Well, it’s been a little while! Around 9 months actually. Rest assured the project has continued on in the background, despite the absence of posting about it. I was feeling pretty burned-out, like I hadn’t fully recovered from the previous game’s launch yet or something. Anyways, I took a bit of time to step back, re-evaluate, rest, and get my feet back under me again. It’s taken awhile, and I don’t feel like I’m back to full power yet, but I’m feeling motivated to pick up some of the old habits I’d put down for a season, like these posts! Though they may not be bi-weekly like they used to be. All that out of the way, let me show you a little bit of what we’ve done.
We left off last devblog with a hint at the first level we were working on, a sort of “fantasy badlands”. One of the first things we did after gathering the concepts we showed then, was to figure out what the village structures would look like. Would they be wooden? Adobe? Tent-like? Which styles would work well together and which would clash? In the end we decided the adobe houses with a bit of tents mixed in felt like the best fit.
Next we started to block out the level, basic shapes to get what if feels like to fly around, and the sense of scale. Once we were happy with that, it was simply a matter of adding in the rocks and structures themselves.
After that came my favorite part, the mood/atmosphere. Through the adjusting of the lighting, adding particles, mist, etc, we can completely change the feel of the level from a clean, landscape, to a hot, dusty place.
