Whiteboxing

Let’s kick off a discussion about whiteboxing. Probuilder and Polybrush are included in the project, so it should be easy to do it using those. Take the character controller in the project, and whitebox some levels to get a sense of scale, obstacle placement, and verticality. No need to be specific, and don’t use external assets as a test.

Also, there’s no need to open a Pull Request on Github for now. Post screenshots of your work in this thread so we can keep refining using each other’s inputs!

Whiteboxing cards are in this deck.

For the environments, refer to the story within the Game Design deck.

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hey is the plan to keep the camera an orbit cam? earlier it was mentioned the game would operate similar to Tunic but without a lockon system. Tunic uses a fixed rotation camera, that’s especially important because it allows for combat/positioning the character without a lockon system much easier than an orbit cam does. This would affect the level design a considerable amount so I’m just wondering.

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I am very newbie on level design matters and I’m wondering In what way does that affect the whiteboxing process.

It would change the angle the world was viewed from. Obstacles like trees, cliffs, buildings would need to be positioned to maintain sightlines with the places the player would be expected to be. With a fixed camera, the angle would never change. With an orbit cam, the camera can rotate around these obstacles as the player moves. Right now the camera does these actions automatically, however in a combat scenario having the camera swing around could disorient a player trying to attack/avoid an enemy. This is normally why lock on systems are used with orbit cams, but it was mentioned earlier that there probably wouldn’t be lockon. Imagine playing dark souls without a lock on system. Some of this issue could be rectified by making the orbit cam not automatically change rotation with player movement, but only change based on player camera control, but that’s not how it’s currently configured (or at least when I last checked)

New to using Probuilder or Polybrush? Not to worry!
These few tutorials should have you up and running in no time at all. You can tackle it all with this Asset Management with FBX Exporter, ProBuilder, and PolyBrush Project, or simply refer to the tools you need with the following tutorials:

When you begin whiteboxing (often referred to as grayboxing - the traditional technique of blocking out the level with simple shapes to see if the level design supports the gameplay before creating the final art assets for the level) you may find it handy to first draw out some your ideas either on graph paper or with a simple graphic program on your computer. We’ve discussed a few points that can help catch you up to speed in this Level Design thread .

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Oh I see, thank you for the info! I guess we would need the final camera working with all its features if we want to accurately whitebox everything.

it should still be possible to start work, but the layout might need to change, which is exactly what whiteboxing is good for

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Awesome! Thanks for the advice and explanation.

Hello people, hope you all have a great week. I played around with the project a bit starting with the Beach Tutorial level (according to the Arrival Card and Game Map) using ProBuilder and Polybrush. I did the whiteboxing after the discussions in the LevelDesign , Dialogue&Narrative and CookingGameplay thread, so I hope my attempt shows our collaborative approach.

Link to blog:
You can see what I made here , there is also a 3 min video explaining what I did and why. I’ve been trying to upload it straight to the Forum but was unsuccessful, so I think a blog post is a better option than stacking the thread. You are more than welcome to change anything you don’t like, (the cliffs can be easily moved for example), this is just a proposal. I will soon submit a separate Github link from my account (not doing any Pull request no worries) should anyone want to download this and play around too.

2nd edit:
I am posting a vimeo link here since the quality video in the blog post was a bit downgraded.

https://vimeo.com/472417239

Because the file size of the scene was a bit too large at 138mb (story of my life) and Github has a 100mb threshold i guess I need to use Git LFS. I am a total noobie in these things and coulnd’t yet figure out how to do it, so if you want to download the project and play around here is a GoogleDrive link. (github vs me: 1-0, lost the battle but not the war)

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Thanks for going over how to enable the probuilder materials @itsLevi0sa , I’m only getting started and that was annoying me. I’ve been meaning to start work on some level design stuff soon but I’ve been a bit busy this week.

I do have some comments. The first area definalty should be used to introduce the basics of the cooking system. I was going to contextualize this as an npc needed to open a path/bridge/door to the villiage, but first needed a meal to fill them up before they were strong enough to open that path.

Also on the fireballs to destroy crates thing. Do we want that to be an innate ability of the chick or a dish that gives the chick that power?

