For sprint 3, I worked a lot more on creating the subsequent 3 levels of the game, the lettuce, cheese, and meat-themed sections. Similarly to the last sprint, I focused on sculpting terrain and modeling the barrier walls and level objects for each map. For the second level, Green Glacier, I built the map to look like a broken-up iceberg, where the player must jump from piece to piece and ultimately reach the Green Glacier Arctic Research Base at the end of the level. I sculpted the terrain to look sharp and jagged like ice and filled the surrounding environment with water to give the feeling that you're out in the middle of the ocean. To add to this effect and the overall immersion, I created a simple skybox that allows the player to see distant icebergs on the horizon. I modeled custom barrier walls for the level using the curve tool in Maya, which allowed me to create a singular, very precise collider that ensured the player wouldn't be able to get out of bounds.
Finally, I modeled a very simple arctic research base, based off of the real life Halley VI Antarctic Research Station.
shown above: aerial view of level 2 map, player view of the end of level 2.
For the third level, currently called Cheesy Crossroads, though I am unsure if that will be the final title, my idea for the map was that it would begin within the fictional city of Swissconsin and lead the player to the city's cheese mines. I wanted the city section to be reminscient of Lombard Street in San Francisco, with its windy sharp twists, surrounded by skyscrapers. I plan to eventually add obstacles that let the player climb around the city and potentially even interactive buildings with interior maps if I have enough time. For now, though, the buildings act as scenery and a barrier to the level. After this section, the player ends up at the entrance of the Swissconsin cheese mines, where they must traverse a twisty cavern and avoid falling into pits as they go through. For this section, I currently have it set up so that the pits are filled with cheese, but I'm unsure if that would work well, as we wanted the player to be able to bounce on cheese. At the end of the level, the player arrives at the Mouse Hole, a tavern that's a popular hangout spot for the miners of the cheese caves. Just like level 2, I also modeled a custom barrier for this level, as well as a roof for the cave to add to the immersion. Luckily, it's easy to organize files in Maya so that you can import them into Unity with the ability to hide parts of it, which I wanted to implement specifically to be able to see into the cave while developing the level. For this level's skybox, I made a treeline to resemble a distant forest outside of the city. I also modeled a super simple entrance for the Mouse Hole, as well as four unique buildings, to make the city area slightly more interesting to look at.
shown above: an aerial view of the level 3 map, a player view of the end of the level.
The fourth map, titled Patty Piazza, was the hardest to come up with ideas for in terms of theming the end goal to the stage. This level is lava/volcano-themed, so I sculpted it to resemble lava rock, as well as adding a simple lava-like texture to the plane below. I also made the skybox colors reflect the theme, with the sky being an ashy gray as if the air is filled with volcanic smoke, and other lava rocks visible on the horizon. The end goal was difficult to come up with, as I had to think of something meat and lava-related that wasn't too violent, like a slaughterhouse, or niche, like a bioengineered meat lab. With this in mind, I eventually thought of what I believe is a pretty good fitting goal. I call it the meatcano! Following the theme of each ingredient being harvested from the environment, I thought up the concept that this volcano is the source of meat for this world, with the lava being a sort of raw equivalent, which is then harvested and cooked into edible meat. In a way, the entire level is technically made of meat according to this concept. Once the player reaches the end area of the level, they must climb up the meatcano to get inside it and fight the game's final boss. Like the others, this level also has its own custom barrier, as well as a simple model for the meatcano.
shown above: an aerial view of the level 4 map, a player view of part of the map and skybox.
There were some difficulties during this sprint, which forced me to sculpt the levels multiple times. First, I somehow accidentally used the same singular terrain mesh across all four levels, so I went to each level and sculpted their terrain, then went back to the first level to check it, only to realize I'd been resculpting the same terrain over and over! So I had to resculpt levels 1-3; though I had screenshots and knew what I was sculpting now, it went by faster. The second issue wasn't as bad, luckily. We had some merge errors due to multiple people working on the same scene at the same time that we couldn't figure out how to fix, so we were forced to revert the build back to a slightly earlier state. This meant I had to reassemble some pieces of the maps and resmooth the terrain, but I didn't have to resculpt anything, which I was worried would happen. After that, there weren't any further issues, and I kept myself in a positive mindset. The way I see it, having to sculpt the same map more than once just furthers my experience using the Unity terrain system and teaches me more about it. From here, I've begun working on the maps for the boss areas and currently have half of them ready to be imported into Unity.
See you next sprint!