CAGD 495

The Dreaming Lake Sprint 6

    My name is Matthew Montalvo and I am one of the Level Designers for The Dreaming Lake. My job this sprint was to pass over half of the map to correct any mistakes that were present, add landmarks to Quadrant 4, and then add a proper border to Quadrants 1 and 4. For the sprint recap, I got 5 cards done, with 2 cards left for a total of 7 points out of 9 points total. Now, I'll break down all of the work I got done this time around.

    The first thing I tackled this sprint was the composition pass of Quadrant 4. This specific pass over the Quadrant is for me to create interesting spots where the player would be interested in taking screenshots.

     As far as specific areas in Quadrant 4 to place these spots, I felt that these 4 spots were spread out enough in the Quadrant for the player without the spots feeling too close together. There are 5 spots circled on the image, but the 2 spots circled on the left are for the same area.

    The first spot I did was the next to the rockslide are on the right side of the image of circled places. This spot is highlighting an interesting man-made tree formation, I showed this formation from multiple angles as the photos help express the spot.

    The second spot I did is on the far right side of the image of circled places. This spot is highlighting an area that has experienced rockslides, the ground is covered in rocks and boulders that are in the ground, and boulders that are on the cliff face. 

    The third spot I did is on top of the image of circled places. This spot spoke to me when I was searching for spots to make compositions out of, it had a fantastic view that I had to take advantage of. The spot itself is highlighting a lookout view as it can see multiple really cool views from that one spot alone.

    The fourth spot I did is the far left circled spot on the image of circled places. This spot specifically had the tree in the middle of the area, you can especially see it in the bottom image. I thought the spot overall was pretty mysterious, and I felt that adding more trees and bushes would allow the spot to be more inviting. 

    The next task I was assigned with doing was to check Quadrant 4 for floating objects and exposed holes. I decided against doing a quick sweep of objects as I felt I could still easily overlook floating objects by mistake. I actually went through every single area and every group to preview every single object so that I could ensure none of them were floating or showing holes during gameplay. 

    After that task I was assigned with doing a similar check of Quadrant 1 where I looked for floating objects and exposed holes. I had to perform a different process compared to Quadrant 4 as Quadrant 1's hierarchy was not organized. Instead of checking every area for object groups, I had to check every tree in the Quadrant first, then every single bush, etc... I made sure that no objects in that Quadrant were floating or had holes showing as I checked everything.

    Now, normally I would have images in each section because that can then prove the work I have done. I made the mistake though of not taking a few pictures during the clean up passes for these Quadrants. Apologies as currently there is no point in me showing pictures of complete Quadrants as it's just going to be a normal picture.

    The next task I got assigned was to create a world border around Quadrant 1 so that players could not just look out of Quadrant 1 and see the edge of the world leading into a void. I gathered reference images and got to work.

    These images above are the only spots I could find in the map where you could see past the tree border of Quadrant 1. Those spots are the highest lookout point in the map, and then the watch tower right next to the Quadrant 1 border. I felt as though I could clearly see the void from both of these locations, with that in mind I needed to raise the land up more than it already is to attract the players eye.

    The first image is what I came up with for the world border of Quadrant 1, the other two images are what the world border now looks like from the reference positions I posted above. The process overall was tricky to get the right mountain feel while also having enough height to hide the edge of the map, but I feel I hit a good balance.

    The next task I got assigned was to create the world border for Quadrant 4 to hide the edge of the map from the player. Like Quadrant 1, I gathered some reference images so that I can get a before and after of what the player can see from multiple vantage points.

     These images above were the main spots that I could see the Quadrant 4 border. There is one other spot that could see the Quadrant 4 border, but I didn't get a picture of it before I started working on that terrain.

    The top image of these four is the overview in the editor of the Quadrant 4 border, this Quadrant border proved a bit more challenging for me to create compared to the Quadrant 1 border. The main reason is that the player had a few ways to see a large majority of this border from up close. The other main reason is that I had to weave a road into the Quadrant border. If the road went straight then the player would see a small part of the abyss of the map. The second and third images are showing what the new world border looks like from the reference images above. The last image is another close up angle of what the border looks like in play mode.

