It's Friday and I spent my time focused on level design and the look and feel of the game world. I started by checking out the Gothic Megapack from Meshingun Studio, and I was not disappointed. This is a high quality AAA style asset pack and includes a few essential tools like spline-based railing and pathway systems and a breathtaking sample environment. The system is plugin-based and includes tools for level editing that I am quite excited about. I love the art style and overall feel of their work and will base my art style on a similar theme. I truly appreciate the developers that spent over 6 months working on such a great asset and releasing it for use on the Unreal Marketplace. Thank you!
Here's a couple shots of the playing the game in the demo level provided:
I adjusted the mana ball to be a deeper blue and have more purple glow and influence. I think it stands out more as a primary attribute now. Performance felt best at the "High" quality setting, which essentially is similar to the "Epic" setting but reduces the canvas resolution from 100% to around 80%. This helps to reduce the pixels displayed and eases the performance pressure applied by pixel-wise operations. Balance between frame quality and frames per second smoothness is key here.
I also spent time learning more about the Unreal LOD system and how it operates. It uses size-on-screen to determine the LOD to display, which is a great approach but has some subtle trade-offs. For instance, you must determine the custom LOD display range between each LOD and if not properly calibrated this can cause jarring "pops" in your assets while your travel your map. This is particularly noticeable on instanced foliage. I will dive deeper this weekend to determine how to properly use this system and keep it performant.
I then transitioned to thinking about what I will work on this weekend. I think it will be focused around hooking up more of the user interface to the attributes and inventory systems. I've also been researching modular character workflows for a potential character creator. Then I'll likely checkout a save system, and I hear that EMS is a quality option.
There are so many things that go into making a game and I am really enjoying dissecting each component, determining if I want that type of mechanic in my game, and learning more about the techniques and approaches that excite me as a gamer. I'd love to create an MMO that has compelling content that doesn't just feel like a clone of other popular games in the genre. This is a challenging topic and will certainly require some iteration. This is the process I most look forward to, as it allows me to learn the most and step outside of my familiar territory. This is the trench in which we as game developers and creatives earn the best experience!
Lastly, I spent a bit of time using Juggernaut to brew up some castle concepts. I was not a huge fan of the results but it was a fun experiment to inform what I might like (and ultimately do not like) about the AI generated content pipeline's results.
A productive day at work and a great game development session tonight. A Friday worthy of a weekend break! I will surely work more on the game tomorrow and with that extra time hopefully I can make some decent progress.
Cheers,
Vinny
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