I finished building our Player Hub area today. I did not use blockout for building the Hub, since this is a small place for players to upgrade their weapons via speaking with the Blacksmith and player can also find out more about this world by interacting with our second NPC by the statue. Players can use the teleporter to explore all 3 levels. I am currently doing blockout for Level 2. You can check out the Level 1 video here. https://youtu.be/eHMZ8gvoIN8
I am so glad and lucky to meet all our amazing teammates. Hex made the teleporter, our character and put together all the animation you see in this video, including health and stamina. We also have our own UI/UX designer and a composer/sound designer.
This project is by no means AAA or indie or a game jam. We just want to make something cool and this is my opportunity to create amazing levels for this game and grow more.
Day 6: I am almost done with finishing Level 2 Blockout Phase. We will have a total of three separate levels for this game. You can watch the Level 1 full showcase video above this comment.
Level 2 is a little bit bigger than Level 1 and players will have the opportunity to find an interesting story/lore about why our hero is on this journey.
I should be able to finish the blockout for Level 2 by tomorrow evening. I need to playtest the level and create an interesting landscape by sculpting and I need to plan the dungeon/mining areas for a flow that makes players feel excited and cautious. It was one of our teammates’ (Hex) ideas to have lava on this level and he gave me really cool Lava assets from his FAB and I took the lava idea a few steps further by taking references from games like Elden Ring, Gothic, Demon’s Souls, Zelda Series and New World: Aeternum.
Day 7: I am now finished with the entire Level 2 Blockout Phase. One more level to go to finish the entire Blockout to full design (make-up). You can watch the Level 1 full showcase video from my previous post.
I spent half a day playtesting this level for any potential issues. One of our teammates is currently implementing sounds via FMOD in Unreal Engine. This is my first time seeing FMOD in action and what he has told me so far sounds incredible and a really cool way to have sounds in the game. I will wait until he is finished to showcase some of his work in the upcoming video.
Interesting info about me: I have platinum in all the Dark Souls series, Sekiro, Elden Ring, Elden Ring Nightreign, Demon’s Souls and countless hours in the Zelda series, Gothic, Skyrim, Lords of the Fallen, Remnant 2, Jusant, Ghost of Tsushima, Dragon’s Dogma series, Lies of P, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War series, New World: Aeterrnum and so many more! My point here is that I know a thing or two when it comes to what players might feel and look at when playing the game for the first time. I don’t get to play games much anymore since I am so focused as a Level Designer on making levels that have inspired me.
When I am playtesting levels, I can put on my gamer hat and really get into the zone and having a team to do playtest helps a lot. In a bigger project, I would imagine that there would be a separate department to playtest or even bring in fresh players from outside but with our project we don’t have that, so we are using what we have to make this game!
Day 8,9 and 10 Combined: I finally finished the entire LevelB (Level 2) from Blockout Phase to Make-Up, and I am really proud of it. I have one more level to go to finish the entire Blockout to full design. I used my Blockout as guidance to put all the FAB assets together. I used PLA to manage all my actors neatly and like always, I used the Actor Palette plugin to bring in all the actors to my level. One of our teammates (Hex) implemented the Custom Sky and I added them to the level with his help.
I recycled my old PLA by breaking them and I reused the foliage by changing the texture to make it look like it belonged to this environment. One of the greatest things I’ve learned during this process was to make new-looking assets by using the same thing and being creative!
I took inspiration/reference from the Zelda Series, Dungeons & Dragons Animated Series (1983-1985), Dark Souls Series, Elden Ring, Demon’s Souls, New World: Aeternum and Gothic.
Our team is continually working to make this game together and we cannot wait for you to try it and kill enemies with these cool arrows. I am currently doing the final Level blockout (Level 3) and I wanted to take this time to showcase some of the work of our teammates.
The VFX you see here was put together by Hex from an asset pack and SFX was created by E. Our UI is currently being designed by Fish. I will soon showcase that when it’s done and in a couple of days you can check Level 3 entire blockout design.
I came up with the Target Dummy idea for the bow inspired by Remnant 2. I used a random pile of bags, sticks and a crystal from FAB assets to turn it into this design and Hex took this idea and turned it into different colored Target Dummies and even made all kinds of arrows.
