It’s funny how wildly time-consuming the most inane seeming parts of a game plan can end up totally taking over and result in a totally different final game. In this case, the total inability to actually capture the lighting of twilight, where everything is faded but nothing is actually dark, caused me to go mildly insane and start throwing the skybox into the far extremes of lighting. Near total darkness was ok enough at the time, as it at least allowed me to put in some strong lights to direct the player’s view, as well as establish something of an atmosphere. The original intent was to create a not too large but extremely detailed brick building, where you could interact with items on a desk and examine carefully composed furnishings. The building was to be abandoned and without lights; ideally, my planned twilight lighting would’ve allowed for emphasized areas via window illumination, while the rest would’ve had subdued lighting but been navigable.
What ended up happening was that none of this got done because I was struggling with the lighting so much. Additionally, it became harder and harder to create a forest with the right dimensions and density so that the brick building would break into distant view after walking down a fully covered path for a short while. By the time a lecture pretty late into the final project timeline came around, the one showing Footnotes, and all of the secrets, all I’d had was a hastily thrown together building that was just steps to a second floor with a window, and a small and dense forest. That one lecture made me realize that my current building/forest was more or less passable, and that I had bigger priorities for overall gameplay. Namely, secrets.
This Fall level was the first, so I decided for it to also be learning practice with the terrain tool for my intentions for Winter and possibly Spring. I created a huge area of terrain underneath the main area, and decided that I wanted to finally do what I never managed in my very first project: create a hidden path on a giant tree branch that you could walk on. I thought it was a good, easy way to overall boost the depth of the level, without having to waste too much time on visual/placing details that would bog me down.
It was not.
Anyways, I hope I made the entrance to the secret not too obscure, but still satisfying to notice. Please lemme know your experiences with it, if you decide to play my game.