Hey, we will have an orbit camera without a lock on system. The fighting in the game will be quite simple, the player needs to move toward the enemy and press a button to attack so no need to be precise when attacking

This is great @itsLevi0sa , thank you for making this amazing video and blog post, this is fantastic! I really like how you started to put all the ideas together after discussing it on the different related threads. Sounds like a good way to get started with the whiteboxing :slight_smile: and yes you can use blog posts for the video or you can simply upload it on YouTube if you have an account.

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@itsLevi0sa That looks so fun, nicely done! From where you have Bard Hare (BH) positioned, it looks like the player could ignore him if they so choose and just go right on up the path. I had imagined he’s blocking the path to the town, or at least a cut-scene is triggered where he appears once the player gets close enough to the path, and I even wrote a little dialogue interaction (prose for BH and regular words for Hamlet) for how it might go (to be added to whatever dialogue shared document is created).

This jives with my thoughts that BH is the impediment. Part of the dialogue I created has BH requesting a dish once he finds out that Hamlet is a chef before giving him more information about the festival and the town.

If it’s a dish, the player gets the cooking tutorial somewhere around the free roam area maybe? Or in the BH’s house area?

If it’s innate, then BH triggering the cooking tutorial makes sense to me, kind of like a “prove your worth to me first” thing.

Kind of curious how this decision would affect controls, but that’s a discussion for a different thread I think.

Hey, no worries everyone has their own pace, that shouldn’t mean you shouldn’t post your work because someone else posted something first (I am saying this for everyone in general). In fact I will refrain from doing another similar post until someone else takes over and goes through the process of making something as well. By the way, your camera orbit concern and how it could affect the design you were so right, it really changed my perspective (literally) on how I worked and the decisions I made. Also glad if the ProBuilder tips helped, that’s what worked for me at least.

So this was mainly a draft to get a sense of scale and gameplay duration, there is definitely space for more input like a cooking tutorial that should be indeed introduced. I mean, I don’t know exactly what is going to happen with Bard Hare. Maybe we find him with a fire already lit and we cook something together as he sings or he invites us in a challenge as suggested. Maybe we have previously found a utensil or ingredient at his place that we picked and the Bard Hare could use to show us something. Maybe that could have a comic relief moment with the Bard Hare saying “nice [ingredient], I have a similar one, I store it in my favorite special barrel” or something, which is the one you smashed and got it from, silly I know, but you get the point! I like the idea of “cook first” and then proceed, that you are suggesting.

I think Phoenixes should have that as an innate power, but maybe they need some energy (from feeding) to do that?

Good call!Maybe the ascending path could be changed to be at the other side of the gulf where the Bard Hare currently is, so that he stands in front of it then.

PS: I wonder how we could proceed for the other levels as well. Should we continue the level design discussions here on the Whiteboxing thread or on the previous Level Design one and use this thread for work showcasing? My proposal is to close the previous Level Design thread as it is a bit outdated and overwhelming for a newcomer. Use this Whiteboxing thread for the continuation of the discussions and actual design implementations. And just add one separate new thread just for the Town because it’s gonna need some discussions mainly focused on that. What do you think?

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This … right … HERE! 10 out of 10 would play again!

Oh no, Phoenix energy meter? Does @ChemaDmk approve?

If the path is moved to behind BH, it’s still a good goal in the distance, but then does the previous space become wasted (e.g. what would encourage the player to turn in that direction to notice the other side of BH’s house)?

Since Gregory already linked the old thread as an intro thread up above, I’d agree to close it for reference and then build from here. As to making new threads, the UI Wireframing is all being done in 1 thread, so why not all level designs done here?

Also, for the few maps that I’ve drawn before, I’ve never used ProBuilder or PolyBrush, just sketched something out flat on a 2D surface. Is that helpful here or not?

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Definitely! We should first discuss on paper before going 3d, as @GregoryLane suggested:

Please share here everything you do :slight_smile: As for the threads I just fear that this one could easily get piled up and the Town needs a special attention I think without other level discussions distractions. Anyway, let’s see what others think in regards to all the above concerns mentioned.

