I wouldn't consider myself a level designer at all, in fact this is my first time designing anything of the sort, but yeah, I've been super hard at work these past two days to get a super basic preliminary block out done for the "main location" of my next project. The basic premise of this is that it's a first-person game set in a restaurant. Day in day out, you perform typical tasks like cleaning the joint, dealing with pests, serving customers etc while you get into dumb hijinks with your co-workers. It's supposed to have this sort of slice-of-life sitcom feel to it, very light-hearted, dumb, goofy and fun. I've always been enamoured with the idea of setting an entire game in a single location.
One of the main people I respect in game dev - Warren Spector - spoke of the idea of the "one city block game" in that he'd set a game in a single city block or building and attempt to simulate it perfectly with all of its people, mantelpieces and cockroaches. I vehemently believe in the idea of smaller, deeper game worlds chock full of detail (think Kamurocho from Yakuza) and I kinda want to achieve the same thing here. Emphasis on a smaller scale world while being able to interact with a large, varied cast. It's also a lot more manageable of a project as a solo dev. I haven't properly decided on an engine or anything yet but I'll probably work with UE4 here. I'm just way more comfortable with it and blueprints than I am with Unity.
Anyways, here's an overhead look at the restaurant and a super quick fly through in Blender. I use the term "block out" here but this is extremely basic and none of the assets in this will actually be used, this is more of a visual reference that'll be used for when I start work on creating the modular assets to build the actual thing in-engine. It's also a nice visual thing I can keep at the back of my head for when I imagine how the game will be played ...
i'm not the only one that does this right...?
I'm hoping to conduct a proper, comprehensive art test once I'm done with Punchline! For now though, here's a small modular floor tile and a box I textured in Photoshop cuz why not.
It's seriously great seeing everyone's output in this thread. There's so many talented people here. I've said this before and I'll say it again, this is the most blessed thread on Era.
