[GAME][WIP] Against The Mountain - 1st Person Exploration/Platformer

[baftis]

DAY 73

Hey-oooh, guys and girls. I hope you guys are doing as great as possible. I’m back with another update on the devlog. I know that I haven’t been posting as regularly as I used to, but work on the project is still ongoing. Me, I’m still learning to program shaders and have taken quite an interest on the technical arts side of things, which surprises me because I was afraid of anything programming for as long as I can remember. And to a certain extent I still am scared because it’s an overwhelming subject to me.

As for the project itself, remember last post where I stated that the second level is being remade? Well, I am still remaking it and that is what I have worked on since my last post (project-wise, anyway). And since then, functional-wise, I am 75% done making iteration number 2.

Here’s how it looks, bird’s-eye view:

Structurally, the difficulty is toned-down a lot (maybe too much) and the hazards/obstacles are laid out in such a manner that they explore every scenario possible as of right now. Since I don’t have enemies in the game, the mindset is basically “the environment is the enemy”. Plain and simple, no two ways around it.

A new addition to the level is the long and hollow mesa in the middle of the level. This mesa came about similarly to how going out and around the tall sequoia tree: as an answer for the “variety” question. At first I was really skeptic about the idea, because on paper it seemed like it was not very interesting. But the idea kept popping in my head, even though I kept dismissing it. And since it kept doing that, I decided to give it a shot and see what comes of it.

Lo and behold:

One long mesa, 4 different sections. Breakdown time!

This section is where I introduce the grappling hook:

This is the section where gameplay with the grappling hook gets slightly complicated, adding falling platforms to the mix:

This is the section where I throw off the player by introducing a different mechanic (the vertical moving platforms).

And the is the section where everything introduced before gets thrown in like a melting pot of mechanics:

To be honest, it’s just OK-to-good, gameplay-wise. It’s nothing spectacular or out-of-the-ordinary, it’s more of an area where the the player can learn the grappling hook mechanic in an easy-to-learn environment. What might be spectacular is the addition of some big holes in the walls of the mesa that reveal the environment from time to time. Towards the end, things get more difficult, as the player has to use timing to his advantage in order to reach the end of this section. Improvements will be made to make it as good as possible, but the focus is to have a structurally sound foundation to the gameplay.

The stage following the hollow mesa is simply a transition area towards what was the entire second level and is now the last stage of the second level. Although I wasn’t really for it, I added the jump pad in this transition area to get the player to the last area faster. But that may soon change it. This is because I settled upon having to only walk in the transition areas, no jumping or anything else that might cause the player to die. Just let the player breathe, take in the environment and allow the story to unfold during that time (for this level, in voice-over form).

The last area (which again, was previously the entire second level) will suffer some modifications to it, since I’ve also added a double jump feature. I’ve replaced the stylized cliffs from the previous iteration with BSP brushes so as to have better control over the layout of the area. I’ve stated before that I’m OK with the “happy accident” of stumbling over a path that the player can take due to the cliffs placed, and I still am OK with it. But I want more control over the layout of the level, because I feel that in this level I relied too much on the “happy accidents” thing. True, they got me going in a good direction, but I can’t rely on that too much.

In the following days I’ll continue working on this second iteration and keep you guys posted. After this, I may take a break from level design (should I finish the tree level too) and focus on implementing the swimming and the wall climb mechanic.

Anyway, that’s it for today. See you guys in the next post hopefully I’ll post sooner than I’ve been doing lately. Buh-Bye!

[baftis]

DAY 74

Alrighty, day 74. Hello, guys and girls. hope you guys are having as great a time as possible. I’m back with another update on the project.

So up until now, I’ve managed to prototype about 80% done with the Level 2 version 2.

Made some minor modifications here and there, because some meshes were weirdly placed before, like so:

Now, what’s left to do is the following:

• Complete/remake the last section of the level

• Make secret areas

• Place more tall rocks clutter

Anyway, after these steps are done, I’ll most likely move back to the tree level. And then after that, I’ll be moving on to swimming and wall climbing, as stated.

