Naastika's Blog

Level 2

2009-07-14T21:25:00.001-07:00

I finally finished the first pass of the first level of my campaign. There's still lots to do, but for the most part, my gameplay is solid on this level. I started on the second level sometime last week, and it's been interesting.

I was surprised how easy it is to package up my map. I had a bunch of people download it through a lobby. I had 6 people play through my map and it was a success. There were a couple of hiccups here and there. One guy keeps complaining about it being so close quarters and he seemed to be lost all the way through the office...even though he works there. The other five people had no problems getting outside. I figure it will help once I put in lighting and props. As my testers have said, my map is challenging, but fun. I think I'm at a good stopping point.

This next level will be quite different. I now have to rely on creativity alone to work this one out. Before, it was a lot easier to just look at my surroundings and know where the zombies would burst through.

I have an idea of where the survivors will go and what they will do, but it's tricky. In the past few days I've already learned a little about how the fog volume works and affects particles, how cordons work, and soon I hope to learn about crescendo events.

Importing Textures

2009-06-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

I have a big portion of the outside of my map completed. As I was looking at it, it didn't look quite right. I wanted to have the outside be as accurate as possible, so I needed to learn how to import a Google satellite image of the area. I managed to get it in there, but I'm still unsure of why it sometimes shows up and sometimes it doesn't. Whatever, it's in now.

When I lined up all my buildings on the Google map, my level grew to 3x it's original size. Needless to say, I put it back to the way I had it. So much for Google.

I totally screwed up my map and broke the nav mesh. I've done this several times now. First it was when I was trying to get breakable ceilings to work. I tried everything I can think of to get this to work. I'm going to make it work somehow. I'll just do this later and work on gameplay first.

I managed to fix the nav mesh, so now I might just leave this level alone for now and work on the harbor level. It's going to be interesting, not to mention a crapload of work.

6-10-09

2009-06-12T15:57:00.001-07:00

So now I have windows and doors and all sorts of stuff, and my outside is really starting to come together. Its getting to be way bigger than I thought it was going to be.

But...I got tanks and witches working!

6-2-09

2009-06-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

I got a little ahead of myself here and did some stuff I probably shouldn't have. I went in and added glass windows, then boarded them up. I put in a couple of lights, and a ton of props. I also learned how to make weapons spawn in random different places.

I also made my first functional safehouse...in our kitchen.

Unfortunately through all my testing, I couldn't get a stupid tank or witch to spawn.

5-26-09

2009-06-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

At this point, I have a climbable ladder going to the roof, and the front angled windows are blocked in. I finally figured out how to get a brush working like a door. I needed working bathroom stall doors! There was a lot of door-work on this iteration. A lot of the doors needed to be removed or changed due to how many there are. Maybe some will go back in. We'll see.

I also started cutting out windows and building an outdoors area. Somehow the outside of the building just came together like its supposed to.

Started working a bit on the outside details of the building.

5-25-09

2009-06-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

So now I have gone through and detailed the rest of the top floor with new rooms and doors. I have also created a path using barricades to guide the player through the level.

5-22-09

2009-06-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

At this point I have made the entire top floor of the building, as well as the stairwells and part of the lobby. My wall connections are still dirty, but at least I had made a nav mesh and gotten to actually play through the top floor of my map...with zombies! I was so excited.

Learning Hammer

2009-06-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

5-21-09

I finally decided to learn Valve's Hammer engine. Of course the first thing I wanted to make was the SemiLogic offices. Who doesn't want zombies where they work?

This is the first iteration of the SLE map. At this time, I had a very rough layout of the top floor. Nothing real cool yet.