to. Nothing serious, tho. But I'm back with a small update. 

I left things off in the tree level, so naturally I went back to it and added more stuff to it. Here's how it looks:

It wasn't necessarily a deliberate thought, but the first thing I went for was mixing things up in this level. At the beginning of it, platforms and mechanics were pretty tightly place in relation to one another. Keeping things is fine for a period of time. But keeping them tight for the duration of the entire level is not good for level pacing. 

So to mix it up, platforms and mechanics are now more "loose" and far apart. And to be honest, it feels slightly better. Just slightly. What this allows me is to chain certain mechanics together to create some momentum. What also kind of holds me back is the relatively tiny space for chaining these mechanics. Or it might be a challenge, not a hold-back. We'll see.

If you guys see some empty space in between some platforms that is unreasonable to reach to, that's where the wall running mechanics comes in. Also, thhose white meshes? those are for ledge climbing. Random purple circle? That's a jump pad.

So with the work I did today, I'd say we're about halfway done with the first iteration of the tree level. That's all for now, guys. See ya in the next post. Bye.

DAY 67

Eyo, guys and gals. Hope you've having a great day. So, work continued yet again on the tree level. And I've gotta be honest, I had no idea where to go with the level when I started today. Tried some things that didn't work out and was slightly puzzled. But then, out of nowhere, a thought came to me. How about letting the player go outside for a bit? And I did just that. Take a look:

I'm starting to feel particularly good about this level in particular. When working on it, it's like the brain is on the lookout for ideas and then grabs one in mid air, just like a frog catches a fly. Good stuff.

BUT...there is a big "but" (noice)

I tried the wall run mechanic on the exterior of the tree trunk. And I've gotta say it bumps up the difficulty by a lot. Doing a wall run on a curbed is a challenge on the inside of the trunk. On the outside....hooo BOY what a nightmare. This one dangerously borders on the bad kind of frustrating. And I'm seriously thinking of removing it. But after I playtest it with other people. It definitely is something to master (I needed about 3-4 tries to get one run right) but I think it's too much. It really spikes the difficulty quite a bit.

What I also tried is a NEW mechanic, the crusher. Right now it's garbage, but it has a lot of potential. Some adjustments are needed: the crusher doesn't detect the player all the time, therefore it passes through him/her instead of pushing the player over. Should be an easy fix, the crusher moves too fast for it's collision to detect the player capsule (I've seen this before, it really is a quick and easy fix). While I'm at it, I should work on the crusher's timeline curve for it's movement.

This area is pretty consistent, feel wise. It's 80% a walk in the park and 20% a complete nightmare (because of the wall run).

Other than that, I have nothing to add. So that's it for today, guys and gals. See ya in the next post. Bye!

DAY 68

Howdy, guys, and gals. Hope y'all are having a great day. Here's me with another update on the development of this game.

This tree level is taking much longer than anticipated, but it takes shape pretty nicely. I'm a little unsatisfied at the moment on how things are shaping up to be for the latter half of this level. Let me show you.

So what I am trying to do at this articular moment in time is mix everything that has been thrown around in this level. At first, the player is presented with a few mechanics: wall run, some grappling hooks and some platforming. In the second stage I've added the jump pad, the monkey bar and the ledge climb. In the third part of the level, I tried "going out of the box" so to speak, by introducing the player with mostly familiar mechanics in a different setting, with one key addition, the crushers. 

In this last section, the player is going to experience all of the above combined: You go in and out of the tree trunk and all previously presented mechanics will be encountered in this level. I haven't gotten that far down this particular road, but what I have keeps momentum.

Speaking of which, After I've expertly played through the level, I've noticed that the first outside area breaks momentum in a noticeable manner. 

It's kind of difficult to explain with words, so bear with me. 

What I mean by this is that up until now, the player was presented with various mechanics, only to have a halt to them. Maybe it's a placement mistake, maybe I paced the level wrong at one very specific point (don't know which one), but throughout the first half, there's an anticipation for something more difficult that the player experiences or the player reaches and maintains momentum, only to have it lost when reaching the latter half of the level. It feels "out of left field" but in a good way. BUT after this specific point, the experience dips a bit because of lack of challenge.