    That was all of the work I was able to accomplish this sprint, as far as the work I have left for the sprint. I have 1 card in progress, and then 1 card in assigned. The in progress card is a Detail Pass of Quadrant 1, and the assigned card is a Detail Pass of Quadrant 4. I am happy with the work I got done this sprint as I added some more landmarks in Quadrant 4 for players to interact with. I carefully checked every object in both Quadrants 1 and 4 for floating objects and objects that were showing holes. I then added borders to both Quadrants 1 and 4 to make the player feel like they are in a world, and not just a floating island in the abyss. 

    I can't wait to see what the other level designer comes up with for the remaining 2 borders, those will be added in the final sprint. The end of this project came a lot faster than other projects I have worked on. I would like to thank my awesome group members for making this project a blast to work on throughout the semester. I am very glad that I got to collaborate on a project of this scale, the game evolved several times over the semester, from an exploration pass to a beauty pass. This will be my final blog post for The Dreaming Lake, but I highly recommend checking out the project when it releases on Tuesday May 10th, 2022 on The Dreaming Lake's itch.io page, see you all then.

The Dreaming Lake Sprint 5

    My name is Matthew Montalvo and I am one of the Level Designers for The Dreaming Lake. My job this sprint was to pass over half of the map in detail to make sure that half was interesting for the player to explore. My job was also to prevent the player from getting stuck anywhere with my barriers, but also to prevent the player from getting out of the map from this half. For the sprint recap, I got all but one card done this time around for a total of 8 points. Now, let me break down what I got done this time around.

    The first thing I tackled this sprint was the detail pass of Quadrant 4 (Will be using the term Quadrant to refer to Quarters of the map from now on). This card was to fix anything I saw that was wrong in the quadrant at the time I got the card. For this version of the card, I found 7 things wrong in the quadrant that I went ahead and fixed.

    The first major thing I did during this card was organize the hierarchy in Unity. We had a running problem throughout the project so far where the other level designer and myself were just grouping by prop. This meant that we had a tree group with over 200 items in there, this is an issue and I looked for a solution. My new solution was to make dedicated areas of props around the quadrant, in the image Area 1 is highlighted which means that all props and groups in Area 1 are highlighted. In Area 1 I also put smaller groups for the trees, rocks, and boulders of that particular area so that we have even more organization. Now we should not have anymore organization issues in Quadrant 4 for the rest of the project as every object has a place.

     The next thing I did during the card was build the fence that borders this cliff. When I started working in this quadrant the fence was started, but none of the middle posts were placed, so I slowly built the fence and moved the middle posts of the fence to the planks as the position was always off. The only problem I ran into with this was having to slight scale a few of the planks to fit a middle post when the space between middle posts would fit another set of planks.

    After finishing up that fence, I built another fence by the watch tower so that players don't rush to the edge. This fence wasn't already partially built, so this one was made from scratch. I had no issues with this card as it was straightforward.

    Then I saw that the watch tower area was pretty empty, so I decided to add trees and rocks to the area to try and give a little more life to the place. I also moved the watch tower itself back as it was right on the edge of the hill which felt a bit too close to be normal.

    I noticed when looking around the quadrant that this hill on the left of the image was completely baron, so I placed some trees and rocks on it to populate the area.

    This particular area in the quadrant also had no trees, sometimes areas with no trees are fine as stated by my lead. This advice is correct in most cases, but I felt since this area was more of a dead end that it made sense to put some trees and rocks in.

    When working on Quadrant 4, I noticed an area that looked like an alternate path of sorts. I asked and found out it was an alternate path, but it was meant to be covered in rocks. I followed that advice and covered the area in rocks, boulders, and bushes.

    The next card I worked on was to put colliders in Quadrant 4. The goal of this card is for me to put colliders in the quadrant so that the player cannot get out of the map, but they also cannot get stuck. The colliders are placed in any area where the player can't reasonably jump down it without breaking a leg or dying. This card was already started, but was then handed off to me as I took over the quadrant from the other level designer. However, most of the colliders were backwards, and the ones that were correct had spots where the player could get stuck. The established progress on the card did not matter as I did everything over again for safety.

    The top image is all of the colliders that were added for this card. The bottom image is the first collider, this was the outside border. This went all the way to Quadrant 3 and had no issues that I came across. This was because there were almost no spots where the player could get out of the map in this quadrant. The spots the player could get out were blocked by a fence that they cannot jump over.

