Dead Metal Punks - Level 13 Concord Starstation Part 14

Finished lighting changes now. I ended up adding some very slight fog to increase the depth of distant objects and changed a lot of the interior lighting to give more varity in hues.

Dead Metal Punks - Level 13 Concord Starstation Part 13

All building sections for the level is done now! A lot of the main structures will be used in other levels with different colours so that should improve itteration time. Now that the final textured assets are in I can give some more focus to the lighting, which is what I will be doing for the next post.

Dead Metal Punks - Level 13 Concord Starstation Part 12

I had a little break over the past 2 weeks. Obviously this shortens the time I have but I needed a break, anyway after more extensive testing the level layout is working well. In my testing I got to the end of the level at 17 minutes and 36 seconds so this is acceptable in terms of length. 

During the testing I did make a few changes, first Listotrons bullets have a much larger chance of being red and the bounce bullets that appear at 50% have increased in speed. The positioning of enemies in Lily's section have been paced out a little more to stop overwhelming numbers.

Finally I have started proper texturing of assets. First off just to get back into the swing of things I went all out on the shuttle texturing, it still keeps in theme using the greens and oranges common in the rest of the Concord army. It turned out pretty well so I decided on getting a pretty shot of it with ingame background.

I finished 2 other pieces as well. The first is a section of the boss rooms, this will be duplicated and flipped to make the entire boss room symmetrical. The second piece is part of the explosive doors, I will use this in an earlier level too so when it comes to this one the player will know what it does.

Dead Metal Punks - Level 13 Concord Starstation Part 11

Everything on the level is now populated and tested. For the second Lily section I wanted to use the platforming and narrow spaces to force the player to be accurate, so in this section they are given a sniper to start with and a much smaller number of enemies to contend with. The sniper will instantly kill any enemies but will be blocked by bullets so accuracy is key, unlike the rocket launcher which destroys projectiles it passes through on the way to its target. 

On the return section the player is given a new set of ammo for the sniper and a rocket launcher, the addition of a rocket launcher on the way back will make it a much quicker to get back for the final section of the level. 

Level lighting is also pretty much done now, still need to texture assets though.

Dead Metal Punks - Level 13 Concord Starstation Part 10

Lily's second section is now finished. Only populating and some pace testing to go and all sections are complete. In this section I played around with some more verticallity in the level design. If the player fails the moving platform sections then they will drop into a lower area that is full of spike traps and will have some extra enemies in it. The only problem with this section is that on the way back the player is forced to do the platform section well, but it's the last level so they should be expected to get things right.

This being completed means I can move on to make some assets and texture all the current ones. It might take a while though in the end, just because I have to model and texture all the enemies as well (7 New in total)

Dead Metal Punks - Level 13 Concord Starstation Part 9

Mining drone enemies are now finished. They work in a similar way to the helicopters but with some extra complexity. First they move to various locations around the player but do not constantly move with the player like the helicopter. Also they will occasionally boost higher into the air to dodge projectiles. They have a relatively low healthpool of 10.

Now that these are finished Lily's first section has been fleshed out with hordes of them and a few soldiers mixed in. Since this is the final level and it needs to be fast the player is given a rocket launcher and machine gun at the start of the section, a poorly hidden shotgun at the midpoint and an additional rocket laucher at the core.

The amount of Drones makes it still have some challenge even with all this firepower because there is a lot of projectiles coming at the player from various angles. The way back to the exit is a bit less packed with enemies so the weapons the player gained should all be near empty for the next section.

Finally I have started expanding the amount of models in the scenery, these models are basically complete in terms of UV mapping and Lightmapping. Also made some odd materials to make the Powercore look interesting.

Dead Metal Punks - Level 13 Concord Starstation Part 8

Been a while since I've updated as I have been doing a lot of little things that were not worth a full post. 

First, the major change, is that the entire level is now populated on the tank side and been tested several times using a set of different tank configurations. This level is very difficult but with upgrades I have managed to get through on normal difficulty taking very little hits. Testing this level is taking a lot of time though since there is lots of sections and little bugs that require tweaking.

Some new little bits were added though for quality of life. Since the tank needs the choice to buy lives before a boss I have to put the repair stations infront of said bosses, but if the player survives on very low lives then they are heavily punished in the next tank section. To make it fair, whilst in the lily section the tank finds out how many lives it has left. If it is less than 4 then it's lives are bumped upto that number, doing it this way only helps players who didn't get through unscathed.

This is the first Lily section, a lot of the assets in this are from the first level. This shouldnt be a problem though since they wont be used much in the middle levels. This is timed at around 1 minute per direction, so is about right for what is required. 

To get this section to go backwards I had to delve into using level streaming to add new assets and camera controls when the player destroys the core. This also unloads certain controls that were used to go forwards.

This level has taked too long at this point. I'm not too worried though as I would rather have a well tested and working final level than rush one out that is crap. I should be able to gain a bit of time back on some of the other levels though due to having a lot of the enemies coding out of the way and when this level is finished a lot of large building assets to use in some of the other levels. 

Finally, although this feels like it has taken 4 weeks to get the level to this point thats not really true as I have done other important things that took a lot of time (Making all the tank customisation and adding it all to the save fuctions, etc). Hopefully this level will be done and dusted by the end of this week and only missing a possible cutscene for the ending of the game (That will be done if I have time).