Level Design Blog

 I've been wanting to go back and polish this level, as I received good feedback on most of the layout, but was told some visual pieces needed help. The main critiques were concerning the mountainous landscape I was trying to go for. The shapes I had originally crafted in the landscape caused the material to stretch in too many places, as it wasn't as natural looking as it could be. So my main goal was to go in and smooth out a lot of those areas to make the mountains look more natural, and definitely get rid of those stretched materials. I also was told the lighting was a little blown out in some areas, so I wanted to mess with the directional light a little bit. My main goal there was to make the light not be as contrasting with some areas being super bright, and others being super dark. So making a little more of a neutral feel of the lighting that could be somewhere in the late evening just before sunset. Here's a handful of screenshots of that work:

This post is a part 2 of my level, which again is an action-adventure demo focused on combat and puzzle-solving. Jumping right into the changes, I decided this may look better if the temple was down in a valley as compared to up top on a hill. This fits more thematically with the idea of it being fairly hidden ruin. So I adjusted the landscaping to make the player come down through the mountains to arrive at the entrance. I also started making a lot of changes in terms of proxy assets and started replacing them with our assets from packs, and included more foliage. I did some more set-dressing for this opening area, and had to change some ideas we had of splitting the main character and the companion based on the functionality of the AI. As seen in previous screenshots too, but after working with artists, the lighting in the level has dramatically improved. We have performed our final presentation for now for Ventures, but are hopeful to continue to pursue this and improve this as a pr...