7 Days Of Indie Game Dev - Devlog

I'm making a first-p person shooter game that combines Bioshock and Willy Wonka in a massive tower full of surprises. But currently, it is nothing like either of those, and that needs to change if we want to keep our publisher 3D Realms happy. So, I spent 7 days trying to do [music] exactly that. Can I make this boring game look like what I promised, or [music] are we going to have an interesting call with 3D Realms? So day one was creating very simple assets to set dress our world. Things like fire extinguishers, mannequins, telephones, some ivy coming through the cracks of the walls to make it feel like it's a really old tower. The cool part about this is I didn't have to model anything. So I'm not actually a 3D modeler. Instead, I'm more of just a art director. So, I can actually just go find some assets [music] from, let's say, Turbos Squid or the Unity asset store and flip them to make an asset that really kind of fits into our world. Here's the thing, okay? When you're searching for your assets, you need to be thinking of the poly count, okay?

We don't want to h have something that's too high poly. So, I'm actually going to just do low poly. We just want a simple simple fire extinguisher. I think that's fine. What do you guys think? That's a little intense there. Oh, good. That's an LOD. All right, cool. So, we've got some low poly LODs. Orangeish red is the color scheme of the game. Guys, it's always important to keep an idea of the exact color scheme you want to use in your game. I think color is frankly color in music is the most important aspect of a game's art direction. So, something like this um is what we're going to end up using. Okay. Uh with some rim lighting as well. It just looks so much better. It really looks gorgeous. Day two. I got distracted already. Already distracted. Day two, I actually ended up fixing the headshot mechanics. For some reason, the heads were not exploding the way that I thought they should. So, I did that.

Why isn't it working? Hello, buddy. Why are you coming through like that? What? I also got into a debate about God's existence with my subscribers. I don't know why I did that. Sorry. If [clears throat] you can predict it, it's not random. But I do believe in random because I believe in God. I believe in the unmoved mover. I believe in the thing outside the system. Some something outside of the confines of even logic. That's the only thing that can create random. God can do what he wants. It doesn't just cuz the world is painful doesn't mean that he didn't mean for it to be. Look at this game, guys. Look at what I'm making here. This thing is dark. Day three was creating a bathtub and creating cobwebs. That sounds random. Well, hang on. All of these elements are going to fit into this creepy Bioshock inspired world on day seven. Hang tight. Oh, look at this. Wait, what? That's all we've got. I think that's actually just fine. I don't think we need anything higher poly than this bath.

Tub. Where is it? It's called tub. We don't want that. So, watch this. Let's go ahead and rename it really quick. [music] You want it to be nice and clean. Everything's got the same naming convention. There's tub. Notice it's a blend file. Yeah. So, we're going to go [music] to bathtub, not bath rub. Why is that see-through? Well, I will never know. There we go. Look at that. It's beautiful. Wow. Cobweb pack. Those maybe work. Let's buy it. Man, I don't like this. I do not like why this is not working. Got all these weird shaders. I don't want your shader. Oh, we got cobweb simple. Look at this. Hang on tight. Let's see here. Oh, good. Goody, goody, goodie. What do you guys think? Ain't that cool? That's kind of cool.

See? Isn't that cool? Let me hit play here and just see what kind of beauty we can add here. Just simple stuff like that goes a long way, guys. All right, I like those. Very good. Day four. Guess what? I got into another derailment. Uh, I decided to test out a theory. And the theory was, can I make this game feel more like a fairy tale and less like, well, Bioshock? Is it someone new? Here's the thing. If you're going to make a Bioshock inspired game, try and make something that's a little bit more derivative, right? We don't want to just go with the classic, you know, 1930s [music] vibe and that's the game. Instead, I actually leaned into more of that Walt Disney [music] spooky fairy tale vibe. So, I worked on the logo to see if I could change up the logo a little bit. I listened to some beautiful music from Llama Del Rey while I worked, which is kind of weird, but I did that to feel it out and feel out, can this actually be a fairy tale firsterson shooter? And lo and behold,

at the end of day four, I realized, yeah, we can do this. There's that one. Then there's that one. I like the the the way that this this purple lighting, it makes this feel a lot more interesting. I kind of like that. So, I wanted to make every asset moving forward for the rest of the week. I wanted it to be more focused on making this a firsterson fairy tale in the 1930s. Day five, we wanted to create some dirt mounds and some trash mounds, some rubble that we could scatter throughout the level. Actually did this custom and then applied some textures from textures.com. And then I also worked on some tall spherical plants that I could scatter throughout the tower again to make it feel more like a fairy tale. These were inspired by Ivan Earl. Ivan Earl is an artist that worked on the backdrops for Sleeping Beauty. And I also worked on some inner tubes cuz there's a water park level in this creepy theme park. Unity just froze. Cool. We got trash or debris here. That's good.

It does look like a It [laughter] looks like a freaking bagel. Day six. This is where we started getting into lighting. Here's the thing. I don't know anything about lighting. And also, Unity's lighting is particularly annoying. It significantly drops the frame rate. It's slow. It doesn't look the best. It's not like Unreal, honestly. I'll admit it. And by the end of this day, I'll be honest, I was completely frustrated. Let's take a look at our light maps. Look, it didn't even bake a light map. Yeah, I didn't know the difference between mixed lighting, real-time lighting, baked lighting. No idea. And I didn't know whether I needed to use any of them. Look at that. Look at that. And we we've got a reflection probe. Why are you so dark? Try increasing the intensity of the reflection probe. Uh, sure. We can try it. So, what do we do here? Oh, I didn't know that there was an intensity value. Set it to real time. You know, when we teach 3D art, when we

teach gamedev at all my different courses, baking is never we have not taught it because we haven't touched it. Man, it's tough. Baking is is my least favorite. Look at this. Baking is my least favorite. I I I will learn to love it. I will, but man, I don't get it. So, I just put out a cry for help on Twitter and asked if anybody anybody could meet with me to discuss these lighting techniques and which ones I might want to use [music] for Twisted Tower. Day seven, I applied what I learned in those calls with these developers. Basically, I learned that you don't want to just use baked lighting. You don't want to just use mix lighting. And you don't want to just use real-time lighting with your game. you kind of have to pick and choose [music] where you're going to put this lighting. Long story short, the majority of my lights are going to be mixed lighting. That's because mixed lighting can bake in almost paint into the [music] shadows of your level. So, it's going to make your game feel less contrasty and more realistic. But, we're also going to use some bake lighting for

more practical light. So, lights that don't really light the character or moving objects, but instead are just sort of going to paint light against walls, those we're going to make baked lights. [music] The rest of them are going to be mixed lighting so that we get that diffused lighting in the shadows, but also they light our gun. They light our player. They light objects that move in the game like boxes [music] or enemies. After that, I dressed our little scene here with all of the elements that we created throughout the week. [music] And this is the final result. I shared this final result with the team at 3D Realms and they think we're on the right track. They think it's beautiful. They're really, really happy with these results. And honestly, guys, I feel like in 7 days, we accomplished well that Bioshock look. There's still a ton of

assets to create. We've just created a little handful here. And so for the coming months, we're going to continue creating assets and adding lighting to our scenes to make it feel more like Bioshock. Oh, and by the way, you can wishlist Twisted Tower below to get notified when it launches, which it might have a launch discount. [music] So, click the link below, wish list. So it would mean a lot to me.