It’s nice to be working on a level that is outdoors and it a much brighter scene all throughout. Since it’s a different level I had to make sure the postprocess and lighting have the right settings. Spent a lot of time tuning those knobs and I am sure I am going to be changing them constantly to find the right balance. I wanted to be able to see the clouds but to do that the sky can’t overpower it. Then I got to find how to make the clouds more stylistic. Figuring out how to add bounds to the level was easy enough. There’s a blocking volume in the engine and I just had to make it “Hollow”, that way it’s edges at the boundaries of the stage. I made sure to line the edges of the map with trees and will add more trees later on when the cabin is done. The grass in the level has a nice wind setting to it already so I edited the material on the trees to match the grass as best as it could.
With the bounds done I went to work on the textures next because they were quite ugly. The grass texture was flat and strange, and the rocky texture tiles were too clear. Instead of using a texture I made it a flat color instead and just used the roughness and normal map of the rock to make it look like dirt. It ended up looking pretty decent and passable for now. I’ll definitely improve it later. It was annoying that the footstep sound didn’t match the ground so I found a simple dirt sound on freesound.org and added a new dirt_PhysicalMaterial to the footstep sound logic. Cleared up some of the grass and flowers to make it less uniform. The foliage also have been a bit taxing on performance so I will make sure it looks nice but still cheap.
The hardest part of the level will be putting together the cabin which I already started. Started off with a flat plane so I could get the pieces on the same height. Added the floors and then the walls and windows. I am using a modular log cabin asset. It didn’t have a model for just a doors so I made the rooms by just adding walls, they won’t have doors to them. Which should still serve their purpose as to creating divisions for the rooms. I replaced the texture with a simple flat color to make sure it stays with the simple look of the game. With the pieces at my disposal from the asset there will be some difficult in closing off the ceiling and the roof of the cabin. All in all it has been really fun but there’s still a lot of work to do.
GoldenGratus Games 