    The top image is the other collider for the watch tower area, the player got stuck a few times which called for adjustments. The bottom image is for the collider around the fence on the cliff, that one had no problems when testing.

    These three colliders all had no issues when I placed them, these are apart of the ridge with the alternate rocky path. Also, I make the colliders so tall so that players cannot somehow bug their way over them. Currently there is a bug where the player can climb walls, so technically making the colliders this high should do nothing. However, I figure when the bug is fixed then there should be no way players escape these barriers.

    The top image is the other side of that ridge from the previous 3 colliders. The middle image is ridge right below the watch tower area, this section was really long which is why some of the collider is invisible. The bottom image is right below the middle image, this collider also had no issues.

    The final collider I added was almost at ground level, and I only added it for some of this raised land as the player could realistically jump down the part that is not covered. I ran into a few places where the player got stuck, but that was fixed pretty quickly.

    The next card I worked on was painting the Quadrant 4 terrain with grass and other materials. This was originally supposed to be in the Detail Pass card that I was assigned, but this slipped my mind and my leads did not mention this task until after the card was already completed. Since the card was completed I asked for another card so I could go back and paint it.

    This is the top down overview of Quadrant 4 with the terrain painted. This task was not challenging, but it was time consuming as you have to get the ground to look good and not rushed.

    For a closer look on a few spots, I mixed multiple materials together to create a blended grass look. In this example I mixed 3 different kinds of dirt materials, and the threw a rock material in the mix to then get lightly brushed over with grass.

    The next card I worked on was the detail pass of Quadrant 3. This was a pass of everything I thought was wrong or needed fixing in the quadrant. For this card I found 5 major things that needed fixing throughout the quadrant.

    The first two spots that I touched up in this quadrant were just spots that I felt needed rocks and trees. The top image I felt like there needed to be more rocks near the lakefront, so I added those along with a few trees and bushes. The bottom image had nothing in the middle of that area, so I added some trees but kept it light as I thought that area needed to be a bit open.

    Both of these images are from the same area of Quadrant 3, there was a big strip of land that was empty. I filled this straight portion of land with trees, bushes, and leaves to liven up the area. Also for the top image I added a big boulder pile as there were no boulders in the area.

    For the top image I implemented the same organization system into Quadrant 3 that I used in Quadrant 4. I figured that I should quickly get this system of organization into the project so that we can take advantage of it as soon as possible. The bottom image is a top-down shot of Quadrant 3 with the painted terrain. I painted the terrain in the same method that I did for Quadrant 4, I mixed material layers to add depth to the ground.

   The next card I tackled was the colliders of Quadrant 3. I had to prevent the player from escaping the map, but also just prevent that player from falling high distances. I did this card last sprint, so this was basically done besides a few extra colliders that I will go over.  

The top image is the collider that surrounds the entire lake in the middle of the map. I adjusted the border that was in Quadrant 3 to allow the player to not get stuck. On the bottom image is the collider on the raised side of the quadrant. I noticed that players could sort of walk up the hill a bit and with enough effort could walk through a collider and then try to go back and get blocked. To prevent this from happening I made this collider double sided to avoid that problem all together.

    The top image is a slight adjustment so that the Quadrant 3 collider meets up correctly with the Quadrant 4 collider. This is so that the player can't slip in between these colliders an walk on the outside of the map. The bottom image is all of the colliders for Quadrant 3 highlighted, this does no include the lake collider that I showed above.

    The final card that I worked on this sprint was a composition pass of Quadrant 3. What this meant was I needed to look for areas, add objects to them and set them up to frame a shot with. This card was tricky for me as I was unsure what I was going to do until I was walking around the quadrant. For this card I came up with 4 spots though.

    

    This is a final version of the Quadrant 3 overview, I circled all 4 spots I worked on for the composition pass. I was thinking of spreading them out a bit more, but I felt they were right in the moment so I kept these spots.

    The first spot that I did was in the middle portion of the quadrant, I noticed that a memory involving a circle was there. This memory prompted me to try creating a crop circle of rocks, I really like how this one turned out. Top image is an aerial while the bottom image is gameplay.

