Hey, all. I wanted to start off this post by wishing you a Happy New Year and may all your endeavors come to fruition. And I also hope you guys had a great holiday.

I know I did, but sadly, the holiday season is over. Which means that now it's time to get back into the thick of things. And back into the thick of things I went.

Today I continued work on level design. Since I did enjoy my holidays and don't want to get back to working on the game aggressively, I felt that I should be continuing what I had done prior the break. Ease your way back in to work, guys, don't go full gung-ho on it.

Here's how the level looks now:

NOTE: The arrow shows the entrance to the level. The screenshots where the player character is present show the entrance.

So up until now, I've made 2 levels with modular pieces that serve as "cave" levels. For the player, it provides a break in pace, mood and feel. It also provides contrast: up until now, you had big, lush and wide open spaces and now you have tight, but expansive passageways. For me as the developer, it provides a showcase for level design and (hopefully) in 3D modelling. But what's more important, for the project It means a breather when it comes to assets population. This would allow the project to "throw out" any previous areas.

So I figured it's time to both "do the same old song and dance" (doing a cave level) and mix things up just a tiny bit (it's not actually a cave level). And I present to you... the mines.

What you see before you is (hopefully) a showcase of "restricted use of modules". I only used 4 different modules out of a total of 9 in the construction of this level: the L shape, the T shape, the square shape and the + shape. There are one-offs of the octagon shape and of the C-shape because of necessity, but that is pretty much it.

What is not "pretty much it" is the level itself. What you see here is about half of the level. And I'm beginning to think these levels are getting out of control, dimension-wise. For the 4th and final cave level, I'll have to restrain myself and not make the level so big. Big does not always mean good, design-wise.

Speaking of "design wise", the mines feel pretty disorienting, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it challenges your sense of space and orientation and it's bad because if you (as a player) generally lack a sense of space and orientation, it has a lot of potential to be a frustrating experience. Then again, it's just the empty layout with no gameplay to speak of...that comes later. Even so, precautions must be taken when set dressing and making the puzzles for this level. I'll simply have stripe decals of varying colors on the walls to guide the player, for now. Maybe these will evolve into something different, but having decals...it's a start.

All in all, 2022 started great for the project. Tomorrow I'll tackle some cloud materials and a monkey bar mechanic.

That's all I have for today. See ya in the next post. Bye.