[Patron-Only Feed] Moderate filling of Triangle Hunter (Patreon)

Note: This post has been made public for presentation purposes.

So far, this month has been a lot more relaxed compared to the last few. 

As you may already know: earlier in the year, I changed my upload schedule in service to the idea of a more relaxed month. 

But even when I wasn't working, I found myself scrambling to work on a near daily basis over the last few months. I often struggle with taking it easy. I HAVE to be producing, I NEED to be productive in order to maintain my relevancy.

I've said it before, but I think the best way for Patreon to work is FOR the creator -- not the other way around. Scrambling to get work done doesn't sound like a secure feeling. It's not an easy feeling for me to combat... I don't ever want to let you down.

Dreams

I've been apprehensive with Dreams lately because I hit a wall - I was trying to design the dungeon's modular tile set so I could easily re-use assets to quickly build the dungeons.

The first floor/wall combination (left) resembles the dungeon designs of Breath of the Wild, which already feels like a translation of the original Zelda's dungeon, but I did want to pull it a bit more towards the original. As that is what I am technically most inspired by.

My attempts didn't prove fruitful, however. The classic floor & wall looks a bit too bubbly & distracting, and so the hero gets lost in that detail. The complexity just didn't mix well with her simplicity. I can't even imagine what that would look like in a full textured room.

So I decided to commit towards the Breath of the Wild aesthetic. Here's what that looks like:

This tile set is broken into parts that can be mix and matched to create interesting, albeit subtle, patterns in the walls. This prevents them from being perfectly flat, like before. It adds just a tiny bit of noise, without being as strong as the previous wall attempt.

Getting the stairs to work properly was the trickiest challenge. I struggled with matching the angle of the steps and the railing, so they couldn't be placed next to each other to make a longer staircase (they'd look awkward). They are consistent now, however. An even bigger challenge was the steps themselves, however...

When running up stairs, Link would get stuck for a second, breaking the flow of her run on the steps that were too high for a smooth transition. Far from ideal...

I was able to solve that issue with some clever, but simple, design trickery. I turned off the collision detection of the steps, so they're visible, but not solid objects. I then created a flat sloped surface on TOP of those steps to collide with, but made it invisible! Ooooh! This way, the player is actually running on the invisible sloped surface, rather than the steps. Now it's a smooth run up and down the staircase.

Because I'm controlling the camera experience in a way that obscures the contact between the feet and staircase, this illusion is near unnoticeable to the player.

Here are those tiles in action (lazily tossed together):

This is looking pretty cool. There is some nice colour harmony going on, and the design is currently pretty readable, but hopefully not too empty of visual noise (the patterns in the walls really help with that. Because the camera is locked to a single angle, we don't get to see light reflections on the wall move, which might create a pretty static image... 

Here's a silly little additional goodie though.

Old TV & Video game filters! Ooooh! 

The resolution is being scaled to appear like a pixel game, while the screen is being warped via pincushion distortion, alongside some scan lines and screen glitchiness. Definitely some cool fun, though I do think it makes this much less readable -- the character mostly. 

If I include this old TV filter setup, it would have to be optional because of how it impacts readability. Though this could be really cool with a Dream that was designed with it in mind.

Man... It just hit me how difficult creating a Zelda boss would be in this... There's still a lot more work to do, and this isn't even the only Dreams idea I have!

Here is what is next on my mental agenda for this project:

• Moving Platforms (horizontal & vertical)
• Locked Doors (should probably create a basic inventory system for keys)
• Toggle Switches (the kind you stand on, and the kind you attack)
• Clean up Attack Animation
• Basic Enemies (this will involve modeling, puppetry, and programming)

Either way, the next handful of things will be logic-intensive, so I'll have to spend some time thinking it through. I swear, soon enough I'll be linking my Patreon to my Dreams creations because I've been spending so much of my time creating with it...

Anyway that's probably good enough for now. Don't forget to eat & sleep!