On the to do list was testing as well. I have to say that I really think this level is too easy. Within the first minute of gameplay or so, I start to zone out and that is not good. To be fair, my focus gets kicked into gear a bit later in the level. And this concerns me just a little. As a precautionary measure, I’ll make minor modifications to the first section to make the gameplay more “active” and alive, so to speak.

One other small thing I managed to do, this time regarding the tools, is that I’ve added a one-point perspective grid to the camera, similar to the rules of third grid.

Someone mentioned something very helpful on another forum, and that thing is to use these grids as guidelines. And he speaks the truth, you can get caught up way too much in a cycle of constant checking, evaluating and reassessing composition. A dash of “guidelines, not rules”, a sprinkle of “good enough is good enough” and some good old fashioned planning + deadlines would kick you into high gear and make you not think too much.

And that’s all for today, guys and girls. See ya in the next one. Buh-bye.

[baftis]

DAY 75

OK, guys and girls, it’s that time of the week again. You know, the time I write an update for the project. I’m happy to announce that I’ve managed to complete Level 2 v2.0. And it honestly wasn’t as easy as I’ve hoped it would be. Granted, it wasn’t hard, but not as easy breezy as I thought.

For one, I was left in a complete stump as to how I’m going to end the level. The previous iteration looks something like this:

While being an extremely tense and calculated section, the above does not really fit with this second iteration, which serves as being a introductory section more than anything.

Anyway, here is hot the last section of the level looks now:

(Spoiler alert: the oversized campfire is a placeholder)

This section definitely has better structure to it level design wise and environmental building-wise. Compared to the first version, this definitely looks more as if the person who made these obstacles worked around the environment and with the environment. Whereas the previous version looked tacky and obviously gamified. Definitely not perfect, there are still a lot of touch-up to be made, but it’s a big step in the right direction.

While playing it front to back, not accessing secret areas, it has the same…“problem??” if I can even call it that. It starts as really unassuming (borderline boring to an experienced player) and a low effort type of gameplay. But excitement picks up after the first quarter of the level. I would say that the level is not really challenging, but it has kicks of excitement sprinkled all over the place.

But I’m still hesitating it calling this a “problem”. At certain points, I would want to add some voiceovers (mix of walkie talkie and voice in this level) and the section that is the least challenging is basically a springboard for the voiceovers. So if the flow of each level starts off as the least exciting gameplay wise and then ramp up the difficulty for the rest of the level, I believe something cool might come out of this. But since I don’t have any voice overs, I can’t tell. Oh, now there’s an action item on the to do list, placeholder voiceovers.

Anyway, that is all I have for today. See you in the next post. Buhbye

[baftis]

DAY 76

Alrighty, guys and girls, it’s that time of the week again…after two weeks, but still. A new entry in the devlog is happening now. And I’m here to talk a little about creative burnout and why this thing is kinda sorta normal and OK to happen.

So, have you guys happened to just have a pretty hot streak in your projects, only for that streak to get colder and colder and colder until it hits ice levels of cold? Well, that is exactly what has happened to me. And honestly this was bound to happen, because things like burnouts are what happen when you try to dedicate yourself to a project such as a full blown game.

So, why is this normal? Well, first and foremost, there’s a lot of moving parts and stuff going on that you, the solo dev, must handle personally. It’s a daunting task, even for someone who is experienced in solo game devs. I actually came to the conclusion that every dev suffers burnout on their projects at some point, but the more experienced devs are coping much better with it. Either that, or they can manage it a lot better than inexperienced solo devs.

So is there something to do when burning out? Well, for starters, take a giant step back from the project. Like seriously, stop working on it and thinking about it for a couple of days or for however long it is necessary. Then get back right into it if you are feeling revitalized. If you are the kind of dev who goes gung-ho about the project, with the “zero-days-off” policy and whatnot, then at most work on some small part of the project or something that gets fast results…or just do some project management in Excel…or testing…

In my case, burnout occurred thusly: after a user stated that the jumping is floaty, I immediately recognized this as an issue after I posted about it. So I decided to do some tweaking in the character blueprint. At first, I didn’t really commit to it, just did some tweaks here and there without saving the changes that were made. After a few days of fooling around with the tweaks, I kind of had a relatively clear idea for what I wanted from the jump mechanic. I knew that the jump (from input to landing) should be under a second, ~800ms to be precise. This theoretically felt the snappiest and the most enjoyable jump and I knew about this for a while. I knew the height should be around 2 times the height of the player character. This further added to the snappy aspect of things. What I didn’t knew was what other ingredients to use to make the vision come to life. This mystery didn’t last long and I’ve started messing around with the gravity. And yeah, mesing around with the gravity was for the better.

