{"author_link":"\/users\/designernap","author_name":"designernap","author_uid":"designernap","comments":[],"epoch":1524856600,"event":"LD41","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":94920,"likes":4,"metadata":{"p_key":"114225","p_author":"designernap","p_authorkey":"1002807","p_urlkey":"330185","p_title":"Making of Skywood Pier - A procedural walking simulator","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD41","p_time":"1524856600","p_likes":"4","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1002807","us_name":"designernap","us_username":"designernap","event_start":"1524182400","event_key":"72","event_name":"LD 41"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD41","removed_author":false},"_superparent":73256,"_trust":8,"author":2807,"body":"\nWell it's been a few days and I have had some great feedback. I have to say it has been received much better than I anticipated as after staring at the same set of planks and walls for 48 hours I thought it was looking and feeling terrible!\n\nI set out originally to create a procedurally generated world and narrative that the player could explore. I started with a very basic idea for corridors and rooms that would spawn upon opening a door. I had big plans for multiple routes, dead ends and item rooms that obviously disappeared when it came to finishing the game in time. The basic building block for the world was this set of planks...\n\n![4Planks.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f1.png)\n\nIn unreal I generated a single blueprint that contained a single mesh that in the construction script, randomly selected 1 of 4 meshes as its base appearance. It then applied one of five random colours. Using this blueprint I created a second blueprint that had many of these planks as childeren. That was the start of my world that built itself and I was happy that there was this hodge-podge thrown together feel to the wood and walls. It looked rickety and I though about making it fall apart, which would also solve one of my issues with procedural corridors and world... How do you stop corridors looping back on themselves or appearing in each other without more advanced systems than I had time to create? They fall apart! After entering in the wrong Z value, my individual planks started floating upwards! This was a happy accident and I think looked much better than falling off. At this stage my corridors also didn't have ceilings which also solved an issue, as if the gravity had been the right way... they would have cluttered on the floor. So, my dissolving world of wooden corridors was born. I created a series of basic room shapes as below - \n\n![RoomLayout.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f2.png)\n\nThe first room was the template that contained a table, a window and an item. The aim of the game was to discover a story that would piece itself together once the items were collected... however I ran out of time so unfortunatly, the procedural narrative was scoped back to be this - \n\n![ProceduralNarrative.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f4.png)\n\n\nWhich as an abstract tale, worked ok and left room for imagination and inference of personal projection. Would have liked to do more though! Threw in 6 objects I made quickly including my trademark \"Space Tea\" that I put in all my games :) \n\n![SpaceTeaThumb.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f5.png)\n\nSo with generating rooms that appeared randomly on door openings, I put some basic logic in that ensured every few rooms would be an item room and made the items spawn randomly and remove themselves from an array once taken. This was really the bare bones of the game and once I composed the music and recorded the voices, it seemed to mostly hang together. Discovered some funny things along the way like, if you spawn too many rooms... the physics gives up and all the planks start falling the correct way! Also this happens if you full screen in editor! which was bizzare!\n\nin the last hour I managed to throw together a front end screen by making a logo, putting a single wall behind it and then animating the camera to look \"floaty\". \n\n![SWP2.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f3.png)\n\nI will be uploading a video of a playthrough soon but will need to capture it somewhere else as my home PC does not cope so well with the engine AND a video capture. All in all, I am quite happy with this one. Would loved to have done more but as always... never enough time!\n\nThanks for everyone's kind comments and support. \n\nSee you next time!\n\n\n","comments":0,"created":"2018-04-27T18:40:55Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":94920,"love":4,"love-timestamp":"2018-04-28T05:05:07Z","meta":[],"modified":"2018-04-28T05:05:07Z","name":"Making of Skywood Pier - A procedural walking simulator","node-timestamp":"2018-04-27T19:17:35Z","parent":88218,"parents":[1,5,9,73256,88218],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/41\/skywoood-pier\/making-of-skywood-pier-a-procedural-walking-simulator","published":"2018-04-27T19:16:40Z","scope":"public","slug":"making-of-skywood-pier-a-procedural-walking-simulator","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":279976},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"94920","n_urlkey":"330185","n_parent":"88218","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/41\/skywoood-pier\/making-of-skywood-pier-a-procedural-walking-simulator","n_slug":"making-of-skywood-pier-a-procedu","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"2807","n_created":"1524854455","n_modified":"1524891907","n_version":"279976","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/41\/skywoood-pier\/making-of-skywood-pier-a-procedural-walking-simulator","text":"\nWell it's been a few days and I have had some great feedback. I have to say it has been received much better than I anticipated as after staring at the same set of planks and walls for 48 hours I thought it was looking and feeling terrible!\n\nI set out originally to create a procedurally generated world and narrative that the player could explore. I started with a very basic idea for corridors and rooms that would spawn upon opening a door. I had big plans for multiple routes, dead ends and item rooms that obviously disappeared when it came to finishing the game in time. The basic building block for the world was this set of planks...\n\n![4Planks.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f1.png)\n\nIn unreal I generated a single blueprint that contained a single mesh that in the construction script, randomly selected 1 of 4 meshes as its base appearance. It then applied one of five random colours. Using this blueprint I created a second blueprint that had many of these planks as childeren. That was the start of my world that built itself and I was happy that there was this hodge-podge thrown together feel to the wood and walls. It looked rickety and I though about making it fall apart, which would also solve one of my issues with procedural corridors and world... How do you stop corridors looping back on themselves or appearing in each other without more advanced systems than I had time to create? They fall apart! After entering in the wrong Z value, my individual planks started floating upwards! This was a happy accident and I think looked much better than falling off. At this stage my corridors also didn't have ceilings which also solved an issue, as if the gravity had been the right way... they would have cluttered on the floor. So, my dissolving world of wooden corridors was born. I created a series of basic room shapes as below - \n\n![RoomLayout.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f2.png)\n\nThe first room was the template that contained a table, a window and an item. The aim of the game was to discover a story that would piece itself together once the items were collected... however I ran out of time so unfortunatly, the procedural narrative was scoped back to be this - \n\n![ProceduralNarrative.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f4.png)\n\n\nWhich as an abstract tale, worked ok and left room for imagination and inference of personal projection. Would have liked to do more though! Threw in 6 objects I made quickly including my trademark \"Space Tea\" that I put in all my games :) \n\n![SpaceTeaThumb.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f5.png)\n\nSo with generating rooms that appeared randomly on door openings, I put some basic logic in that ensured every few rooms would be an item room and made the items spawn randomly and remove themselves from an array once taken. This was really the bare bones of the game and once I composed the music and recorded the voices, it seemed to mostly hang together. Discovered some funny things along the way like, if you spawn too many rooms... the physics gives up and all the planks start falling the correct way! Also this happens if you full screen in editor! which was bizzare!\n\nin the last hour I managed to throw together a front end screen by making a logo, putting a single wall behind it and then animating the camera to look \"floaty\". \n\n![SWP2.png](\/\/\/raw\/7fa\/z\/144f3.png)\n\nI will be uploading a video of a playthrough soon but will need to capture it somewhere else as my home PC does not cope so well with the engine AND a video capture. All in all, I am quite happy with this one. Would loved to have done more but as always... never enough time!\n\nThanks for everyone's kind comments and support. \n\nSee you next time!\n\n\n","title":"Making of Skywood Pier - A procedural walking simulator","wayback_source":[]}