Howdy guys and girls, hope you are having a great day...well as great as a monday night can be, anyways. Me? Oh, I'm having some second thoughts about the layout of the tree level. And I'm spilling the beans as to why.

Recall that I've been using square platforms in a tree trunk (which is round) and we all know how square pegs fit in round holes (spoilers: they do not). For your convenience, here's and old picture to illustrate how it looks:

That is not pretty in the slightest, but it does the jobs of placeholding and fast iteration. Now, since this level is pretty much done on a layout level (pun not intended), I'd figure I'd "ennicen" the looks of the placeholders. Ennicen is not even a word, I just made it up, but it wouldn't be a far fetch from what sh*t I've heard thrown around. To ennice something is to make something nicer, I've decided :)).

Anyway, so the most reasonable thing to "ennicen" is to make the platforms fit the round shape of the tree trunk. Now, I'm by no means a 3D artist, BUUUUT... I think I know how to do it.

The outer radius of the tree is 2000 unreal units and the inner radius is 1600. Height of tree trunk is irrelevant, because I'll shrink it down to 100 unreal units to be the same size as any platform. There are 64 sides to the cylinder. With this info I can do the following:

- make a semicircle from this full circle

- take the semicircle and half that

- take the quarter-circle and half that too

- repeat process until left with decent sized platforms that can look/feel aesthetically pleasing and thematically sound.

Once those small pieces are done, I can go replace the square platforms in and around the tree. I'm super curious as to how it's going to turn out (I've barely started the work on it)

I will try this in 2 different radius thicknesses (is "thicknesses" the correct term in the context of the radius even? Genuinely asking, I'm not a native English speaker....I think it's "wide"...right? RIGHT?!?!)

So, on the left hand side we have the 100 unit radius difference between inner and outer radius (1m) and on the right hand side we have the 200 unit radius difference between inner and outer radius (2m). Now, this might be the least interesting screenshot of all time, but I assure you in the end is going to be worth it...which end? The game end, of course. When the game ends development...*sighs and daydreams about a day that is so far away it is incomprehensible*)

I will give it a shot with both thicknesses, because variation. Let's see how that goes.

Now, for the next change that I want to add: if you'd recall, there is a bridge at the top of the tree trunk. This one:

And it has great value for the gameplay experience. So I thought "why just keep that as the only one"? Just place more of them, with variations of course (bridge with full set of planks, bridge with few planks missing, bridge with half the planks missing and so on). I did not expect I would enjoy that bridge so much I'd be making it as a recurring death trap thingy.

Speaking of which, this new idea will allow me to place multiple types of death traps near and/or around the bridge. Some crushers in various orientations, some death traps like arrows, swinging axes and so on (oh yeah, I have those now). Keep in mind, if one touches you, you die.

So yeah, that's about it for today. I know I haven't been showing off with new and interesting screenshots, but it is to be expected when you post this often and about this particular subject too (replacing place holders), but this might be the beginning of a pretty looking tree level instead of the "functionally doing good-to-great, but fugly looking" level.

I'll see you guys in the next post. Bye!