This week, I continued working on level construction, with a focus on building the dungeon area.
Working process:
- 00:00 – 10:52 : Completed the construction of the second half of the dungeon.
- 10:52 – 20:50 : make landscape and flower in the middle area
- 20:51 – 30:25 : Built the bridge and the final gate.
- 30:29 – 39:56 : Used physics-based drops to scatter debris and built the rocky walls.
- 39:56 – 47:57 : Write the blueprint of small gate and key
- 47:57 – end : Refined the space behind the corridor and the small door.
In the game world, the player starts in a grand hall filled with knight statues. This hall was once a sacred place dedicated to the worship of heroes and the goddess. Together, they sealed away a powerful being known as the Serpent.
Though they couldn’t destroy it completely, they managed to imprison it deep within this place. To guard the seal, the people built this ancient site and placed stone gargoyles as protectors.
However, over the years, the goddess and heroes vanished, and the memory of their purpose faded. One day, a descendant of the nobility discovered that the Serpent’s blood possessed miraculous powers—it could cure diseases, and even bring the dead back to life. Driven by greed, he secretly constructed a dungeon in a side chamber next to the main hall, using condemned prisoners and corpses for inhuman experiments in an attempt to harness this forbidden power.
When the player reaches the end of the hallway, they’ll discover an underground space. While designing this area, I wanted to create a sense of complete darkness, with no light sources at all. To progress, the player needs to turn on their flashlight. This creates a circular highlight in the scene, which not only guides the player’s focus but also helps enhance the overall sense of immersion.
When creating this scene, I used the previously mentioned Packed Level Actor method to combine the statue, vessels, gargoyle, and dragon-head sculpture into a single level instance. This area represents the place where those mad experimenters offered blood in their rituals.
Used plugin: Dash：
I use Dash to help me better organize assets. It makes the assets more visual. Although you can also use filters in folders, Dash feels a bit more convenient.
It also lets me use physics simulation brushes to scatter objects on the ground, and vine brushes to create vines on walls. But these tools can be a bit tricky to use.
It lets me use physics simulation brushes to scatter objects on the ground, and vine brushes to create vines on walls. But these tools can be a bit tricky to use.
I also used it to draw some vines, but later the actor became too large, which caused a heavy lighting load, so I deleted the vines.
However, when the project entered the later packaging stage, as the pressure of optimizing lighting and materials increased, I had to face a reality.
These vines brought a large lighting and performance overhead. For a game that needs to run smoothly and allow real-time player interaction, I had to delete them to ensure a smooth frame rate. The same applies to the point lights on the torches in the knight hall. I had to set them to static lighting because the knight statue actors are too large, and too many lights would bring a large overhead.
Compared to film production, this made me realize a core principle in game development. The balance between visuals and playable runs. I need to make choice and put limited resources where the player really needs to experience them.