Feb. 18th, 2021 4:50pm — Jordan, Maker of Pretty Things - @ZSG
I can quickly chime in here while my lighting builds and I upload The Gallery for Fred.
Also, I had to divide this in two parts due to the character limit.
Dear Devlog, Why does Fred always spoil things? I remember Fred and I saw Tarantino's Grindhouse when it had a limited run in theatres, Fred spoiled that as well by informing me that the screening was actually a double-feature. The second of which (Planet Terror) had this awesome half-assed plot about zombies or something created in a secret underground lab or something. Anyways — When I woke up this morning and launched Discord for my morning catch-up, I was met by another premature reveal by, you guessed it, Fred. Fred. Sigh...
Anyways. This week has been SUPER productive. We tend to hit these waves where things just kind-of work, and it's awesome. I primarily worked on polishing up The Gallery today; touching up post-processing volumes, lighting, organizing and trimming down the project file so Fred doesn't break anything. I've also got to finish up the environment, what you can see outside of windows, or when you're in an outdoors portion of the map. I'm about halfway done. Had an awesome chat with the community today while I took a break from a five hour stint. It was super encouraging to hear that (although I didn't communicate it) a lot of the points that people were raising regarding their favourite parts of the Splinter Cell games had already been implemented into our game, with our own twist of course. We're really fortunate to have such an enthusiastic, engaged community. You guys are going to LOVE Spectre.
Another huge focus was our Spectre spawn point. A good point came up recently in discussion with the Spectre community where spawn-killing/spawn-trapping was a concern. Here is my solution (and it looks freaking great, I'll prob post something in sneak-peeks ). The goal is to create a 'safe zone' where our Spectres spawn, that has one-way routes to different points in the map. And I did it. And finished it. My first solution was pretty restrictive (in the sense of navigating to different points in the map) and would allow the Spectres to backtrack into the safe zone. I had considered keeping this, as it could give the Spectres a place to regroup if need be, at the expense of time running out. Ultimately, I decided against this, because regrouping at the spawn point would essentially allow the Spectres to navigate the map from outside of the area accessible by the Reapers, and that isn't very balanced at all. I'm gonna take a break and have some breakfast now. Hang out with the fam for a bit, then return to the grind for a few more hours. Tonight, I'll be attacking our [REDACTED] map. I've mentioned before that I'm a HUGE horror fan, and tried to really capture that horror tension and suspense in The Gallery. Our [REDACTED] map takes that to the next level. This is a full-on spookfest (with a really, really cool nod to one of my favourite horror series'). Fred and I are really starting to feel like some real all-S.T.A.R.S. It is simultaneously motivating and terrifying that we are sooooooo freaking close. We're getting to the point where the game looks like a real game. That's some spookyass stuff. Anyways. This ended up way longer than I anticipated. Thanks again for the support, guys!!! Upload is done.
- Jord