Blockout levels for 3D Platformer game

Overall, missed most of the specific goals but most importantly, I’ve rebuilt the habit of working on my game!

Recap:

• Made a good first pass on the initial forest zone
• Made some progress on the MountainCove start
• Entirely missed any progress on the hubcity

What went wrong:

• Individual week goals were too ambitious
• Didnt compensate for travel/distractions/games in the last week.
• Goals were too specific. Next time bake in more freedom to work on what parts I want

What went well:

• Kept the main hour goal achievable with easy room to shoot past.
• Split out the individual targets for what I wanted to accomplish in doable chunks
• Got back into regular gamedev!

Here’s a final screenshot of the initial forest zone blockout. Next I need to block out some character spots and some monsters but thats about it. The rest of the blockout progress is in the post before this.

Progress has been slow over the past few days but I’m onto the second level now! I’m starting with this intermediate zone that directly follows the initial zone. It’ll be some winding caves that I’m intending to be a bit more linear but then open up to the proper level

Great news! The motivation/discipline to do gamedev stuff is finally coming back after being out of it for 2 or 3 months ish! For me that’s the real goal/intent behind doing this project which is huge and has me really excited.

But onto the updates! So I did begin sketching a bit of the following mountain cove level but primarily focused on more blocking out of the existing level to flesh things out. Definitely not going to make it to the hub city this dk30 like I planned but no worries!

This zone is intended to be the first main zone, so I want to introduce certain mechanics like simple buttons/boxes/switches, and then wall jumps, in this area in a basic way and go fancier later.

So far i’m hitting the general goal of 5 hours a week. I’m maintaining an about an hour a day on average but honestly the specific number isn’t what’s important as long as I’m staying committed.

Ok updates! Cleaned up the northern section. It’ll serve as a way to introduce wall jumping. I do want to add a few more wall jumps though.

Reworked the southern section to be more closed off. The entrance to the area is going to require a crouch jump or sideflip to get enough height to grab the ledges. I do want to fiddle with the section itself to be more focused on verticality

Stretched out the final exit to give room for a moving platform and center area that’ll contain the way to activate the platform once you explore the area and gather some items.

For now I think I might move on to sketching out the proper mountain cove zone that follows this. I think that’ll help me explore more level design ideas and then I can come back and refine this space with more practice.

First pass at blocking out the initial zone in engine. I still need to stretch out the left side to add the final zone and then stretch out the far right exit to make space for the final moving platform.

The current blockout doesnt actually have much in terms of platforming elements/items so I’ll start placing a few things and see if more/less space is needed.

Small update but I’ve doodled a layout for the initial zone.

Starting with the first zone, heres a quick run through with the player character to show off the scale currently.

Eventually this will be filled with collectables and a character or two. So my first thoughts are to widen the area by half or double it to give more space and add one or two more little interesting sections to work with. I’ll sketching some layouts for alternate shapes of this zone next.

As per usual with these projects, here’s my current state of the blockouts! I’m returning to this project after a hiatus during the summer but ready to use the dk30 as a springboard back into things.

Initial starter zone

MountainCove

Hubworld-City