Vilya's Workblog

Time for the final part of the phase puzzle & poison challenge - the abandoned room part of the final poison map, which we started to take a look at yesterday :)

The Finished Room!

As you can see I changed things around a bit compared to the end of the video - while I was working on the background I had hidden the bricks I made in the beginning, and totally forgot all about them! I only remembered after uploading the video, so I decided to add them to the background and move things around a bit so they'd fit in better.

Here it is, the final poison-filled map you'll venture through on your way to the final puzzle we took a look at before the weekend! Though we (hopefully by the time this post airs) already launched the new patch, I thought it would be interesting to see the WIP behind this background as well.

I've split this post in two parts, as there's a companion video featuring the creation of the semi-ruined room that will be in the lower left part of the map which I thought deserved it's own post as well.. :)

The Good Old Prototype

Sketching Away

Walls & Floor

Greenery!

Adding stuff with the editor

And the final version of the "little" cave system! Phew!

In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the new patch and help us hunt all the bugs! Please let us know what you think about the new content and how we can improve in upcoming content :3

We'll end this week with the final Phase Puzzle, and the last part of the Mount Bloom challenge!

In reality, there will be another poison map before this, but because of how they are connected it made more sense to create this one first, and so I'll write this blog post first as well :)

Prototype

Sketch

GIF of the door creation!

All the platforms in place...

Adding the puzzle BG

What's Mt Bloom without greenery?!

Adding the editor thingies...

And the final result! Man this map was tall haha!

Getting a hang of this yet? It's time for the fourth phase puzzle background! And this time around, it's the more advanced version of the one we failed at yesterday.. :)

Prototype

Sketch

Platforms

Greenery & New Props

Editor Props

Final decorations!

Let's hope this one is problem free when it gets implemented! Creating these maps are less and less time consuming, as more props get made that can be reused in various ways. For this map, the thing that took the longest was creating the little 'bridge' between the two platforms to the right. Originally in the prototype, this was a single long platform, but I thought it would spice things up a bit graphically to have two that are connected instead.

As usual, I'm thinking of spicing up the wall in the back once the rest of the backgrounds are done, but we'll see how things work out in game first! :)

I had the next Phase Puzzle background post scheduled for today's blog, but something rather silly happened that I thought would be interesting to share instead. You never know what happens next in the world of game dev! ;)

You see, sometimes, things don't go as planned. And this was the case with the background I posted yesterday. Unfortunately, when we implemented the background in the game, we realized things looked waaay off:

See what I'm talking about?

For some reason we had ignored the fact that the barrels, when they move, pass underneath the user interface, which then blocks your vision in an annoying way (it totally blocks the door you're supposed to reach as well)! If we were to fix this by simply moving the camera up, then you wouldn't see the lower platform instead, so... Time for me to remake the background a bit :D

After some measuring, Teddy gave me new dimensions to work with. Basically, the entire map had to become smaller, both in height and width. No problem!

Things like this happen occasionally, and there's not much you can do other than fix the problem and move on. Luckily for me, resizing a map like this isn't particularly difficult! Basically I just have to move some layers around in Photoshop a bit and repaint any seams that look weird in doing so.

After about 15 minutes work, the map has been resized properly:

And now things look waaaay better in-game, wouldn't you agree?

Now, onward to the next background! :)

Next background up: the first "donkey" puzzle, where you'll get to know the puzzle blocks with arrows!

Prototype

Sketching~

Adding some walls!

Platforms & Edges

Doors, railing, screens... :)

Greenery and props added with our editor!

Finally: Decorative flowers & mushrooms :)

This map might look a bit big and empty right now, but there's gonna be a lot of puzzle blocks floating around as well! After all the backgrounds are done, I wanna add holes to the wall and put random decorations in there as well :)