    The second spot that I did was over in the top left corner of the quadrant (according to the top down image). My original goal was to create a circle of trees that had an opening in the middle for a potential stargazing memory spot. I instead opted for an obelisk like pillar surrounded by trees so that the player is attracted to the mystery of the spot. I raised the terrain in this area so that the player would look towards that first, otherwise nothing bright is screaming at the player to look in that direction.

    The third spot that I did was on the right side of the crop circle that I made. My plan was to take those towers of rocks that you see and make an interesting location out of them. I created a boulder tower to mimic the rock towers, I wanted the location to be an eye catcher. I specifically put a rock tower on the trail so that the player will turn and look in that direction, then they will see the rock structure and be drawn towards it.

    The fourth spot that I did was right below the crop circle. I had already established boulder piles there from a previous sprint, but I wanted to make cliff boulder formations so those boulder piles made sense. I also used some trees to frame a good shot that players can look at when walking by.

    That was everything that I got done this sprint, as far as work that I have left, I have 1 card. This card is to do a composition pass of Quadrant 4. I am overall very happy with the progress I made this sprint, half of the map got a quality of life improvement with the hierarchy cleanup and detail passes. I also painted the terrain in Quadrants 3 and 4 and now they look so much better than what they were. The collider updates seem solid from testing, and I really like the spots I created for the composition pass. It's crazy to see how far this game has come in just a few short months, 2 sprints are left and I'm ready to finish strong. I'll talk with you all again in the next sprint blog. 

The Dreaming Lake Sprint 4

    My name is Matthew Montalvo and I am one of the Level Designers for The Dreaming Lake. My job this sprint was to add trees and rocks to the third quarter of the map, along with going back to the second quarter of the map to adjust what was already there, then I added a border to the first quarter of the map to prevent players from escaping, and finally I created colliders in the third quarter of the map to prevent players from getting to places that they should not be. Despite this sprint being shorter than the others, not counting spring break. I actually got all of the work done before the sprint ended, though I did cut it a little close. As far as points go I was able to complete 8 this time around, so that has become an average for me.

    My first task of the sprint was to add trees and rocks to the third quarter of the map. The base terrain of that area is already established from last sprint and I was attempting my usual method of placing trees. 

       That was my main problem though, placing trees the way I have been instead of trying a new method of placing trees. After placing trees wrong for the beginning stages of the project, my lead pointed out to me that the trees should be more spread out than they already are. With that advice I placed trees in a more spread out fashion. This method actually proved to have pretty good results based off the pictures above. I was also told to place boulders just in the forest, that advice confused me, but after trying it I realized that the boulders there actually look pretty good and natural.

     My next task was for me to go back and do a pass over of the second quarter of the map. A pass over of an area basically meant that if I saw anything wrong then that was my assignment to fix it. I ended up finding seven major things that I felt needed fixing in order for this card to be considered complete.

    The first half of the map did not contain the pink trees before this task, instead that half only contained the orange trees in the second image. The main problem with replacing some of these trees is that the trees already there looked like an orchard and not a forest. If I just replaced trees and did nothing else, then that would not solve the issue of the area looking like an orchard. So I took it nice and slow and deleted trees that were too close together, then moved and placed trees to try a different approach to a natural look. I'm not completely sure if I achieved that look yet honestly, but it is certainly better than the orchard that it was before.

    

    The next thing I tackled was making the pathway outlined in red easier to walk up and also look more noticeable. Getting the path to be easier to walk on was not super difficult, but the hard part was getting the path to be more noticeable in game. I tried to add pink trees that were going up the hill to make that pathway more noticeable, I do not think it really worked that well but the pathway is more noticeable than it was before. The path itself is not glaringly obvious, but you can tell if you look at it that it is some sort of path.

   

    This one was very straight-forward, the bushes on this hill were all floating due to terrain changes getting conflicted. To make sure we do not have people seeing that during playtests, I moved all of the bushes into the hill.

    In general on the ridge there are these rock trails all along the ground for a sort of decoration. However, the player quite often gets their movement stopped from these rocks, to get up the hill shown in the photo you have to move left and right with your character to avoid all of the little bumps. I fixed all of the ones that I knew of in the area so that players will have an easier time walking around that area.

    My lead wanted a barrier along some of the alternate pathway up to the ridge. I put this barrier in and playtested it to prevent the player from getting stuck between the barrier and the pathway.

