Greeting and welcome to newsletter # 12
The latest video dev log has been released on YouTube and can be found here:
Last Week:
I spent last week working on improving the environmental visuals and refining the design of the generation techniques for rooms inside each level
I decided to restrict the complexity of each room and make them each more unique by making them have a unique base layout that the parts would be applied to instead of a very open ended base like in the image below
Each part would have a specific theme and layout that would help give each room an initial feel. Room parts would then be added to configure the room to have specific paths and challenges available depending on the needs of the procedural generation system
I also worked on improving the visuals but leveraging the Unreal Geometry Script system to cut out parts of the floor and make the level look like one cohesive piece
I’ll be able to use Geometry Script to blend a lot of pieces together in the level to achieve a really polished look, and I’m really happy with how easy it is to cut out parts from one another at runtime
The last visual improvement I made was to convert my floor material in Unreal into a world aligned floor material. This made it so the floor of the various parts all flowed together with the tiles aligning even though it was made up of multiple parts
The other thing I worked on this week was trying out some AI modeling tools to see if they would work to make a few assets. I have contracted out professional artists to make the player character and guards and planned to make all the other assets myself but it is a lot of work so if I can get some smaller assets made using AI it would free up time to improve gameplay and other key elements of the game.
I was able to turn some concept art I had created in Midjourney into a workable asset so I think I can use this process to make smaller assets that aren’t seen really up close and just used for ambience. The camera below was made using Rodin and looks decent. I’ll be cleaning it up a little bit more but it works great as a placeholder until I can make another polish pass
I had limited success when using the concept art I had for drones so I’ll have to pick and choose my battles
This Week:
- Choke and Dagger Animations!
- Implement spawn pistol effect
- Fix issue with pistol location when player on steps
- Environmental energy barriers and wall details
That is all for this update,
Tony D
Cronoforge Studios Inc