Who Turned Out the Dam Lights?

I spent a bit of time working on my next level this week, and with it something I’ve been planning since January: the Dam.

Most of the levels I’ve shown up to this point have been pretty flat. The reason for that is that, since around my second demo video, boats have actually been locked to a single plane – just for the sake of keeping the physics stuff simple. But I knew I didn’t want it to stay like that forever.

After all, locks are (to me, at least) one of the more interesting and iconic mechanical elements of a canal. Plus, the locks and dams at the Delaware & Raritan Canal were a big part of what gave me the idea for this game in the first place – so it’d feel a little wrong of to me to leave them out.

The idea for gameplay is pretty simple: locks act as a timed gate, which will raise or lower boats inside them. It’s building off the moving obstacle in the previous map, with a moving component that’s necessary to complete the stage, rather than just being a nuisance.

Obviously, this level isn’t complete yet, as I was trying to just get the feel of the main mechanic down, first. I think this is going to be a simpler stage than the previous overall, though – just because I want to pace out the introduction of game elements a bit. I’m taking a bit of time to work on level geometry, too – because the different heights requires something a bit different in terms of layout.

Aside from all this dam stuff, I’ve also started trying out some shaders and render tools.

I’m not super committed to any of them yet, but I’ve been tentatively using the Simple Toon shader from the asset store, and I like the results well enough. I’ve got a fair bit of adjusting to do, but I like the idea of keeping the art style simple and colorful as I go.

Lastly, as I was setting up the shaders, I learned something new and fun about what happens when you forget a decimal point in default renderer’s ambient occlusion settings. And then mix that with multiple scenes. Take a look.

Whoops.

Anyways, thanks for reading!