When the player reaches the area that I've shown you in this post above, at the moment it feels not as challenging or exciting or at the very least defies an expectation. In a bad way. So I'll keep a mental note of this and work on it tomorrow.

Other than that, not much to add. So that's it for today, I'll see you guys and gals in the next post. Bye!

DAY 69 (noice)

Hello, guys and gals. Hope you are having a great day. Here's me, providing you with an update on the state of the game.

Today I have managed to finish the tree level. Well at least the first iteration of it, anyway. I'm too tired to test it now from start to end, but I will do so tomorrow.

It's been quite a ride with this level. Mostly smooth, surprising more than occasionally and inspired most of the time. I'm especially satisfied with the ending. While very short, it manages to keep you tense. Check the last part of the level out:

As I've said yesterday, the main focus was to try and mix inside exploration and outside exploration. I cannot attest to the success of the endeavor, because I have not tested it. I'm especially satisfied by the bridge section with missing planks and crushers. It's really tense and provides a satisfying conclusion to the level.

That's it for today, guys. I know I usually write a lot, but I'm tired, it's late and can't see straight :)). I'll make it up in future blogs, I promise. See ya in the next post, bye! 

DAY 70

Howdy guys and girls, hope you are having a great day...well as great as a monday night can be, anyways. Me? Oh, I'm having some second thoughts about the layout of the tree level. And I'm spilling the beans as to why.

Recall that I've been using square platforms in a tree trunk (which is round) and we all know how square pegs fit in round holes (spoilers: they do not). For your convenience, here's and old picture to illustrate how it looks:

That is not pretty in the slightest, but it does the jobs of placeholding and fast iteration. Now, since this level is pretty much done on a layout level (pun not intended), I'd figure I'd "ennicen" the looks of the placeholders. Ennicen is not even a word, I just made it up, but it wouldn't be a far fetch from what sh*t I've heard thrown around. To ennice something is to make something nicer, I've decided :)).

Anyway, so the most reasonable thing to "ennicen" is to make the platforms fit the round shape of the tree trunk. Now, I'm by no means a 3D artist, BUUUUT... I think I know how to do it.

The outer radius of the tree is 2000 unreal units and the inner radius is 1600. Height of tree trunk is irrelevant, because I'll shrink it down to 100 unreal units to be the same size as any platform. There are 64 sides to the cylinder. With this info I can do the following:

- make a semicircle from this full circle

- take the semicircle and half that

- take the quarter-circle and half that too

- repeat process until left with decent sized platforms that can look/feel aesthetically pleasing and thematically sound.

Once those small pieces are done, I can go replace the square platforms in and around the tree. I'm super curious as to how it's going to turn out (I've barely started the work on it)

I will try this in 2 different radius thicknesses (is "thicknesses" the correct term in the context of the radius even? Genuinely asking, I'm not a native English speaker....I think it's "wide"...right? RIGHT?!?!) 

So, on the left hand side we have the 100 unit radius difference between inner and outer radius (1m) and on the right hand side we have the 200 unit radius difference between inner and outer radius (2m). Now, this might be the least interesting screenshot of all time, but I assure you in the end is going to be worth it...which end? The game end, of course. When the game ends development...*sighs and daydreams about a day that is so far away it is incomprehensible*)

I will give it a shot with both thicknesses, because variation. Let's see how that goes.

Now, for the next change that I want to add: if you'd recall, there is a bridge at the top of the tree trunk. This one:

And it has great value for the gameplay experience. So I thought "why just keep that as the only one"? Just place more of them, with variations of course (bridge with full set of planks, bridge with few planks missing, bridge with half the planks missing and so on). I did not expect I would enjoy that bridge so much I'd be making it as a recurring death trap thingy.

Speaking of which, this new idea will allow me to place multiple types of death traps near and/or around the bridge. Some crushers in various orientations, some death traps like arrows, swinging axes and so on (oh yeah, I have those now). Keep in mind, if one touches you, you die.

So yeah, that's about it for today. I know I haven't been showing off with new and interesting screenshots, but it is to be expected when you post this often and about this particular subject too (replacing place holders), but this might be the beginning of a pretty looking tree level instead of the "functionally doing good-to-great, but fugly looking" level.

I'll see you guys in the next post. Bye!