    Currently in our builds, the river is pretty steep which influences player behavior. Players tend to walk onto the river and then have difficulties getting onto the other side of the river due to the steep incline of the surface. To fix this problem I made a riverbed or a flattened piece of land on either side of the river. This allows the player to walk alongside the river instead of on it. However, if they walk on the river, then they will have an easier time getting onto land as there is another flat piece of land waiting for them.

    The final thing I did was add rock piles around as these were not in the original forest, and as I learned from the previous task that the boulder piles actually look decent with trees near them. I took advantage of this and placed many of these around this part of the map.

    My next task was to add a border to the first quarter of the map so that players would not be able to get out of bounds. I also needed to add trees past the border as to sell an illusion of more stuff being out there. 

    I broke up this task into two halves as I figured it would be easier to keep track of the work. The first half was harder to place the border down, but easier to place the trees down. I put rock formations on the left and right sides of the fence to prevent players from getting out. I quickly found out that players could get out despite the rocks being there, you are able to hug the rocks with your player and get over the fence. After finding that out I placed an invisible wall slightly behind the fence so that the player would always be blocked from getting over.

     This half was easier to place the border down, but harder to setup the trees properly. I realized that the terrain was really smooth on the right side of the image, so I had to extend the invisible wall way further than this barrier to prevent players from getting over that fence. 

    The final task I did for this sprint was creating colliders for the third quarter of the map. These were different than the border as these were meant to specifically block the player from going to certain areas of the map and not specifically past a fence.

    I specifically with this task spent time looking for areas that seemed like problems. One area was the fallen tree bridge to the center island, along with the center island itself. I can only imagine the frustration of the player when they try to cross the bridge and fall off, there is only one way to the center island which can cause frustration in the future. For the moment I put colliders on the fallen tree bridge and the center island. I also put a collider on the road that surrounds that part of the map, then I put a collider around the mountain so that players stay away from areas that can get them stuck.

    The tasks that I was unable to get to this sprint currently is one thing. I was supposed to do the border for the fourth quarter of the map, but the other level designer was working on that portion of the map. This means that I am blocked, but instead of leaving that card with me, my leads moved that card over to the other level designer and gave me the last task that I talked about above. Other than that I have nothing in my backlog or assigned, so I am going to ask for new cards when my leads get a free moment.  

    Despite only getting four tasks done this sprint on the task list, the card for the pass over of the second quarter of the map felt like two tasks combined into one. So, even with less total tasks completed I still felt like I was getting around the same amount of total work done this sprint. I need to find time over the next sprint to replicate another sprint 3 workload as that was my best sprint by a decent margin. I am still excited for the progress of this game as it has drastically changed visually since the last sprint which is really cool. That was my contribution to the game this time around and I am excited to continue hammering away at this project over the next 2 week cycle, see you next sprint.

The Dreaming Lake Sprint 3

    My name is Matthew Montalvo and I am one of the Level Designers for The Dreaming Lake. My job this sprint was to create the terrain for the second half of the map, then detail pass over the first half to correct mistakes that might have shown up, and finally I was to place trees and rocks in the second half of the map. I ended up getting a majority of this work finished before the sprint ended, I was delayed on finishing a task for a bit, but that was my own fault as my time management was not the greatest these past 2 weeks. In the end there were a few leftover tasks that I could not reach but I am actually happy with my performance this time around. I will now talk about what work I completed this sprint.

    My first task this sprint was to create a blockout terrain for the third quarter of the map. I was expected to use the already established annotated map for the third quarter of the map. This terrain did not take me too long to create as this quarter of the map had the least amount of elevation.

    The only real issues that I came across when creating this terrain was the elevated land island towards the center of the map. The map was not fully labeled on the legend, so I mistook that piece of land as a pond and started sculpting a detailed pond. I mentioned the pond in class and was told there was no pond, so I had to erase the work I had done and start that area over again. 

    This quarter I thought was going to be a bit more dynamic, but in the end was pretty simply due to the annotated map being so light one elevation changes.

    The next task I worked on was adding some more detail to the first quarter of the map. I was confused on how I was going to approach this card as not much detail was given on what they wanted which meant that I had the freedom to do anything. 

