First off I just wanted to say thanks again for your encouragement F3NR1S. It’s really great to hear the game has been heading in a good direction
It really is starting to come together nicely like you were saying. Hopefully I'll be able to share more tidbits too. I’m not sure when I’ll be working on the water. I do have some meshes ready for it as part of sculpting the landscape, I just haven’t imported them and tried any shaders yet. I would also like to be able to do something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmYx1NYdqPg, but I’m not sure if it would work with a plain mesh or if I have to use splines. If I have to use splines for all the streams, it might take a while before it would be done 
Things have been pretty busy since the last update with other things coming up, and I had some health issues that prevented me from working on things as much as I would like to, but all things considered, there is still quite a bit that got done.
I’m also happy to say that the teleporting works, but it’s not quite done yet, so I’ll wait until the next update to share new game builds. There have been some neat things to share with the vegetation as well, but this post is so long, I’ll wait until next time to share it.
The main thing for this update is I have been working on designing and modeling that room for teleporting to various areas. Since I'm not very good at drawing, I have to do all my concept work with the 3D models. So it took a little while, and many variations, but I think I finally arrived at a design that will be pretty nice in the end. The original design that I came up was going to be a circular room a glass dome in two pieces for the ceiling. Since the entire game is meant to be an art piece as well, I had the idea that it would be really neat to have paintings on the walls that the player would then teleport through. Here is what that original design looks like in the engine:



The idea being that you would be able to select a place to go to, then the two dome pieces would rotate around until they arrived at the painting. After this, the painting would change from being an impressionist painting of the game, into being a live look at the level. Then you would teleport to being next to a painting, hanging on the wall in one of the buildings. So it would feel like you were actually walking into the painting. As I got to thinking about it though, I realized the building would make a really great observatory for any star type puzzles, and I probably wouldn't be able to make a better one. So I decided to try to come up with a new idea for the teleport room.
As I was trying to come up with a concept for it, I remembered another idea I had a few months ago, that I had forgotten to write down, that I thought it would be really neat to do like an art gallery up in the clouds for the main menu. Then when the player clicked on play game, it would allow them to walk around in the art gallery, walk up to a painting, and go inside of the painting, into the main game world. I realized both the teleport room idea and that main menu idea would work well together, so this was the starting point for the new building.
It took quite a few iterations to start getting a look that I liked, and to be honest I don't normally design fantastical types of things
, but I think it could be a very pretty room in the end. While I was designing it, I kept seeing all of these things hanging from the ceiling and rotating around, almost like a chandelier or prisms hanging from the ceiling. As I started trying to go this direction, things started to come together more and more, and here is what I have so far inside the engine. Blender’s booleans helped tremendously to cut the holes in the ceiling's glass grid:

Here is the rest of it that's in Blender still with some very basic lighting:


The idea for the building is to have a wall of some kind in the center of the building with a shaft going to the ceiling, driving the rotations for all the gears. Then as the gears are rotating, they rotate the pieces hanging from the ceiling, which have the paintings on them, and as the player gets near a painting, the hanging wall would face the player and stop rotating. Then the painting would become the live version of itself. On the wall in the middle would be the poem from the description, kind of symbolic of it being the heart of the paintings, and the thing driving the possible story piece for each building.
Here are some shots of how the paintings look with a live version of the painting showing the game world:


and here is one in the game world that would be hanging on a wall in a building:

For right now, since the project is also an experiential art piece, I’m thinking that the best thing would be to have the live version flat, like a painting, instead of like an actual portal where it looks like you’re looking through a window. If anyone else has any thoughts about that, feel free to let me know. Here is what it looks like from the side:


I also had an idea of doing these doors along the two long walls that could be rotating at random amounts, making it feel like the wind is blowing through the building as it's up in the clouds. The other idea was to have the doors in the middle start rotating first, and gradually rotate the other doors open, almost like an accordion effect. Then have them all close again starting at the far ends and going towards the middle, almost like the building is breathing, or love flowing in and out like it talks about in the poem. I'm not sure which one to go with yet though.
Since it's going to be up in the clouds, the whole thing has been heavily inspired by clouds, with the way they move and change, and having something like rainbows in the clouds with all of the color wheels. Right now anyway, in that image up above, it's kind of neat too that the glass frames seem to mostly disappear when you're at the other end of the hall, as though you could walk off into the clouds. As part of all of that, I was thinking of having the glass color be a bit fuzzy around the edges, kind of like a rainbow effect:

So all in all, I now have the concept work done for two buildings and I have the teleporting all working. Hopefully I’ll be able to do more with the environment soon after the teleport room is more finished.
Thanks for looking!