DAY 71

Why, hello, guys and girls. I'm back with another small update on the project.

Last post I've talked about making some aesthetic changes to the current version of the tree level, because the placeholder meshes were simply too primitive and ugly. And in this post I shall present the new changes. Mostly visually, though.

This is the entrance to the level.

Continuation of the entrance

The one below is a layout modification:

...of this area:

This is the view from about a quarter of the way up the tree. Compare the above screenshot with this one:

Now, as you can see, there have been both cosmetic changes and layout changes, but mostly cosmetic. The changes done to the layout happened because I'm trying to find spots for more broken bridges in this level. Broken bridges allow for a more precise type of jump and it adds tension for the player. 

I'm about halfway into the level with replacing the yellow platforms and it looks heaps better. All the platforms visible in the screenshots will be replaced with logs, planks and/or branches in Blender, and the form of the placeholders allow me to make stylized models of platforms in this specific shape.

Not only they are newer versions of these placeholders, but they are also smarter versions: the outer radius of the platform matches perfectly with the inner radius of the cylinder that is a placeholder for the hollow tree. The gimbal/gizmo is placed in the same position as the center of the tree trunk. Put these two things together and you got a placeholder that, when copied in the exact same location as the tree trunk, can be rotated on the Z-axis flawlessly and not worry about minute positioning of the mesh. 

Simple stuff, really. But it helps a lot production wise. There are about 9 versions of these placeholders and they all work wonderfully.  

So that's about it for today. Tomorrow I'll be focusing on replacing the platforms in the other half of this level. See ya, bye! 

Day 71.5

Hello, guys and girls and hoooo BOY, do I have a treat for you guys. Now, I'll keep this short and sweet. Yesterday was the 6 months anniversary of this devblog. And to celebrate this momentous occasion, I present to you....(drum rolls)....gameplay footage of the entire tree level.

No more talking, enjoy: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LNPIkungJeKm3qWPWP0QAONLc5Iy8Xr9/view?usp=shari...

Let me know what you think, I can't wait. See you in the next post, bye!

DAY 72

Hey, Guys and girls, hope you are doing as well as possible. Me? Oh well...as you have probably observed, I haven't posted any updates recently because I've been learning the shader basics in Unreal. You know, all the math nodes, data types, input vectors, View Space, World Space, Object Space, & Tangent Space...that kind of stuff. Riveting stuff, almost illuminating. Even thought I might dabble in HLSL/GLSL programming.

Though I must confess that, creatively I've hit a roadblock when it comes to level design. Or, more specifically, what musicians and writers call "writer's block". And I've hit that roadblock for quite a while. It's not a pleasant feeling, especially if you think of yourself that you have untapped creativity at your disposal, like I do. 

To give you some context for what follows, I'm also a musician and have been a bedroom musician/weekend warrior for 20-odd years. In all these years, I've hit the writer's block many many times and sometimes I was able to break through the block. 

And, naturally, I thought that the lessons learned in music breaking through writer's block could help in game dev as well, but could not for the life of me figure out how to do it. Until I've spotted the similarities.

1. If your level does not seem to go anywhere, no matter what you add to it, it's time to scrap some part of the level that currently doesn't really work. Do not be afraid to scrap something. What you have scrapped in one level can be used in other levels and/or in other ways.

2. If sections of your creation do not gel together but in and of themselves the sections are great, it's time to focus on other things. This is because stress/pressure has very likely reared it's ugly head and there's nothing really constructive you can do about it except detach from what you are working on.

3. Play other games to get inspiration from. Do other things, completely different things (watch a movie, go for a walk) and allow greater inspiration to hit you.     

4. Writer's block is a mindset. When you fight against a mindset, you actually feed it. When you work with a mindset, you actually feed it as well. Therefore, if you fight writer's block, you feed writer's block. When you work with creativity, you feed creativity.

With this in mind, I've decided to re-make the second level, aka the Rocky Formations level. Well, this:

And this is how it looks like now:

Keep in mind, this is still a first person platformer, but the mannequin is there to show the scale of things. Although I was asked if I would make a mix of First/Third Person platformer, it would still be a First Person (though I would leave the game moddable, and if his/her heart desires so, he/she can make a mod).

