DAY 36
Did not have much time to work on the project today, but had some mild inspiration bursts.
I continued work on the second level, on the first area from a total of four. When playtesting it, I noticed that the area is very busy in rock pillars and their placements. It kind of made sense, but it didn't feel nor looked right. It felt like the level had a transitional area after the already established transitional area. Also, the placement of the rock pillars was all over the place, so I decided to trim the fat quite a bit.
Now I feel it looks more appropriate to the setting. The body of water was somewhat between intended and placeholder, I just went with the flow at that time. Plus, the area looked more like it was flooded rather than something that grew naturally there. While not necessarily a bad thing, the flooded vibe didn't worked for me eventually. However, I do intend on giving this area like it's own little history in the form of an audio log.
It also felt like the beginning area of the level was sort of a transitional area, and that did not really stick with me. That's because I already established an area that would function as a transitional area between levels. So I got rid of that beginning part, eventually, and the area looks something like this now:
There's still a lot to do here and I'm beginning to ponder a different approach to this area. I think I'll use either the engine's own BSP's or some cubes to prototype this area. This is because the shape of the current rock pillars are distracting as hell to prototype with: the small, protruding rock pieces with grass patches along the bigger rock piece paths really get in the way of prototyping most of the time. Sometimes they create interesting choices and serendipitous situations, but most of the time they get in the way really bad. Because of the serendipitous value, I'd like to keep working with them, but it'll take much longer to get something done.
Oh, I almost forgot. Changes to the second transitional area were done. And now I had a sudden realization that I did not took screenshots of the original transitional area. Whoops, sorry...but then again you didn't lose anything. Anyway, this is how it looks now:
These changes were made to make way for a grappling hook invisible tutorial there. Before that, the grappling hook tutorial was planned to be quite far away from the beginning of the second level. I changed this in order to let the player use the grappling hook sooner than originally planned. This way I can create more intricate situation with the grappling hook later on.
So that's it for today guys. See ya in the next post, bye.