It's been awhile since the announcement of "The Hidden Labyrinth" back in October! A lot has happened and changed since then. One of the major changes was that I had to rework the entire forest map (terrain) in the scene. I was simply not happy with the initial layout of the forest, so I had to start over - this time making the height and size as I had intended. With that change also came the switch to URP instead of the Legacy (built-in) rendering pipeline. This decision has some drawbacks - such as not being able to implement a flash light effect I really had my eye on (light cookies aren't supported in URP), but there are work-arounds to 'fix' this. Overall the game looks and plays much better with the new Universal Rendering Pipeline implementation. In the same scene, there is a part of the labyrinth the player can explore. This is where you can obtain your first special ability in the game; being able to see 'the forbidden'. This ability enables you to see things that are not visible normally - opening the pathway to create puzzles in the game that make use of this feature.
 |
| The front gate of "The Hidden Labyrinth" - the lion heads on either side are 'placeholders' and are going to be replaced eventually with a different model, probably one I'm going to create myself in Blender. |
Furthermore, I created some of my own shaders which are used to highlight some objects in the game that are normally hidden.
The forest scene itself is from an asset pack by NatureManufacture. They use extremely detailed models and textures for trees, rocks, grass, leaves - pretty much anything you can think of in a real forest.
 |
| The area where the player is going to be able to pickup their special ability that enables them to see 'the forbidden'. |
 |
| The forest also has many particle effects - one that I made myself (and particularly proud of!) creates the illusion of fog (animated), that slowly moves through the forest - spooky! |
 |
| The scene view with all particle and post-processing effects turned-off! |
The biggest challenge for me was to implement the 'lookatobjects' system. This basically takes care of detecting what and where the player is looking at. If there's an interactable object, the crosshair in the center will change to an 'E' (depending on which platform the game is played) to let the player know they can interact with the object. I built this system myself from ground-up because I wanted to know exactly how to code works. It's likely the foundation of not only this game but also future games.
The project is doing extremely well and I'm making some great progress. Now that I have the basics set up, expect more frequent updates in the future!
 |
| One more screenshot of the forest where the player initially has to find the labyrinth... |
Follow on twitter if you want to stay up to date - I know I don't update this site very often.