The very first thing on my list was to make the very first scene of the level fit the scene composition rule of thirds, with the addition of making it breath taking (basically this would be the first WOW scene in the game, but don't quote me on this). I'll explain later on what the rule of thirds is. The end-point of the level was moved way in the back and the level landmark got way taller. 

As a natural consequence, the level just got way bigger. This was a desired consequence, though not necessarily something that I directly pursued. To populate the level further, I've decided to stick with the BSP brushes instead of using the stylized meshes and replace said meshes where the case calls for it.  

One of the bigger mistakes made was basing the level around "not-exactly-prototype-material-but-this'll-do" meshes. Stuff from the Unreal Marketplace. While that's absolutely great for emerging ideas and going with the flow, not exactly great if you have something specific in mind. 

Since this would technically be the second level (again, don't quote me on this) I would tone things down a bit mechanics-wise and only add the basics. Also, I would be toning down the difficulty of said mechanics. 

The biggest gripe I've had with this level and the reason I've decided to re-do it is because of the scene composition.  It had it's moments, but I knew I could do much more. So I started documenting myself about scene composition. One thing that I have been made aware of (although I kind of knew it from photography) was the Rule of Thirds. 

The rule of thirds means that the screen is basically split into 3 rows and 3 columns. Depending on the artist's desire, the focal points of the scene could be aligned according to the horizontal or vertical lines OR at the intersection of the lines. Like so (hope this gif shows up)

And I thought that I can incorporate this into Unreal. And so I did. The way I did it is as follows:

1. Downloaded a Rule of Third grid picture (with transparency) off the internet

2. Made a material in Unreal with said grid

3. In the material, I loaded the texture and plugged the RGB into Base Color plug and the Alpha into Opacity plug.

4. In the first person character blueprint, I added a plane mesh under the FirstPerson Camera, so that it is attached to the camera.

5. In the Event Graph, I had this blueprint code attached to the plane mesh:

6. With the plane selected, I changed the rendering stats and unchecked the visible tickbox. This is so that the grid will only show up when the G key is held. (the G key is only for development, not a feature that will be present in the game...unless I make a photo mode)

And voila. With this simple tool, I can check the scene composition in-game. Would actually check if I can do it for the editor camera. Like so:

That's it for today, I'll elaborate more about this level in the next post. Buh bye.

DAY 73

Hey-oooh, guys and girls. I hope you guys are doing as great as possible. I'm back with another update on the devlog. I know that I haven't been posting as regularly as I used to, but work on the project is still ongoing. Me, I'm still learning to program shaders and have taken quite an interest on the technical arts side of things, which surprises me because I was afraid of anything programming for as long as I can remember. And to a certain extent I still am scared because it's an overwhelming subject to me.

As for the project itself, remember last post where I stated that the second level is being remade? Well, I am still remaking it and that is what I have worked on since my last post (project-wise, anyway). And since then, functional-wise, I am 75% done making iteration number 2.

Here's how it looks, bird's-eye view:

Structurally, the difficulty is toned-down a lot (maybe too much) and the hazards/obstacles are laid out in such a manner that they explore every scenario possible as of right now. Since I don't have enemies in the game, the mindset is basically "the environment is the enemy". Plain and simple, no two ways around it. 

A new addition to the level is the long and hollow mesa in the middle of the level. This mesa came about similarly to how going out and around the tall sequoia tree: as an answer for the "variety" question. At first I was really skeptic about the idea, because on paper it seemed like it was not very interesting. But the idea kept popping in my head, even though I kept dismissing it. And since it kept doing that, I decided to give it a shot and see what comes of it.

Lo and behold. One long mesa, 4 different sections. Breakdown time!

This section is where I introduce the grappling hook:

This is the section where gameplay with the grappling hook gets slightly complicated, adding falling platforms to the mix:

This is the section where I throw off the player by introducing a different mechanic (the vertical moving platforms).

And the is the section where everything introduced before gets thrown in like a melting pot of mechanics:

To be honest, it's just OK-to-good, gameplay-wise. It's nothing spectacular or out-of-the-ordinary, it's more of an area where the the player can learn the grappling hook mechanic in an easy-to-learn environment. What might be spectacular is the addition of some big holes in the walls of the mesa that reveal the environment from time to time. Towards the end, things get more difficult, as the player has to use timing to his advantage in order to reach the end of this section. Improvements will be made to make it as good as possible, but the focus is to have a structurally sound foundation to the gameplay.

