Welcome to the second issue of our DevLog! We hope you enjoyed the last entry and are looking forward to this one. We've got some exciting new before and after-screens of our first stage the treehouse, which has seen some significant rework. So let's jump right in!
Reworking an existing Stage
You surely remember the treehouse-stage, where Simon hides after stealing a melon from the cuties. Our team always felt that the stage wasn't completely done - especially from a graphical standpoint - and that there was room for improvement. Since we're in a treehouse we figured it would make sense to show some trees and forest-like scenery in the background. We worked on some concepts of how it would integrate into the existing scene:
It was important to us that we place the trees, the lake and the other details in spots, where the player could actually see them, which is why we chose to create a conceptual layout of the background details first. Now, just to give you a better idea of the differences in detail, have a look at the old version:
So we began to work out the actual assets for the background, which mainly consisted of painted 2D-planes. Since the integration of the Oculus Rift is somewhat a pillarstone of the game, we discussed if this approach wouldn't destroy the perceipton of depth, because a plane is quite flat per se. But we figured that these objects are all quite far away from the player, so it wouldn't make much of a difference. The same goes for the skydome, which also just consists of a 2D-Texture spanned over a dome. But enough talk, time to show you the results of our work! We always greatly appreciate feedback on our works, so we can further improve it. c: (click on the image for a better resolution)
This concludes this issue of our DevLog. We hope you're also around next time! We plan on including some individual updates from our team-members, right off what they're currently working on to give you a insight of the work on the project c: Until then!
