009 The Blog & Starting a New Level
Monday 14th Jan 2019
6:50am
I’m up and straight onto the PC to get this dev blog online. I have to leave the house soon to do the school run so figured I’d get this out the way with beforehand. I had originally planned to do this last Friday so I’m a little behind schedule. Today my focus was supposed to be 100% on creating a new Graveyard Race Map, but that’s on hold for now.
8:35am
Still working on adding a blog to the site, time to take a break for the School run.
9:10am
Back in the office and back to getting the blog sorted out.
12:30pm
Well the blog is now done and I have shared it!
Between making the blog, promoting it in a couple of places and talking to Ant about outstanding 3D tasks my morning has completely vanished! Time to have some lunch and refresh so that I can fully commit to making the Graveyard level this afternoon.
1:30pm
Back from lunch and ready to go! I am making a level set in darkness, so it will be a challenge, but I have done some initial prototypes already and have an idea in my mind. I like to just dive right in and see what comes out!
3:05pm
Time for the school run again so downing tools for a little while. The terrain is already starting to take shape though and I’ve got the basic layout done. When I get back this afternoon I’ll focus on smoothing out the terrain, mapping down the dangerous pitfalls (empty graves in this case), adding some placeholder swamp water, and hopefully setting up the terrain foliage.
4:10pm
Back in the office and back to making this map.
5:30pm
Time for another break, this time to cook dinner. I’ve made more progress though, mapping down some whitebox props, light sources, pitfalls and swamp water. Unity’s terrain tool gets a lot of flak but I love it personally, it’s flexible and allows for really quick iteration. After dinner I’ll spend some time setting up the foliage and possibly painting down some placeholder textures to help portray the feeling of the environment more.
7:15pm
I ate and also finished watching Coco with the family (that we started last night) – if you haven’t seen this film yet I highly recommend it! It took me a while for me to warm to it, but the second half of the film was just beautiful. Anyway – back to work on my graveyard level!
9pm
I made up some time this evening due to the school runs and cooking dinner this evening. I’m relatively happy with the shape the level is taking, the route and terrain is pretty much there now, I just need to have a run around and get a feel for it. I’m toying with the idea of making height variations in the graveyard itself, but actually think a flat terrain could work fine here due to the difficulty that will be introduced with the low visibility (players will be in darkness using head torches to navigate their way around the map).
I’ll revisit this level tomorrow and keep improving it!
Adios amigos!
Signed by my face