The stage following the hollow mesa is simply a transition area towards what was the entire second level and is now the last stage of the second level. Although I wasn't really for it, I added the jump pad in this transition area to get the player to the last area faster. But that may soon change it. This is because I settled upon having to only walk in the transition areas, no jumping or anything else that might cause the player to die. Just let the player breathe, take in the environment and allow the story to unfold during that time (for this level, in voice-over form).  

The last area (which again, was previously the entire second level) will suffer some modifications to it, since I've also added a double jump feature. I've replaced the stylized cliffs from the previous iteration with BSP brushes so as to have better control over the layout of the area. I've stated before that I'm OK with the "happy accident" of stumbling over a path that the player can take due to the cliffs placed, and I still am OK with it. But I want more control over the layout of the level, because I feel that in this level I relied too much on the "happy accidents" thing. True, they got me going in a good direction, but I can't rely on that too much.

In the following days I'll continue working on this second iteration and keep you guys posted. After this, I may take a break from level design (should I finish the tree level too) and focus on implementing the swimming and the wall climb mechanic.

Anyway, that's it for today. See you guys in the next post hopefully I'll post sooner than I've been doing lately. Buh-Bye! 

DAY 74

Alrighty, day 74. Hello, guys and girls. hope you guys are having as great a time as possible. I'm back with another update on the project.

So up until now, I've managed to prototype about 80% done with the Level 2 version 2. 

Made some minor modifications here and there, because some meshes were weirdly placed before, like so: 

Now, what's left to do is the following:

- Complete/remake the last section of the level

- Make secret areas

- Place more tall rocks clutter

Anyway, after these steps are done, I'll most likely move back to the tree level. And then after that, I'll be moving on to swimming and wall climbing, as stated.

On the to do list was testing as well. I have to say that I really think this level is too easy. Within the first minute of gameplay or so, I start to zone out and that is not good. To be fair, my focus gets kicked into gear a bit later in the level. And this concerns me just a little. As a precautionary measure, I'll make minor modifications to the first section to make the gameplay more "active" and alive, so to speak. 

One other small thing I managed to do, this time regarding the tools, is that I've added a one-point perspective grid to the camera, similar to the rules of third grid.

Someone mentioned something very helpful on another forum, and that thing is to use these grids as guidelines. And he speaks the truth, you can get caught up way too much in a cycle of constant checking, evaluating and reassessing composition. A dash of "guidelines, not rules", a sprinkle of "good enough is good enough" and some good old fashioned planning + deadlines would kick you into high gear and make you not think too much.

And that's all for today, guys and girls. See ya in the next one. Buh-bye.

DAY 75

OK, guys and girls, it's that time of the week again. You know, the time I write an update for the project. I'm happy to announce that I've managed to complete Level 2 v2.0. And it honestly wasn't as easy as I've hoped it would be. Granted, it wasn't hard, but not as easy breezy as I thought.

For one, I was left in a complete stump as to how I'm going to end the level. The previous iteration looks something like this: 

While being an extremely tense and calculated section, the above does not really fit with this second iteration, which serves as being a introductory section more than anything. 

Anyway, here is hot the last section of the level looks now:

(Spoiler alert: the oversized campfire is a placeholder)

This section definitely has better structure to it level design wise and environmental building-wise. Compared to the first version, this definitely looks more as if the person who made these obstacles worked around the environment and with the environment. Whereas the previous version looked tacky and obviously gamified. Definitely not perfect, there are still a lot of touch-up to be made, but it's a big step in the right direction.

While playing it front to back, not accessing secret areas, it has the same..."problem??" if I can even call it that. It starts as really unassuming (borderline boring to an experienced player) and a low effort type of gameplay. But excitement picks up after the first quarter of the level. I would say that the level is not really challenging, but it has kicks of excitement sprinkled all over the place.

