Read this and thank Jesus...

I spent a while this evening talking to Jesus. He has experience in making mods, and helped me out allot by explaining some important things to me. In my own words i will try to explain what he taught me, and throw in some of my own thoughts too...

An explanation of how the general texturing will work...

The image is showing how you would have a general wall texture, that is repeated. Decals overlap that wall texture to give more variation. These are planes (possibly alpha planes depending on what you were doing) that give more detail an variation. they are used to show things like signs, posters, drips and splodges, scratches stains even vents. They can also be folded around courners to make scratches on the courner of a wall for example.

This same method can be used for Prefabs. A prefab is a prefabricated mesh, e.g a fire extinguisher. This is a mesh and texture that can be repeated throughout the level. But may have different properties according to location, it could be clean or dusty or grimy. Decals can be used here, it may be more efficient to change the texture page sometimes, but this is just an example of possibilities.

This leads onto the fact that there are allot of things in the queens building that can be duplicated. Rather than being built in entirety. e.g hand rails. A list of these things should be compiled. But also general common sense should be applied here!

Another thing we talked about is playflow. Funneling the player through the level.
I have drawn up a mini plan of how i think the ground level could work, I'd like to know what you think. Things like lighting, and interesting features or blocked ways can be used to guide the player. I thought is this plan btw, J didn't help me with this bit :P

The light blue represents a divide. I thought that maybe the electric grid can split the room in half as well as form a roof. The player can see through the grid, and upon entering the room, see something 'shocking' or the like on the other side of the grid. But thinks they don't have to go past it.

Yellow represents field of vision.

the player is forced through the main room, finding the only option is to double back and go past the shocking dark blue blob.

This is only the ground floor plan. I'll see what people think before i do more. Post all your opinions!


Another important thing is that importing surfaces that will be walked on can cause problems, Its much more effective to make those parts in the editor. These problems may not be apparent until much later, to do with lighting and such, so the problem should be avoided early on. But, this is up to the tech leads, if any other tech's are reading this and have any input please go ahead!

Many thanks to Jesus for talking stuff over with me!