But as I started to test out the changes in the levels, I’ve had a rather unsurprising revelation: all levels needed to accommodate changes to the jump. To be expected, sure. But I did have one surprising revelation: things got way more difficult in the rocky formations level. Which, if you recall, was something that I’ve complained on more than one occasion. So in that level, very few changes were made. Fixed the section where some sequence skipping occurred and made adjustments to the overall layout.

Discovering all these issues, fixing some issues while other issues popped up (of course the height of the character jump affected the jump pad and the monkey bar distances), then fixing those issues as well and the OTHER issues popped up (of course the gravity changes affected the wall run) was just simultaneously draining the joy out of the project and adding to the joy of knowing that the level is closer to being great.

But in spite all of this, I think I may have regained some of the joy back. Because I’ve started working on the forest level. I’ll only link one screenshot of it, because it’s terribly late and I’ll be missing my beauty sleep. But here is how it looks as of now:

I am making a promise to show more tomorrow. Pinky swear.

Well, that is all for today, guys and girls. See you in the next post, buh bye.

[baftis]

DAY 77

Why, hello guys and girls.

So today I continued to place chopped tree trunks that serve as…well, un-chopped, real living tree trunks. Not much work has gone today, because of a Discord call with a friend (what was supposed to be a short, ten minute or so call ended up being a 2 hour bonanza of talking…not regretting it one bit ).

But as promised, here are some more screenshots from the Forest area (including today’s work).

This area would preceed the ginormously large tree from earlier posts and clips. THere are a number of challenges that I would encounter throughout the creation of this level. One of them would be the “kill zone”.

OK, so for falling to the character’s death, we’ve only had heights so far. Continuing having heights will not really go over well, for an obvious reason: variety. So for this area, a thought that keeps popping in my head and doesn’t want to let go is the idea of having a huge fire spreading over the area. Or a fire that has already spread wide enough. And that fire would be the kill zone. This allows me to have death situations at low-ground level as well, not just way high above.

At first I thought about making this area a swamp, but it was already established that the water will not kill you if you so much as touch it. So the next choice would’ve been fire. Now, the way I want to do it is for it to propagate via blueprints (i.e. controlled situation). I’m not done looking up into this solution, but it is very doable and would look fantastic. Once I have some update on this, I’ll tell you guys all about it.

So, that’s it for today, guys and girls. See you in the next post. Bye

[Get_DOVAH_it]

Hi Baftis!

It’s great to see you back on the proverbial horse again! You’re right. Burnout is both normal and okay. How one processes this reality is unique to the individual. It appears to me that you have taken the right steps, as you are back at it again, and in full effect!

When it comes to the differing levels (i.e. forest, rock, cave, ginormous tree), will you have something in place to let players know what level they are on? Something like a text widget that shows up once you reach a particular checkpoint in the level? For instance, let’s say I am leaving one level and am approaching the forest level, will something popup letting me know I have reached the “Forest of Fiery Doom” , or will it show at the bottom of the player screen?

[baftis]

Hey, Get_DOVAH_it

That is actually a great question. I will most likely keep this as diegetic as possible and I have two solutions for this:

1. A Firewatch-style map, where you would see the world as you would a real-life map and having a “You are here” marker on the map that updates in real time. Like you would on a real life map, you’d have the location name (and most likely delimited) on the map.
2. Have sign posts in the game world that show the direction towards the “level” and a sign post at the beginning of the level.

Well, I have three solutions if I combine the two above.

[baftis]

DAY 78

Howdy, guys and girls. Hope y’all doing as great as possible. Me, I’m back at it again with an update on the project.

