031 Plugging in New Race Maps
Monday 11th Feb 2019
9:25am
In the office and feeling a bit fragile. Yesterday was an attempt to claw back some lost time, and get ahead with tasks that I knew I needed to find time for, namely setting up the Demo online for sharing, and getting a new build of the game in full (as it stands) for sharing with Publishers. Both tasks are done now, after many, many hours of finding & fixing issues. But I am feeling the pinch as result for sure!
Today I’m down to start plugging in another new map, one that Ant has been working on – the Waterfalls level in the Jungle Region. But first, I need to update the blog.
10:55am
I genuinely hate how long it takes to update the blog and post on Social Media! But it is necessary, and is now done.
Time to get stuck into Unity and plug this new Race Map in.
1pm
Level blocking. We need to talk about our relationship…..
Well, it’s done at least. Fortunately there was quite a lot of it already mapped down by Ant but this was quite a complicated level with lots of variations in the terrain and tricky angles to deal with. I have spent the last two hours adding more, tweaking what was there an making sure it’s airtight.
After lunch I’ll move onto the Ghost Perk zones and death pit triggers.
Time for a break!
2pm
Back in the office
3:05pm
Been a productive hour. All the Ghost Perk zones are in, and I’m about 80% of the way through the death pit triggers.
Time for the school run, when I get back I’ll start mapping down everything else (stampede waypoints, weapon pickups, etc etc).
4:30pm
Back, a bit later than usual as I had some stuff to do around the house. On with setting up this level!
6pm
Been a productive 1.5hours, although I lost about 20 mins trying to fix an obscure issue with lighting in the scene. Shadows weren’t being cast by anything, long story short – a model in the scene has some extremely large bounds, which was causing it to cast a shadow across the entire map! Once I’d solved that I managed to map down all of the stampede waypoints.
Another break now for some dinner, I’ve got another couple of hours left of my shift, I’ll use that to try and finish everything.
7pm
Back from dinner, time for a focused session.
8pm
Making good progress on the level, have to stop a little abruptly without updating this as Ant has come over for some playtesting!
9:30pm
Stopped for the night, been chatting away with Ant. Playtest threw up loads of bugs, which have been sorted by priority so I know what I absolutely have to fix before sending the build out.
One thing I haven’t noted down is there was quite a lot of stutter on occasion, but I'm taking that with a pinch of salt as a lot of levels haven’t been fully optimised yet.
Adios amigos!
Signed by my face
