Greetings and salutations!
For this week's screenshot, a look at the second section of the "pit" area in the first level, which is now--I believe--complete:
For the most part, the week just past was one of continued building-up of the first- and prologue- levels, although it also included a decision on a technical/level-design issue regarding portal culling:
First of all, I finished reworking the vines in the prologue level; while not perfect, I'm much happier with these than I was with the old vines, I believe!
I also added a small fallen block beneath one of that level's tumbled stones, as the latter looked a little unstable.
On the level-design side, I made the ideogram puzzle encountered in the prologue a little bit easier, removing some of the options available to choose from. As this is a prologue and tutorial, I don't want the puzzles here to be too difficult, I feel! There are still a fair few options to choose between, but I'm hesitant to pare it down much further...
That said, most of the week was, I think, spent in work on the first level. I finally added in proper doors. (It's a little surprising what a difference that makes to the feel of the place!) I tweaked a number of elements, and finished up the shelving.
I mentioned the placement of doors. This followed on, as I recall, from a perhaps-important decision, one that I'm not entirely confident of: how to handle the borders between the cells that divide up the game-world for the purpose of "portal-culling". Let me explain:
In short, the game-world is separated into chunks, or "cells", with "portals" looking from each into those visible from it. When standing in a given cell, that cell's objects, and objects visible through any portals (including portals within cells so viewed), are made visible; objects within other cells are not.
The problem lies at the edges: it's quite easy, it seems, to arrange things such that objects disappear from certain perspectives when placed near cell-borders. Further, I have small gaps between cells, and objects placed in those gaps may be placed in no cell at all, or the wrong cell. It's possible to split static geometry across cell borders, but in some cases that can become tricky, I find.
My solution is, essentially, to allow some things to sit outside of the portal-culling system. In the case of the tombs, these things include doors and door-frames. This means that they should be rendered correctly--but also that they should never be culled by the portal-culling system. Is this a good idea? I'm not sure, but for now, it seems to work. It doesn't entirely solve the problem for objects placed by the player between cells, however, I fear.
(I did ask after this on a few forums, but received no responses, I believe.)
Returning to the contents of the level, I've also been filling out some of the small items to be found around the lower tombs. I had already begun this with the shelf in the first of these tombs, I believe, which aside from the near-omnipresent books holds a knife, a brass box, a sketched portrait, and a wooden box containing some sort of dust or ash. In the week just past I continued, adding in models for a variety of extant items (two types of key and two puzzle-items--a large metal rod and a small one), and creating a few new ones (including some small purple crystals, a little dish of pale stone, and a near-complete model of a game-board.
As per usual, there were a number of small changes and bug-fixes not mentioned explicitly above!
On another note, I began a little side-project, a hobby, I suppose: I've begun Let's Playing. I'm currently playing through Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire--an old favourite of mine. In addition, the Quest for Glory series provided part of the inspiration for the combat mechanic in A Door to the Mists! You should find my let's play videos on
my YouTube channel.
That's all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^