Things have been pretty busy since the last update with other things coming up, and I had some health issues that prevented me from working on things as much as I would like to, but all things considered, there is still quite a bit that got done.
I’m also happy to say that the teleporting works, but it’s not quite done yet, so I’ll wait until the next update to share new game builds. There have been some neat things to share with the vegetation as well, but this post is so long, I’ll wait until next time to share it.
The main thing for this update is I have been working on designing and modeling that room for teleporting to various areas. Since I'm not very good at drawing, I have to do all my concept work with the 3D models. So it took a little while, and many variations, but I think I finally arrived at a design that will be pretty nice in the end. The original design that I came up was going to be a circular room a glass dome in two pieces for the ceiling. Since the entire game is meant to be an art piece as well, I had the idea that it would be really neat to have paintings on the walls that the player would then teleport through. Here is what that original design looks like in the engine:



The idea being that you would be able to select a place to go to, then the two dome pieces would rotate around until they arrived at the painting. After this, the painting would change from being an impressionist painting of the game, into being a live look at the level. Then you would teleport to being next to a painting, hanging on the wall in one of the buildings. So it would feel like you were actually walking into the painting. As I got to thinking about it though, I realized the building would make a really great observatory for any star type puzzles, and I probably wouldn't be able to make a better one. So I decided to try to come up with a new idea for the teleport room.
As I was trying to come up with a concept for it, I remembered another idea I had a few months ago, that I had forgotten to write down, that I thought it would be really neat to do like an art gallery up in the clouds for the main menu. Then when the player clicked on play game, it would allow them to walk around in the art gallery, walk up to a painting, and go inside of the painting, into the main game world. I realized both the teleport room idea and that main menu idea would work well together, so this was the starting point for the new building.
It took quite a few iterations to start getting a look that I liked, and to be honest I don't normally design fantastical types of things


Here is the rest of it that's in Blender still with some very basic lighting:


The idea for the building is to have a wall of some kind in the center of the building with a shaft going to the ceiling, driving the rotations for all the gears. Then as the gears are rotating, they rotate the pieces hanging from the ceiling, which have the paintings on them, and as the player gets near a painting, the hanging wall would face the player and stop rotating. Then the painting would become the live version of itself. On the wall in the middle would be the poem from the description, kind of symbolic of it being the heart of the paintings, and the thing driving the possible story piece for each building.
Here are some shots of how the paintings look with a live version of the painting showing the game world:


and here is one in the game world that would be hanging on a wall in a building:

For right now, since the project is also an experiential art piece, I’m thinking that the best thing would be to have the live version flat, like a painting, instead of like an actual portal where it looks like you’re looking through a window. If anyone else has any thoughts about that, feel free to let me know. Here is what it looks like from the side:


I also had an idea of doing these doors along the two long walls that could be rotating at random amounts, making it feel like the wind is blowing through the building as it's up in the clouds. The other idea was to have the doors in the middle start rotating first, and gradually rotate the other doors open, almost like an accordion effect. Then have them all close again starting at the far ends and going towards the middle, almost like the building is breathing, or love flowing in and out like it talks about in the poem. I'm not sure which one to go with yet though.
Since it's going to be up in the clouds, the whole thing has been heavily inspired by clouds, with the way they move and change, and having something like rainbows in the clouds with all of the color wheels. Right now anyway, in that image up above, it's kind of neat too that the glass frames seem to mostly disappear when you're at the other end of the hall, as though you could walk off into the clouds. As part of all of that, I was thinking of having the glass color be a bit fuzzy around the edges, kind of like a rainbow effect:

So all in all, I now have the concept work done for two buildings and I have the teleporting all working. Hopefully I’ll be able to do more with the environment soon after the teleport room is more finished.
Thanks for looking!
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