Dev Log #3 - Terrain Painting & Starting core-gameplay

Hey everyone!

A quick check-up with what I've been currently doing :)

Psst...! I also made an instagram and Tiktok account where I will be posting some shorts as well!

So... I've been working some more on the terrain. I had a bit of a "wowie, where to start?!" moment and had in-between decided to also switch more to the basic core mechanics! 

Day & Night Cycle

Super quickly done, but was quite fun to learn! HDPR is completely new to me as a pipeline (before I've done a lot of things in URP), so changing the sun was a little different from it too.

Initially, I wanted to go down the asset route, but then how would I learn more about game-dev if I were to? Plus, some things are pretty expensive for just one singular feature! 😬 I mean, if I can code, why not attempt it, right?

So that's what I did! I followed this tutorial:

Terrain Painting

I will admit, while I really loved the initial terrain (see dev log 1 & 2) from a distance, it wasn't really doing it for me closer up once being in third person. There was only 1 grass texture, and no real depth for the lakes and such I was working on...

So, I ended up grabbing some free assets by the Unity Team, as well as the Procedural Terrain Painter By Staggart creations. It's a cool thing! You can share where and what slope/height the textures need to be, noise textures, etc. It's pretty neat for something free like this!

The grass is now a more yellow-y green, but that's okay! Maybe doing some post-processing will fix things up 😉

I also added a couple of roads of where I wanted things to lead to. However, Currently if we were to start all the way on the bottom right, to the middle (by going to the top and then left), it takes about 14 minutes in real time to get there. I think it's okay... but I am also pondering that maybe in the future I should see if I should connect a second terrain to this one.

Plants plants plants

Honestly an endless battle of perfection I'm having with it lol. Initially I was thinking "I can draw! Why don't I draw grass!"...

... That's why I don't draw grass lol.

It's not bad, I agree, but currently it's not really "fitting" the game's style. I also know that currently, the post-processing basics I put on right now make it pop green even more. And it ironically does make the terrain grass a bit too yellow from what I was hoping to go for.

This is where I feel a little of a weird battle internally with what art style to go for. I know modeling wise, i'm much better with realism, but I also want something vibrant which suits the stylized artstyle better. Oh well, I'll figure it out lol.

I also have some wildflowers I was working on, but at this point I'm wondering if I should save up for a foliage asset pack I had my eyes on for a while... We'll see!

Level loading...

(see what I did there? hehe)

The dooor.... THE DOOOOOOR!.... (said every indoor cat).

I had never ever done that either, in fact... I only used Unity really for dorky ideas that weren't always games, and nothing was really any big project-y like this one. But I do have experience modding for games, so I figured... how hard could it be!

Holy crap was it hard. 

Okay, backing up a bit here. It wasn't hard-hard, but the thing is, while there are a bazillion tutorials out there on game development, I don't always know what's the best practise. So I just use my programmy C# brain, instead of C# game dev brain, to put stuff together. Which ironically worked out this time, since... singletons!

It's currently really simple, but oh my did I derp on the "DontDestroyOnLoad()" Objects... I actually thought they were being destroyed, turns out Unity puts them in a different place in the hierachy! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Spend a good hour figuring that one out...

But that's beside the point. Right now, it's... moving scenes. I just need to make sure the player does too lol.

What's next?

I REAAAAALLY want to get to building houses and structures! And so, I think I may spend a lot of time in Blender for the coming past few days, do a bit of coding too, but I will leave the world as it is currently. once I get some cool assets for that, I think I will spend some good time on that again :) So stay tuned!

As always, thanks for reading!