So I’ve been on again off again working on the Forest level, replacing some assets here and there, making gameplay adjustments and so on. Kind of secretly delaying working on wall climbing and swimming and fixing bugs, but I’ll eventually get to that…eventually…

There’s still a lot of work to be done, a lot of things to be added and a lot of modifications to be made. First and foremost, I’ve added a small, make-shift pier with a hut. This would serve as the very beginning of the level, as you’d be arriving in this level via Paraglider.

This pier section would be just for exploration and some exposition purposes. There are two huts (one of them still needs to be worked on) and a toilet, just for fun. Complete with toilet paper.

Inside the first hut there are some computers. I’m not telling why exactly there are computers in a pier near a forest, except that it leaves some story bits for the player to discover.

I’ve completely replaced the grey tree trunks with a fallen log mesh, just to have a feel about how this level would look. I’ve also completely replaced all ramps with the bridge blueprint.

So as you can see, work has progressed pretty far in this level. Not up to snuff, tho. I haven’t exactly figured out the gameplay: it might be more exploration oriented, it might have some puzzles in it, I don’t know yet. But from what I’ve played, something like solving puzzles to progress to the next area feels right.

Lastly I would actually make a change in how I present the devlog to you guys. In the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the project bit by bit without updating the devlog. Sometimes literally working just 15 minutes per day, like no joke. Of course, working 15 mins a day doesn’t result in a devlog-worthy entry. So naturally, I’ve decided that devlog entries would be a weekly thing, not a per-day entry. It makes more sense to me both time wise and content wise. Plus I’d have a more balanced work-life-passion project-hobby thing. Hope you guys would also enjoy it in this format.

So that’s kind of it for today, guys. See ya in the next post. Bye!

[baftis]

Day 79-82

So naturally, I’ve decided that devlog entries would be a weekly thing, not a per-day entry.

HAHAHAHAHHA…cool joke, man…overly optimistic Past Baftis is overly optimistic.

Why hello, ladies and gents. Back at it with an update on how the game is going.

So I’ve been struggling quite a bit with working on the game and actually have a work-life balance thing going on. Clearly one of these didn’t work out, but I did manage to work on the game more.

Turns out motivation is a thing and got demotivated in the past few weeks. A vacation (of all things) managed to ease the struggle. Turns out that’s what I needed.

So one of the things I’ve worked on is redesigning the canyon part of the level. There’s nothing really wrong with the current version of the canyon, but visualizing the game when falling asleep churns out some pretty inpiring things. One of those inspiring things was the canyon part. Why? I wanted/needed a level where things could get really twitch-y and reflex based and really fast paced. Kind of like Sonic games, but in first person and with jumping. And one of those areas seems to pop up time and again: the canyon.

Now this turned me on big time, and as I started to implement this, I came across what I initially though was a bug. So, I have the jump-pad, right? And whenever you overlap with the jump-pad, the character flings in the air (on the Z axis) and you can go pretty much either way after that. Well, I did try to adapt this jump pad to a monkey bar kinda thing (the pole in DOOM eternal) Where you fling forwards. Well, that monkey bar had a problem: see, the idea is to fling the player forward on the Y-axis of the monkey bar. But lo and behold, the monkey bar does fling you on the Y-axis…of the world!!! So, I though “OK, this is clearly a bug”, and went about to fix it.

Turns out that this isn’t a bug. By using LaunchCharacter nodes, the script tells the character to jump on the Y axis of the world, so you can’t use relative rotation on the LaunchCharacter node. What this also means is that if I want to fling the character in a certain direction, I’ll have to manually input the force on the axes I want that character to fling to. And my brain went “UUUUUUUGH!!!” So, for every single directional jump pad/monkey bar that I want in the game, I have to make manual adjustments…“UUUUUUUGH!!!” Thank God I don’t have to do this on the jump pads that just fling you up, otherwise, I think I might’ve gotten insane.

So yeah, fun times, guys…really fun times.

Anyway. For the time being, work on the Forest level is on hold. I’ve completely ran out of inspiration for it and will touch it once inspiration hits…or I’ll visualize it before sleeping again. I’ll leave you with only 2 screenshots, since it took a collosal amount of time to get the sequence right.