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For now the phoenix is almost like a tool. It helps set the fire to cook, and appears in cutscenes and such. No need for energy meter :slight_smile:

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This is a GREAT start, I love almost all of it :smile:
That said, here I ask a few questions (and make an attempt at answering them)

  1. Why are those canes there? If they are so high that the player cannot pass through them, then no one else can too, right? So why did nobody did cut them already? As it is now, the BH is the only one allowed to get to that part of the island (using his own house). And since that is the most accessible part of the island (for you can dock boats there) I’d consider this a little weird;
  2. How exactly does the tutorial happen? Is there a textbox telling us what to do, with words spoken by no one but the game itself? Or is there a character speaking to us? And what event makes the dialogue box appear? Us getting close to the BH house? There is a sign with written instructions that we have to interact with to read?
  3. How do we know that there is a cooking festival going on? Does the BH know about it? And what is he doing under that tree?

There may be many answers to these questions, but here is a solution that tries to answer all of them at once:

My first drawing represents whan the player sees when the cutscene finishes and Hamlet steps on the island: a wide beach with some trees, and a more detailed point of interest (very noticeable also thanks to the rule of thirds) in the distance.

The player can explore this area, but there’s not much he can do (if not maybe collect some random low-value ingredient from the ground) and after learning the movement controls he heads to the point of interest.

Here I merged down the BH’s house and @itsLevi0sa 's idea of the bridge between the beach and the rest of the island. BH’s house is build (or better, digged) on two levels, with two doors. The great obstacle this times aren’t wild canes, but some crates and chests that someone put there. There a sign on one of them. It reads “Bard Hare’s food supplies. DO NOT TOUCH, STEAL OR INTERACT WITH IT IN ANY WAY”. Immediately after the player stops reading, a popup appears, in the middle of the screen, saying “Press X to destroy the crates” (I played it in my mind and tbh it could be hilarious).

When the player destroys the first crate, we hear a scream from somewhere. I don’t have an exact line in mind, but something like “Who is stealing my stuff?”
Camera shifts and we see the BH, looking at us. When he comes close, he doesn’t recognize us, so he guesses we’re foreigners. He realizes that with all his stuff obstructing the road he wasn’t allowing anyone to pass, and he apologizes, adding that he has too many things going on on his mind. He even alludes to some kind of event that could make him famous in the whole island, but he doesn’t elaborate on that.
He says that if we want further details on what he was talking about, we must do something for him. Somewhere around the beach there should be a “rare” ingredient that he can’t find, and he needs it for a special recipe. We have to get that ingredient and bring it to him. We can take all the time we want: it will take a while to remove all the crates from the passage, the’re pretty heavy…

Here we can explore the the island again, this time with a bit more freedom: we can destroy stuff, and even burn canes with our chick (maybe the BH tould us how to do that), and behind some canes is exactly where we find the thing that BH was looking for.

When we bring the item to BH, we found out that he has removed all the crates (until now he was standing in front of them, blocking us from destroying them) and the road is clear. As a reward for the ingredient, BH tells us about the cooking competition and wishes us good luck in case we want to participate.

Edit: Ok maybe the bard hare is’t competing in a cooking festival (or is he? Who said we can’t have more than one passion?), but this could still work. Maybe he was asked to write a song for the cooking festival, or one dedicated to the Elder Chef, or to do something else. All details here can be added/removed/changed :slight_smile:

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hey I’ve been having a few ideas for level design tools, submitting my first one. If you’ve ever used UE4 you may be familiar with being able to right-click on a position in the editor and start from that position, this works similarly where it lets you set a Spawn Location with only a mouse click

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Seems like a pretty handy tool! Even coming from…You know who. Nice to think of such tools and start discussing ideas like these.

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I created a new branch in the Git repository called ‘‘whiteboxing’’ from the ‘‘art-assets’’ branch. You can it find here:
https://github.com/UnityTechnologies/open-project-1/tree/whiteboxing

If you would like to propose a whiteboxing for any of the locations, feel free to do it on this new branch. You can create a new scene and work on it (Don’t use an existing scene, to avoid Git merge conflicts later if you decide to open a PR). Of course, we always recommend that you post screenshots of your work in this thread before opening a PR.

@itsLevi0sa would you like to add the scene you made to this new branch? I think it would be a good way to use your scene so that others can duplicate it, use it as a starting point and iterate on it if they want :slight_smile:

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