And on the 7th Day, he closed the Scene Manager…

Oh boy, I made it in time for Saturday this time.

I’ve spent a good week doing work on level management, and set up a bunch of placeholder stuff for a game menu. I can actually move forward with UX again! I think.

I’ve really put this thing through the wringer since the last one – though it doesn’t quite show it in the video.

To start with, I’ve finally finished a complete overhaul to the way I handle loading levels – I can now load in segments of a level piece-by-piece, and lay them out to create an extended series of challenges. Functionally a golf course, I guess. But with boats.

Theoretically I can also load the player in at any point now (though I haven’t given that a thorough test) – which opens up the ability to better to save states, quicker resets, etc.

I ended up smoothing out my two levels – and as a result they look a bit worse than previous videos. I had some issues with geometry and object placement, which – compounded by the back-end work I was doing – were making things irritating. I bulldozed everything, made sure all this works, and going forward I’m going to redecorate the environment.

Additionally: I have a main menu now, which lets you select a level! There’s only ONE level, in fairness, but the menu script actually does assignment stuff, so I should be able to easily pop future levels into it and have them ready to play.

Now that I’ve sufficiently beaten back the specter of scene management, I want to do some work on polishing the game – sounds, boat physics, generally smoothing out the transitions between scenes. Stuff that makes what I already have look and feel better, on a basic level.

Most of all… I’m looking forward to not touching Unity’s scene manager for a little bit 🙂

Have a good weekend!