That’s it for now, ladies and gents. See you in the next post. Buhbye.

[baftis]

Hello, hello ladies and gents. hope you are having a great day. As for me, I’m back with an update on the project.

So the reason I haven’t updated the devlog is because I kept putting off making it. Yes, it’s that mundane. Because behind the scenes, I actually started working on not one, but two new levels. Let’s go!

So the first level I’m going to talk about is the Gap level. This one came (like all good things) in my head, while falling asleep. I though that would be cool to have a level that focuses on wall running and the many ways that it could go to. And, while you can only do so much with a wall-run mechanic, it turns out that it works great when combining it with different mechanics (like, duh), especially the paraglider.

Now, the Gap level is, to put it simply, a very very narrow canyon. The player, being almost at the top of the gap, must traverse it via wall-running. Here’s how it looks:

It is pretty difficult to capture some screenshots from this level because there is not much space to work with. And because it involves wall running, there’s mostly long empty spaces with the occasional small cliff. Oh, but that’s not all, there are some Death Traps around this level as well. One of these traps is in the third screenshot, a pendulum axe. The other one is in the BSP brushes, a blade that comes out of the rocks. If any of these traps touch the character, he is dead.

The second level I want to talk about is the Foggy Forest.

This will most likely be the most simple level in the game in terms of implementation. This is because at it’s very core, the level is about orienteering: you simply have some markings on trees/rocks and as the player, you have to find and follow said markings to reach the end of the level. That’s it. In this level, you would also have a landmark that coincidentally serves as the end of the level. Said landmark is visible from all across the map if you look for it.

Here’s how it looks as of now:

Btw, I was getting really sick and tired of just grayboxes in every single level. SO as a test, I used some assets off the marketplace. So we have GRAPHICS for a change, yay!! I don’t know how the level is going to look with all post-process effects on (I’m only using a vignette as a post process effect now, fyi), but I’m sure as hell happy with how it looks as of now. Of course, things will get more populated as time goes. And yes, some trees are not upright (ooooh, that’s going to be a pain to fix).

Now, what makes this level challenging is 1) the low level of visibility 2) finding the markings (they won’t be hidden, but they won’t be easy to find either. 3) navigating through the forest: it will most definitely have multiple branching paths with dead ends. As such, it will be frustratingly difficult if you DON’T follow the markings.

Now, there’s a fun reason why I made the decision to make a foggy level.

Initially, I wanted it to be sunny in the level. A hot mid-day kind of vibe. But as it was painfully brought to my attention in the form of hands-on experience, baking the lighting for a level that contains a lot of trees takes literally forever. Like in 2 hours, only 5% percent of the lighting was baked. This was a real problem if I was to iterate a lot on this level. Sure, one could argue that you do not have to bake the lighting at every iteration of the level, and one would be right. But it would still take forever + 6 months to bake lighting if this is how baking the lighting behaves with only trees in the scenery: foliage would be a big pain, props would also be a pain to bake.

So, a little bit off on a tangent, that got me thinking about making photos for textures and how I need to have bad weather so that no weird shadows or anything other than flat lighting appear in the texture. And then it hit me: how about I make a level in bad weather? You know, grey clouds, almost thunderstorm skies. In that weather nothing has a shadow and it looks great, very moody. And then it hit me again: oh, how about fog and/or mist? A little bit of that fog on the trees looks absolutely amazing to me. That definitely set the mood right away. And that is how I ended up doing a foggy level.

Now, this is not the final layout of the forest because I did this as a test. Trees don’t have collision, so that is a big no-no. The path to the end of the level, while defined, I’m not really happy with it. But I’m really happy with the results and I’ll continue working on these two levels.

That about sums it up for this update, guys. See you in the next post. Buh-bye

P.S. Hope this time around I’ll post more often.

[Get_DOVAH_it]

Hi @baftis !

How’s it going? I’m just sending a friendly message out here to check on you to see how you are fairing! I hope all is well!

Please take all the time you need to post your next log. There’s absolutely zero pressure.

Wishing you well and sending positive vibes your way!

[bbennett2]

Anyy chance you are still working on this? Would be amazing with the UEVR mod