But I'm still hesitating it calling this a "problem". At certain points, I would want to add some voiceovers (mix of walkie talkie and voice in this level) and the section that is the least challenging is basically a springboard for the voiceovers. So if the flow of each level starts off as the least exciting gameplay wise and then ramp up the difficulty for the rest of the level, I believe something cool might come out of this. But since I don't have any voice overs, I can't tell. Oh, now there's an action item on the to do list, placeholder voiceovers.

Anyway, that is all I have for today. See you in the next post. Buhbye 

DAY 76

Alrighty, guys and girls, it's that time of the week again...after two weeks, but still. A new entry in the devlog is happening now. And I'm here to talk a little about creative burnout and why this thing is kinda sorta normal and OK to happen.

So, have you guys happened to just have a pretty hot streak in your projects, only for that streak to get colder and colder and colder until it hits ice levels of cold? Well, that is exactly what has happened to me. And honestly this was bound to happen, because things like burnouts are what happen when you try to dedicate yourself to a project such as a full blown game.

So, why is this normal? Well, first and foremost, there's a lot of moving parts and stuff going on that you, the solo dev, must handle personally. It's a daunting task, even for someone who is experienced in solo game devs. I actually came to the conclusion that every dev suffers burnout on their projects at some point, but the more experienced devs are coping much better with it. Either that, or they can manage it a lot better than inexperienced solo devs.

So is there something to do when burning out? Well, for starters, take a giant step back from the project. Like seriously, stop working on it and thinking about it for a couple of days or for however long it is necessary. Then get back right into it if you are feeling revitalized. If you are the kind of dev who goes gung-ho about the project, with the "zero-days-off" policy and whatnot, then at most work on some small part of the project or something that gets fast results....or just do some project management in Excel...or testing...

In my case, burnout occurred thusly: after a user stated that the jumping is floaty, I immediately recognized this as an issue after I posted about it. So I decided to do some tweaking in the character blueprint. At first, I didn't really commit to it, just did some tweaks here and there without saving the changes that were made. After a few days of fooling around with the tweaks, I kind of had a relatively clear idea for what I wanted from the jump mechanic. I knew that the jump (from input to landing) should be under a second, ~800ms to be precise. This theoretically felt the snappiest and the most enjoyable jump and I knew about this for a while. I knew the height should be around 2 times the height of the player character. This further added to the snappy aspect of things. What I didn't knew was what other ingredients to use to make the vision come to life. This mystery didn't last long and I've started messing around with the gravity. And yeah, mesing around with the gravity was for the better. 

But as I started to test out the changes in the levels, I've had a rather unsurprising revelation: all levels needed to accommodate changes to the jump. To be expected, sure. But I did have one surprising revelation: things got way more difficult in the rocky formations level. Which, if you recall, was something that I've complained on more than one occasion. So in that level, *very* few changes were made. Fixed the section where some sequence skipping occurred and made adjustments to the overall layout.

Discovering all these issues, fixing some issues while other issues popped up (of course the height of the character jump affected the jump pad and the monkey bar distances), then fixing those issues as well and the OTHER issues popped up (of course the gravity changes affected the wall run) was just simultaneously draining the joy out of the project and adding to the joy of knowing that the level is closer to being great. 

But in spite all of this, I think I may have regained some of the joy back. Because I've started working on the forest level. I'll only link one screenshot of it, because it's terribly late and I'll be missing my beauty sleep. But here is how it looks as of now: 

I am making a promise to show more tomorrow. Pinky swear.

Well, that is all for today, guys and girls. See you in the next post, buh bye. 

DAY 77

Why, hello guys and girls.

So today I continued to place chopped tree trunks that serve as...well, un-chopped, real living tree trunks. Not much work has gone today, because of a Discord call with a friend (what was supposed to be a short, ten minute or so call ended up being a 2 hour bonanza of talking...not regretting it one bit :D ).

But as promised, here are some more screenshots from the Forest area (including today's work). 

This area would preceed the ginormously large tree from earlier posts and clips. THere are a number of challenges that I would encounter throughout the creation of this level. One of them would be the "kill zone". 

OK, so for falling to the character's death, we've only had heights so far. Continuing having heights will not really go over well, for an obvious reason: variety. So for this area, a thought that keeps popping in my head and doesn't want to let go is the idea of having a huge fire spreading over the area. Or a fire that has already spread wide enough. And that fire would be the kill zone. This allows me to have death situations at low-ground level as well, not just way high above. 