    With that freedom I decided to add more pathways up to certain areas of the quarter as these areas were not obvious on how to get up, or just had one singular way up. Other changes I made to the quarter are just smaller terrain fixes to make certain areas easier to climb. This task was pretty interesting as it was very open, and I figured out an interesting way to improve the quarter.

    The next task I did was create a blockout of the terrain for the fourth quarter of the map. This was also based off an annotated map.

 This map was much more detailed on terrain than the third quarter's map, this ultimately had me spending more time making sure that this terrain was good. 

    This terrain was actually pretty fun to make as the landscape was so diverse, but it was trial and error with the pond in the middle. Overall I didn't really have problems with this card, it just took time to complete because of the detail of this quarter of the map.

    The next task I did was to place trees and rocks in the fourth quarter of the map. This card was delayed for a bit before I started working on it. My lead only wanted some portions of the quarter to be filled with trees as some parts of the quarter are going to change. 

    

    I was not used to placing the pink trees with the regular trees, and I was also trying to avoid the orchard look again that I originally achieved in the first two quarters of the map. I got a tip from my lead to angle the trees in different directions along with messing with their scale, this really helped it have a more natural look. Other than avoiding another orchard situation, the card didn't have any other problems besides the delay I had in getting to it.

    The final task I was able to complete this sprint was an observation of two playtesters with written notes for the team. 

    I tried to record every action they did as this helps the people reading the notes to understand what happened in the playtest. This task was going to be finished in the library on Tuesday, but we found no playtesters. I got an artists opinion on the game as this game is trying to achieve an artistic look and he can give proper feedback on how to proceed to getting that look.

    The tasks I was not able to get to this sprint was surprisingly not as many as last time. I am currently placing trees and rocks in the third quarter of the map. Then I need to do a second look over the second quarter of the map. Other than that I got everything else done that was assigned to me, I got the most points done this sprint that I did in the other two totaling at 11 this time. I am happy with my performance this sprint, but I still do need to fix the delay that I had during the sprint as that prevented me from getting more work done.

    I feel like I'm almost in rhythm on task completion during sprints which gets me excited, I pulled myself up from the first two sprints and I'm ready to continue moving forward at the pace of this sprint. The third and fourth quarters look pretty cool with objects in them and I am excited to continue more work on them to create a pretty cool exploration game, see you next sprint. 

The Dreaming Lake Sprint 2

    My name is Matthew Montalvo and I am one of the Level Designers for The Dreaming Lake game. My job this sprint was to fill the first half of the map with objects so that the player is not wandering an empty landscape aimlessly. I have not had much experience with rough blockouts, so when my leads asked me for a task to be rough looking, I personally struggled as I tried to make everything look good. Because of that mentality towards my rough blockouts, I ended up having a rocky start this sprint. I was able to recover though, but I was only able to get one more task done compared to last sprint. This was due to me trying to be perfect on a rough. My fault completely as I did not fully understand what they wanted for a rough, and ended up spending more time than I needed which caused cards to not get complete. I will now break down what I completed this sprint.

    My first task this sprint was to create unique objects and land features for the first quarter of the map. What this card says is that I needed to adjust the terrain to fit these landmark locations, and I created placeholder meshes using probuilder, then I placed them in their proper spots on the map. I have not used probuilder in a few years, but I picked it back up fairly quickly. Probuilder models that I threw together were a Dock, Shack, Cabin, and a Bridge. These models were not that detailed as I was going for an idea and not an actual full mesh.

    This quarter of the map was based off the annotated map above that I made in sprint 1. All of the probuilder meshes were made to look simple as these were placeholders for when the real models made their way into the game. For the moment though, they are simple and they take up space so that the map looks somewhat filled.

    The second task assigned to me was to place trees and rocks across the first quarter of the map. This task was meant to be a quick arrangement of trees across the 1st quarter of map, nothing too in detail. However, I made a mistake and decided to arrange the trees off of my annotated map of the map. This led to me adding dirt trails and ensure that none of the trees crossed into the trail, but also that no spots are left empty of trees. 

    This is what the first quarter of the map looked like with trees in the proper spots, I made sure to stick to the orange dirt trails so that the pathways are clear to walk. This card was originally meant for the entire map, but because of how detailed I was being with each quarter the card was split up into quarters. 

