Developer Diary 90 - Level 01 - For Real This Time

Ok, I know how depressing that sounds. Years of work and I keep making a total overhaul of the first level. So what did I do these two last months?

- I recreated the manta palace, this time focusing exactly on how it looked like when I dreamed about it
- I spent a solid month figuring out a lighting bug in the engine, updating both the engine (twice!), GFX drivers, and Oculus drivers in the process

- I made an overhaul of the underwater experience and adapted several factors that sucked away valuable FPS in VR

- I created a demo landscape in which I placed the finished palace to see how it will integrate into the overall atmosphere of the woods (see last picture).

Ok, so what is different now from the previous versions?

The screenrate is a solid 90 FPS on GTX970 and the visuals are coherent and beautiful. There are no day night rhythms in real time anymore. I completely converted the lighting for the entire game into "static lighting", since dynamic lighting forced me to remove most of the shadows, greatly reducing game immersion.

The current version of the game feels very different than the previous ones. It feels right. It feels close to what I dreamed about, when all of this started developing in my head years ago. 

I still have massive problems with the game's shadows though. UE has a ton of lighting bugs that come to surface when you are trying to light large scenes or architectural areas, that are split into smaller subdivisions and I don't know how to fix them. I learned from several PS4 games which meshes need to cast shadows in order for an environment to feel realistic, but implementing it is far more challenging. Especially if the engine decides to shade your entire level, for no reason other than that it thinks it should.

The palace shown in the images above, is how I want it to look. And I can say that wholeheartedly. The music merges perfectly with the environment and the movement of the mantas matches up perfectly with the rhythm of the music. I have a lot to learn about lighting in general, but I spend every day on it, fixing larger and smaller issues wherever I find them. Building a game from scratch when you have sufficient background knowledge is one thing, but doing it while learning the craft each day is a whole different story.

So whoever is reading this: please be patient. I know I tell myself that very thing each day I work on this little world.