At first I thought about making this area a swamp, but it was already established that the water will not kill you if you so much as touch it. So the next choice would've been fire. Now, the way I want to do it is for it to propagate via blueprints (i.e. controlled situation). I'm not done looking up into this solution, but it is very doable and would look fantastic. Once I have some update on this, I'll tell you guys all about it.

So, that's it for today, guys and girls. See you in the next post. Bye  

DAY 78

Howdy, guys and girls. Hope y'all doing as great as possible. Me, I'm back at it again with an update on the project.

So I've been on again off again working on the Forest level, replacing some assets here and there, making gameplay adjustments and so on. Kind of secretly delaying working on wall climbing and swimming and fixing bugs, but I'll eventually get to that...eventually...

There's still a lot of work to be done, a lot of things to be added and a lot of modifications to be made. First and foremost, I've added a small, make-shift pier with a hut. This would serve as the very beginning of the level, as you'd be arriving in this level via Paraglider.

This pier section would be just for exploration and some exposition purposes. There are two huts (one of them still needs to be worked on) and a toilet, just for fun. Complete with toilet paper.

Inside the first hut there are some computers. I'm not telling why exactly there are computers in a pier near a forest, except that it leaves some story bits for the player to discover.

I've completely replaced the grey tree trunks with a fallen log mesh, just to have a feel about how this level would look. I've also completely replaced all ramps with the bridge blueprint.

So as you can see, work has progressed pretty far in this level. Not up to snuff, tho. I haven't exactly figured out the gameplay: it might be more exploration oriented, it might have some puzzles in it, I don't know yet. But from what I've played, something like solving puzzles to progress to the next area feels right.

Lastly I would actually make a change in how I present the devlog to you guys. In the past few weeks, I've been working on the project bit by bit without updating the devlog. Sometimes literally working just 15 minutes per day, like no joke. Of course, working 15 mins a day doesn't result in a devlog-worthy entry. So naturally, I've decided that devlog entries would be a weekly thing, not a per-day entry. It makes more sense to me both time wise and content wise. Plus I'd have a more balanced work-life-passion project-hobby thing. Hope you guys would also enjoy it in this format.

So that's kind of it for today, guys. See ya in the next post. Bye!

Day 79-82

So naturally, I've decided that devlog entries would be a weekly thing, not a per-day entry.

HAHAHAHAHHA...cool joke, man.....overly optimistic Past Baftis is overly optimistic.

Why hello, ladies and gents. Back at it with an update on how the game is going. 

So I've been struggling quite a bit with working on the game and actually have a work-life balance thing going on. Clearly one of these didn't work out, but I did manage to work on the game more. 

Turns out motivation is a thing and got demotivated in the past few weeks. A vacation (of all things) managed to ease the struggle. Turns out that's what I needed.

So one of the things I've worked on is redesigning the canyon part of the level. There's nothing really wrong with the current version of the canyon, but visualizing the game when falling asleep churns out some pretty inpiring things. One of those inspiring things was the canyon part. Why? I wanted/needed a level where things could get really twitch-y and reflex based and really fast paced. Kind of like Sonic games, but in first person and with jumping. And one of those areas seems to pop up time and again: the canyon.

Now this turned me on big time, and as I started to implement this, I came across what I initially though was a bug. So, I have the jump-pad, right? And whenever you overlap with the jump-pad, the character flings in the air (on the Z axis) and you can go pretty much either way after that. Well, I did try to adapt this jump pad to a monkey bar kinda thing (the pole in DOOM eternal) Where you fling forwards. Well, that monkey bar had a problem: see, the idea is to fling the player forward on the Y-axis of the monkey bar. But lo and behold, the monkey bar does fling you on the Y-axis....of the world!!! So, I though "OK, this is clearly a bug", and went about to fix it. 

Turns out that this isn't a bug. By using LaunchCharacter nodes, the script tells the character to jump on the Y axis of the world, so you can't use relative rotation on the LaunchCharacter node. What this also means is that if I want to fling the character in a certain direction, I'll have to manually input the force on the axes I want that character to fling to. And my brain went "UUUUUUUGH!!?!?!?!" So, for every single directional jump pad/monkey bar that I want in the game, I have to make manual adjustments...."UUUUUUUGH!!?!?!?!" Thank God I don't have to do this on the jump pads that just fling you up, otherwise, I think I might've gotten insane.

