Developer Diary 51 - Disgusting Pines & Selfbuilding Environment

I created a blueprint that builds the world as the player progresses. Landscape chunks in the movement direction of the player are spawned in front of him while chunks opposed to his movement direction are destroyed. I also found some amazing low poly pine models online, that seem to create a very eerie, disgusting, yet beautiful atmosphere. Unfortunately their resolution is way too low for close ups with the CV1, but I don't care for now. I can still redo them at a later point. The blueprint for the pines works in a similar way as the world building blueprint and creates new foliage in a certain distance to the player in his movement direction.

The landscape is now infinite, and the mazes the player enters are potentially infinite as well.

Developer Diary 50 - Dharmapalas & Cheating

Success! The maze is building itself in realtime. And if the player continues succeeding throughout the maze, an increasing number of obstacles spawn inside each new chamber. Concentric Circles in combination with a series of dead end walls and randomly rotating doorways keeps it interesting enough...

The following problems remain though:

- AI will have huge navigation problems with moving walls and the overall procedural form of the maze
- Dharmapalas help the player cheat, to the point where the maze itself malfunctions. The walls need to be immune to the Dharmapalas Effects and keep the player in place no matter what. Right now he is able to swim above the walls as soon as he calls Mahakala. We'll need to change that ....

Developer Diary 49 - Walls System & Doorways

Once the player enters a new room in the maze, the difficulty level rises. The faster he proceeds, the higher the increase in difficulty. with each difficulty level concentric circles and doorways spawn inside each room. These doorways randomly rotate around the z axis on the center of each room, but are set up in a way so that theoretically every ground tile of the room is accessible at one time during rotation. So if one Doorway element has the setup 000111 (0 for wall / 1 for doorway) the opposing wall needs to have the setup 111000. After the player reaches the guiding lights of Manipura, the maze is replaced by a forest section that guides him towards the first spirit Mahakala. The center of each room is reserved for a large AI that chases and threatens the player throughout his endeavor.

Developer Diary 48 - Selfbuilding Maze

So after I struggled a lot with the FPS locks, I needed a new design in order to keep the FPS high, but without letting go of the initial concept of a forest maze. Inspired by Minecraft's concept of a selfbuilding world, I created a code that builds the maze, as the player moves through it in real time. Each area is unique, and if the player decides to turn back, the previous areas will not remain the same, but they will have changed their appearance as well.

So far this concept in combination with the surreal world and the day night cycles creates massive immersion. The overall concept of the Manipura Chakra is still in place. The player will only reach the Dharmapalas if he moves along the lights in the distance.