    The next task that I worked on was placing trees and rocks for the second quarter of the map. This is the same task as the last task assigned to me, so I approached it the same despite the process taking so long. The result I ended up with similar to the first quarter of the map.

   This quarter of the map was based off of my other level designer's annotated map, this gave me a good idea of how I was laying out the trees for this quarter of the map.

    This annotated map was not drawn in the way that the terrain was currently designed, so after asking my lead he say to not design the map based solely off the annotated as things change. So, I mostly used this annotated map for the tree placement and open spots across this quarter of the map.

    The next task I was given was to adjust the terrain and add landmark locations to the map based off the approved location list. My lead wanted these specific models made in probuilder, but exported so that the 3D Artists can just make the polished version. Models that I was tasked with making was a Waterfall, RV, Picnic Table, and Tree House. My lead heavily stressed that the RV model be rough as this is going to another person to make it better.

    These models were pretty fun to make, I took reference and gave them a shot. I believe they came out pretty good, I was really happy with the RV, despite it being a little rough.

    The next task I was assigned was to place fences along ridges so that some areas are guarded. I was working with a modular fence, I was not expecting it to be in pieces but that just meant more freedom to me when placing these. I finished the fences in the first quarter of the map, I am planning to revisit this fence placing card when this card appears for the second quarter of the map.

    The final task I was able to complete before the sprint ended was taking notes and observing the playtesters of the first electronic prototype build. There was not much to this card, I went out with my lead to the library to find playtesters and we both observed and took notes that would help the future of this project.

    I took notes specifically on how the entire playtest went in terms of order of events, along with my specific reactions to what I observed, despite us only finding one playtester, the data we gathered from them was extremely valuable as he was in the games target audience.

    The task I am currently working on is making probuilder assets for the third quarter of the map, but I also need to make the terrain at the same time before I can make these assets. 

    

    The tasks that I was assigned but was never able to start were "Second Pass Sculpt over quadrant 1" "Second Pass Sculpt over quadrant 2" "Trees and Rocks placed in quadrant 3" "Trees and Rocks placed in quadrant 4" and "Probuilder assets to mark locations in quadrant 4"

    That many tasks still not started looks bad, I agree. During the sprint I was given more work on top of what I already had throughout the sprint despite being nowhere close to finishing my current tasks. I also asked my leads to shift the priority of my cards as the order I was doing things would not make sense when designing the level. I understand though that 8 points is not enough for a sprint, my original goal was 10-11 points. 

    I still have a bit to go, and I am hoping that I can pull something together in the next sprint as I should be getting into a rhythm now. I am very happy with how the map looks so far though, it has made great progress since the last sprint. I am looking forward to getting more work done next sprint.

 

The Dreaming Lake Sprint 1

    Hello everyone, my name is Matthew Montalvo and I am a Level Designer for The Dreaming Lake. My job during this sprint was to generate ideas for the game's memory system, generate locations for these memories to take place in, and create annotated maps for quadrant's one and two on the four quadrant map. Partway through the sprint though my job changed entirely, I swapped from generating memories and locations ideas to actually creating the starting map in Unity utilizing the terrain tool. This change took me a moment to adjust, but afterwards I was able to push out some good work, let me break down this sprint.

    The first task assigned to me was to create ideas for potential memories for the memory system. I was tasked with coming up with at least 30 ideas with a max of 50 ideas. I was having problems wrapping my head around things that you do at lakes since I do not camp often. After a while of thought though, more and more ideas came to me which I wrote down. For context on the picture, emoji means that my lead likes the idea, green means the idea is approved.

    These are all of the memory ideas that I came up with, but as you notice it is way less than 30. I was pulled aside a few days after cards were assigned, and I was given a new list of cards to start work on since my lead had both level designers working on the same things at first. This card was pulled from my workload when the switch happened, but it was put back a few days before the sprint ended as I helped with the memory creation process so they gave me credit for the card.

    The next task assigned to me was to create a rough sculpt for the terrain of the level that felt believable. I was lost at first in terms of how to do this as at the time as not every location or memory had been created yet. As this was a big task, my first step was to create a map of potential terrain and locations so that I'm not blindly sculpting terrain. I drew the map on paper as my digital drawing skills are not as strong. 