So yeah, fun times, guys...really fun times. 

Anyway. For the time being, work on the Forest level is on hold. I've completely ran out of inspiration for it and will touch it once inspiration hits...or I'll visualize it before sleeping again. I'll leave you with only 2 screenshots, since it took a collosal amount of time to get the sequence right.

That's it for now, ladies and gents. See you in the next post. Buhbye. 

Hello, hello ladies and gents. hope you are having a great day. As for me, I'm back with an update on the project.

So the reason I haven't updated the devlog is because I kept putting off making it. Yes, it's that mundane. Because behind the scenes, I actually started working on not one, but two new levels. Let's go!

So the first level I'm going to talk about is the Gap level. This one came (like all good things) in my head, while falling asleep. I though that would be cool to have a level that focuses on wall running and the many ways that it could go to. And, while you can only do so much with a wall-run mechanic, it turns out that it works great when combining it with different mechanics (like, duh), especially the paraglider. 

Now, the Gap level is, to put it simply, a very very narrow canyon. The player, being almost at the top of the gap, must traverse it via wall-running. Here's how it looks: 

It is pretty difficult to capture some screenshots from this level because there is not much space to work with. And because it involves wall running, there's mostly long empty spaces with the occasional small cliff. Oh, but that's not all, there are some Death Traps around this level as well. One of these traps is in the third screenshot, a pendulum axe. The other one is in the BSP brushes, a blade that comes out of the rocks. If any of these traps touch the character, he is dead.

The second level I want to talk about is the Foggy Forest. 

This will most likely be the most simple level in the game in terms of implementation. This is because at it's very core, the level is about orienteering: you simply have some markings on trees/rocks and as the player, you have to find and follow said markings to reach the end of the level. That's it. In this level, you would also have a landmark that coincidentally serves as the end of the level. Said landmark is visible from all across the map if you look for it.

Here's how it looks as of now:

Btw, I was getting really sick and tired of just grayboxes in every single level. SO as a test, I used some assets off the marketplace. So we have GRAPHICS for a change, yay!! I don't know how the level is going to look with all post-process effects on (I'm only using a vignette as a post process effect now, fyi), but I'm sure as hell happy with how it looks as of now. Of course, things will get more populated as time goes. And yes, some trees are not upright (ooooh, that's going to be a pain to fix). 

Now, what makes this level challenging is 1) the low level of visibility 2) finding the markings (they won't be hidden, but they won't be easy to find either. 3) navigating through the forest: it will most definitely have multiple branching paths with dead ends. As such, it will be frustratingly difficult if you DON'T follow the markings. 

Now, there's a fun reason why I made the decision to make a foggy level. 

Initially, I wanted it to be sunny in the level. A hot mid-day kind of vibe. But as it was painfully brought to my attention in the form of hands-on experience, baking the lighting for a level that contains a lot of trees takes literally forever. Like in 2 hours, only 5% percent of the lighting was baked. This was a real problem if I was to iterate a lot on this level. Sure, one could argue that you do not have to bake the lighting at every iteration of the level, and one would be right. But it would still take forever + 6 months to bake lighting if this is how baking the lighting behaves with only trees in the scenery: foliage would be a big pain, props would also be a pain to bake.

So, a little bit off on a tangent, that got me thinking about making photos for textures and how I need to have bad weather so that no weird shadows or anything other than flat lighting appear in the texture. And then it hit me: how about I make a level in bad weather? You know, grey clouds, almost thunderstorm skies. In that weather nothing has a shadow and it looks great, very moody. And then it hit me again: oh, how about fog and/or mist? A little bit of that fog on the trees looks absolutely amazing to me. That definitely set the mood right away. And that is how I ended up doing a foggy level.   

Now, this is not the final layout of the forest because I did this as a test. Trees don't have collision, so that is a big no-no. The path to the end of the level, while defined, I'm not really happy with it. But I'm really happy with the results and I'll continue working on these two levels.

That about sums it up for this update, guys. See you in the next post. Buh-bye

P.S. Hope this time around I'll post more often.