Dev Blog #3: Implementation
Sprints 4 & 5 2/06/20 - 2/20/20
During these last two sprints sof development team the Camera Shy team has really dove into the hands on development of the game. Over this period of time new systems and mechanics have begun to be implemented as well as the re-working and improvement of existing ones. For the past two weeks I have been working on the physical implementation of the new version of the Kitchen into the project.
With this basic room I went ahead and populated it, again based on the listed locations of items in my LDD. After population there was a period of room geometry changes and tweaks, a phase that lasted the entire 2 weeks. To make changes either myself or an artist would enter Maya, make the desires changes, and then re-import the mesh into Unity. The eventual result saw some deviation from the original LDD but no drastic changes were made.
New Kitchen Screenshots
Old Kitchen Screenshots
These past two sprints also included the creation of a Kitchen variant to be shown off at PAX East. Booth constraints do not allow Camera Shy access to a 10x10 space and so a new, 8x8, level was created. To do this I moved the artists’ geometry mesh into Maya and cut the room up to fit in the space properly. I think rearranged large environmental props in the scene accordingly.
In addition to level designer I have also adopted something of a lighting artist role. I don’t claim to be any kind of light or environment artist but the art team had enough work already and I had some previous experience with lighting in Unity already. Since I was already in-editor making changes to the level scenes often anyway the team decided it makes the most sense for me to just incorporate lighting along with all the other level assets.
The Kitchen level was the first level I contributed to during my time on the Camera Shy team. This level was a re-imagining of a demo level created by the team in the previous semester, before I joined. With the new version of the Kitchen myself and the art team wanted to push the whimsical, unrealistic qualities of the room. We also wished to sell the space more as a small kitchen. What became of this was the impossibly tall ceiling, color palette change, long “hallway” wall, and new or re-made props.