    I took the existing locations in the locations list and put them in the four quadrants of the map, afterwards I put some terrain ideas so that I could reference this map when making the actual map. The highlighted parts are different elevations of terrain so that everything is not flat. 

    After drawing that map, I was much more confident to create the terrain map as I had a direction I could go towards. During the creation of the terrain I had issues with brush size versus player size, often times I would make a small hill for the player to scale, and then realize in gameplay that the map is just huge compared to the player. One reason it felt big was due to the player at the time having slow movement that I could not change, but I was confident that the map would be better when the player speed gets adjusted. For this card I had to play a delicate dance of tweaking the map over and over again until everything felt like a comfortable size for gameplay.

    The first image is a shot that shows off the map, second image is a first person shot to show the size of the map, this is the lookout point to see the entire map.

    

This is the final result for the rough map in a top down view, the numbers next to each corner are showing the quadrant number. This map is not a complete recreation of the paper map, I added a pond, took out the camp site on the top left, and the village on the bottom right. I took out those locations as I realized they were not approved by my lead. 

     The next task I was given was to create an annotated map for the first quadrant of the map. My first steps were to create the base layout of the locations I already knew in the quadrant. 

    This image is very colorful and not very annotated, my first thought to fix the annotation was to ask the other level designer what locations he used so that we could avoid duplicates. I found out that most of the locations were being used, so I used locations that he did not to create this annotated map. 

    This was what the map looked like with all of the landmarks on it, but the map itself is still not very annotated. I was told by my lead to correct the colors to match my other level designers annotated map, and I was also told to have more text on the map itself rather than everything being in the legend. 

    This is the final version of the map that was approved, I changed the colors to match my other level designers map so that everything is consistent, and all of the locations on this map are unique to avoid the duplicate location problem that we will tackle later on.

    My final task that I started work on this sprint is revisions to the already established terrain. My lead had some thoughts on changes that were not communicated to me until after the card was considered complete, so I asked for another card so that this work could be documented. 

    This image shows the notes that were left for me from my lead. The main pieces of feedback I got from the notes was that the mountain in quadrant two is not nearly tall enough, my lead also wanted it to extend further along into quadrant three. He wanted me to allow a path for the player to cross in between quadrants one and four. I started getting to work on the solutions as soon as I got the card to in progress.

    First thing I tackled was the path between quadrants one and four, he sent me an image with this spot specifically so that I knew exactly what area I was fixing. 

    My lead wants the player to cross this particular section without any problems, so I took the set height tool and the smooth tool and got to work creating a path. 

    I made the path a bit flatter due to the rocky terrain making it more annoying for the player to cross.

    

    After that problem, I tackled the lookout tower hill as the slopes to get up each level are simply too high to climb. My goal was to provide a flattened path that goes up while still showing the sloped surface. 

The final problem I tackled was the size of the mountain, now it is at least double of the size it used to be in the height department. I also extended it out to around halfway in the third quadrant play area. My other level designer designed the mountain to be climbable with things to do on it, so I made a pathway to reach the top without the player having to fight massive height differences. Most of making the mountain and pathway feel correct was a bunch of trial and error since I can not afford to overwhelm the player by sheer scale if that was not my intention.

    Currently this is the top down view of the new map, the only major noticeable change is the really big mountain in quadrant two compared to before where the mountain was much flatter.

    This card is in verify at the moment so this work may not be the final version, but this is the work I currently have on the card. 

    As for the other cards in my assigned list, "first pass of unique objects and land features in quadrant one" "first pass of trees, rocks, and other objects around the map" "second pass sculpt over quadrant one to get fine details" "second pass sculpt for quadrant two to get fine details" I did not get to these cards in this sprint due to me taking longer to work on the terrain than I originally thought. The next card I will be working on in the new sprint is the "first pass of unique objects and land features" as that card is a continuation of me adjusting quadrant one terrain to be very similar to the annotated map I showed above. 

    I personally did not get as much work as I wanted done in this sprint. Even though I had a rocky start with my cards being swapped, I still do not think that is a fair excuse as I had around the same amount of time as everyone else. I will attempt to get more stuff done in the next sprint to makeup for my rocky start that I had this time around. I do believe however that the work I did get done is awesome, and I can not wait to continue completing tasks for this game.