Level Tiles

Greetings and salutations. I apologize for the late post during the week. I didn't have anything to share and I still don't. Well, I can actually talk about how I am approaching level design in Prism.

For the levels in Prism, I am taking a modular approach. What I mean is that each level will be made up of specific rooms that function as the halls and intersections of a particular level. Within those tiles, I will have specific objects randomly spawn in preset locations. These objects could be enemies or they could be treasure. The reason for making the levels modular is because it saves time in the long run without compromising quality. The original Phantasy Star Online does it; Diablo, the game it's based off of, does it; and even Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance does it. All three of those games pull off modular level design quite successfully so I will take the same approach, just hopefully with better graphics.

Now the first level I am working on is a forest level. Not a creepy forest level but a welcoming one, full daylight but under the shadows of ancient trees so the player has a chance to get familiar with the game in a mysterious, but not creepy, environment. Since it is the first level, I don't want many obstacles except for maybe simple enemies. I have already sculpted out the tiles which you can see below:

Tiles for Prism's forest level.

Each tile is fifty meters square, so they are good size. Unfortunately, because they are so large, they also have high polygon counts, each with 100,000 polygons. That is way too many polygons so I need to reduce them by quite a bit. I also need to create basic meshes for the flora and fauna. I have an idea for the lighting which I am thinking will be a yellow tone due to particles in the air like pollen and other stuff. Hence volumetric lighting or the illusion of it may be required. I will also need to see if Unreal Engine 4 supports cucoloris' so I can create the shadows of the trees on the ground. If not I can always bake them into the texture. Actually, it might be a better idea to just bake the shadows to save on render time for the game. Overall, I want the forest to seem old even though there is some technology within.

So this is what I have been working on all week. I will post more about the level in future posts, so stay tuned!