Forest Level Assets and Terrain

Here is a collection of all the models and assets used to build up the forest level. Using basic triangulated shapes and trying to keep an interesting silhouette to make sure the assets were visual pleasing and consistent. We also thought it would be a clever idea to keep everything as modular as possible, meaning we can re-use terrain pieces and assets to build up the levels without having to model it all completely from scratch. 

As mentioned earlier in the blog, the forest level consists of a woody environment to begin with and then moves onto forest ruins. The ruin pieces could of probably had a better colour as the grey is a little drab but was hard to find a colour that wouldn't clash or not work with the rest of the environment. 

Here are all the modular Forest level assets, most of these are repeated throughout the zone to fill out the level. I think we could of had a lot more variation in each level but as a small 3 man group i think we did alright populating each area. As we went for this visual style and low poly models, means we spent a lot less time needing to un-wrap and texture each individual piece.

Lighting and Lightmapping - Forest, Ice, Fire

Once I had started building out the levels with our terrain models I begun doing a few lighting tests in order to see which method of lighting would best suit our game. Originally we were going to use all dynamic lighting, however after running a few tests with lightmapping in Unity, we found that it gave much better results that more closely resembled the art style we were aiming for. Setting up and optimizing the game for the lightmapping process was not as simple as we had at first hoped, as several of the models were too large to fit onto our lightmap atlas and would appear pixelated during gameplay. In the end some of the larger models had to be split and our max atlas size and lightmap resolution was adjusted accordingly to give us the best possible results. Below are some screenshots of the first three sections of our level fully lit and lightmapped:

Level Assets - Forest, Ice Fire

After the terrain had been imported and Jez and Elliot had finished modelling the majority of the level assets I started to fill out our level with the newly modelled assets. Below are screenshots of the levels with the newly imported assets:

Starting Enemy AI

Once the level mechanics had been finished the next bit of scripting that I had to do was to start some sort of AI system for our enemies. The system itself will be pretty basic as our enemies are only really designed to patrol specific areas or simple stand still. The only slightly complex aspect our our enemy scripts will be the code that manages when our enemies are bugged and what that changes about our enemies.

The standard enemy uses a character controller component as it was more suitable than a rigidbody. The standard enemies will constantly move forwards in any direction that they are pointed. If they hit something or come to a ledge they will turn around and begin walking in the opposite direction. This is done by checking the current velocity of the enemy as well as using a raycast to detect the edges of platforms. In order to "kill" the enemies in our game each one has a collision box attached to their head that detects a collision only when the player is jumping down onto them. Below is a screenshot of the standard enemy in the engine and the code that manages the direction of the standard enemy:

As well as our standard enemy that remains grounded at all times, we also have a flying enemy that acts in a similar way to our standard enemy. However instead of moving forwards along the X axis, the flying enemy moves up and down along the Y axis, sort of hovering up and down. Below is a snippet of code that shows how the movement of the flying enemy is achieved:

3D Thorns

 

Official Thorns

 

 

 

This is the final model of the thorn hazard, based on the second 2D Version, Only one has been modelled as it will be a highly repeated asset. This model is in two parts, the main body and the actual spikey thorn bits, this allows us to easily change texutres and apply new ones.

Forest Level Mentalray renders.

Once i completely finished modelling the forest assets corresponding to Lukes initial sketches, i layed out roughly what the game could look like. Placing tree, bushes, rough backgrounds and other various assets to get an idea of what lighting and composition we want. Once i tweaked around with the Mentalray settings to try out different effects, this gave us a very clear idea of what lighting and overall art direction we were aiming for. 

Above was the closest to how we wanted the game to look, the colours blend nicely and nothing stands out too much. The only problem i had with mental ray was the white on top of the rolling hills, this was very hard to get rid of while preserving everything else. 

By changing the ground colour darker, this lead to this nice render of a possible night time version of the forest level. While this won't be used it was interesting to see what other themes could possibly be achieved. 

 Because of the block colours and low poly models is was very important to get this idea right, you can see below that a more over saturated look made the colours stand out way too much. While this did give a bright vibrant tone, i think we all preferred the more desaturated atmosphere in the earlier renders.

This then lead to Luke looking into how we were going to light our game, by light mapping and using light probes, we shall hopefully be able to recreate this look in Unity. 

Importing Terrain and Puzzle Assets - Forest, Ice, Fire

Once the mechanics for each level were finished I had to import and build  the first three sections of our level with the models that Jez and Elliot had made. All scripted objects were replaced with the asset counterparts and all terrain was positioned to roughly match the old grey box. After initially building the forest section I found out that the collision geometry of the original greybox did not exactly match the geometry of the newly modelled terrain. In order to ammend this I made a new set of collision geometry out of cubes in Unity, that more accurately matched the shape of our terrain. Below is a screenshot of the new collision geometry and each of the levels built: