30 October 2024: Working on level 4.
Each New Level Should Be Unique and Memorable. After all, who wants to play through similar levels repeatedly?
However, we soon found that our map editor wasn’t quite ready to handle this level of variety. We’ve had a few ideas, but they all seem to bump up against the limitations of the editor.
Idea One: Creating a grocery store
Our first idea was to create a store level. I’ve already purchased an asset pack for it (drawing everything myself would be unrealistic, and hiring a 3D artist is very expensive).
The plan is to break down all the store elements into separate objects and import them into the map editor, so we can place tables, shelves, and counters directly within the level.The real issue, however, came from an unexpected place—walls and roofs. We can’t simply take a brick house with a tiled roof, place a cashdesk, scattered fruit, and tipped-over shelves, and call it a store. A store needs to look like a store, not a residential house. At a minimum, it needs different wall textures and a flat roof.
This means we’d need duplicates of every type of tile in the editor: a "house wall" and a "store wall," a "house window" and a "store window," and so on. But that feels clunky—there has to be a better solution.
Idea Two: Customizable Wall Textures.
Currently, all houses look the same and are approximately the same size. Even if their interiors differ, from the outside, they all look like identical houses! Texture swapping might be the answer.
Each house is built from a set of square tiles: door, window, wall, corner wall, etc. Each tile is essentially a pre-made object. Rather than creating separate objects for "brick wall," "concrete wall," and "wooden wall" in the editor, we could add a texture selection feature. Then, when a wall object loads, we could swap its default texture for brick, concrete, wood, or whatever fits the scene. This way, we’d only need one wall object in the editor but with endless texture possibilities!
Idea Three: different building shapes
Right now, the editor doesn’t allow for buildings with unique shapes, like cornered buildings. However, creating long, stretched-out buildings that differ visually from square ones would be relatively easy.
Idea Four: Adding Multiple Floors
We’ve needed additional floors for a while now! With multiple floors, we can ditch the awkwardly shaped tiled roof, with its sloped edges and flat middle, and build proper roofs using individual elements: fully sloped, flat, or even castle-like towers!
Adding floors and selecting wall textures would also be an ideal solution for the store building: standard walls could be retextured as needed, and an extra floor could be added to allow for the high ceilings typical of a store. A third “floor” could even serve as a flat roof.
Now, all that’s left is to bring it all to life…
