Official Whiteboxing

Let's kick off a discussion about whiteboxing. Probuilder and Polybrush are included in the project, so it should be easy to do it using those. Take the character controller in the project, and whitebox some levels to get a sense of scale, obstacle placement, and verticality. No need to be specific, and don't use external assets as a test.

Also, there's no need to open a Pull Request on Github for now. Post screenshots of your work in this thread so we can keep refining using each other's inputs!

Whiteboxing cards are in this deck.

For the environments, refer to the story within the Game Design deck.

 

hey is the plan to keep the camera an orbit cam? earlier it was mentioned the game would operate similar to Tunic but without a lockon system. Tunic uses a fixed rotation camera, that's especially important because it allows for combat/positioning the character without a lockon system much easier than an orbit cam does. This would affect the level design a considerable amount so I'm just wondering.

 

I am very newbie on level design matters and I'm wondering In what way does that affect the whiteboxing process.

 

It would change the angle the world was viewed from. Obstacles like trees, cliffs, buildings would need to be positioned to maintain sightlines with the places the player would be expected to be. With a fixed camera, the angle would never change. With an orbit cam, the camera can rotate around these obstacles as the player moves. Right now the camera does these actions automatically, however in a combat scenario having the camera swing around could disorient a player trying to attack/avoid an enemy. This is normally why lock on systems are used with orbit cams, but it was mentioned earlier that there probably wouldn't be lockon. Imagine playing dark souls without a lock on system. Some of this issue could be rectified by making the orbit cam not automatically change rotation with player movement, but only change based on player camera control, but that's not how it's currently configured (or at least when I last checked)

 

New to using Probuilder or Polybrush? Not to worry!
These few tutorials should have you up and running in no time at all. You can tackle it all with this Asset Management with FBX Exporter, ProBuilder, and PolyBrush Project, or simply refer to the tools you need with the following tutorials:

• Probuilder
  • Editing with ProBuilder
  • Working with Shapes in ProBuilder
  • Working with Poly Shapes in ProBuilder
• Polybrush
  • Sculpting with Polybrush
  • Scatter Objects with Polybrush

When you begin whiteboxing (often referred to as grayboxing - the traditional technique of blocking out the level with simple shapes to see if the level design supports the gameplay before creating the final art assets for the level) you may find it handy to first draw out some your ideas either on graph paper or with a simple graphic program on your computer. We've discussed a few points that can help catch you up to speed in this Level Design thread.

 

Oh I see, thank you for the info! I guess we would need the final camera working with all its features if we want to accurately whitebox everything.

 

it should still be possible to start work, but the layout might need to change, which is exactly what whiteboxing is good for

 

Awesome! Thanks for the advice and explanation.

 

Hello people, hope you all have a great week. I played around with the project a bit starting with the Beach Tutorial level (according to the Arrival Card and Game Map) using ProBuilder and Polybrush. I did the whiteboxing after the discussions in the LevelDesign, Dialogue&Narrative and CookingGameplay thread, so I hope my attempt shows our collaborative approach.

Link to blog:
You can see what I made here , there is also a 3 min video explaining what I did and why. I’ve been trying to upload it straight to the Forum but was unsuccessful, so I think a blog post is a better option than stacking the thread. You are more than welcome to change anything you don’t like, (the cliffs can be easily moved for example), this is just a proposal. I will soon submit a separate Github link from my account (not doing any Pull request no worries) should anyone want to download this and play around too.

2nd edit:
I am posting a vimeo link here since the quality video in the blog post was a bit downgraded.

Because the file size of the scene was a bit too large at 138mb (story of my life) and Github has a 100mb threshold i guess I need to use Git LFS. I am a total noobie in these things and coulnd't yet figure out how to do it, so if you want to download the project and play around here is a GoogleDrive link. (github vs me: 1-0, lost the battle but not the war)

 

Thanks for going over how to enable the probuilder materials @itsLevi0sa , I'm only getting started and that was annoying me. I've been meaning to start work on some level design stuff soon but I've been a bit busy this week.

I do have some comments. The first area definalty should be used to introduce the basics of the cooking system. I was going to contextualize this as an npc needed to open a path/bridge/door to the villiage, but first needed a meal to fill them up before they were strong enough to open that path.

Also on the fireballs to destroy crates thing. Do we want that to be an innate ability of the chick or a dish that gives the chick that power?

 

@itsLevi0sa That looks so fun, nicely done! From where you have Bard Hare (BH) positioned, it looks like the player could ignore him if they so choose and just go right on up the path. I had imagined he's blocking the path to the town, or at least a cut-scene is triggered where he appears once the player gets close enough to the path, and I even wrote a little dialogue interaction (prose for BH and regular words for Hamlet) for how it might go (to be added to whatever dialogue shared document is created).

This jives with my thoughts that BH is the impediment. Part of the dialogue I created has BH requesting a dish once he finds out that Hamlet is a chef before giving him more information about the festival and the town.

If it's a dish, the player gets the cooking tutorial somewhere around the free roam area maybe? Or in the BH's house area?

If it's innate, then BH triggering the cooking tutorial makes sense to me, kind of like a "prove your worth to me first" thing.

Kind of curious how this decision would affect controls, but that's a discussion for a different thread I think.

 

Hey, no worries everyone has their own pace, that shouldn’t mean you shouldn't post your work because someone else posted something first (I am saying this for everyone in general). In fact I will refrain from doing another similar post until someone else takes over and goes through the process of making something as well. By the way, your camera orbit concern and how it could affect the design you were so right, it really changed my perspective (literally) on how I worked and the decisions I made. Also glad if the ProBuilder tips helped, that’s what worked for me at least.

So this was mainly a draft to get a sense of scale and gameplay duration, there is definitely space for more input like a cooking tutorial that should be indeed introduced. I mean, I don’t know exactly what is going to happen with Bard Hare. Maybe we find him with a fire already lit and we cook something together as he sings or he invites us in a challenge as suggested. Maybe we have previously found a utensil or ingredient at his place that we picked and the Bard Hare could use to show us something. Maybe that could have a comic relief moment with the Bard Hare saying “nice [ingredient], I have a similar one, I store it in my favorite special barrel” or something, which is the one you smashed and got it from, silly I know, but you get the point! I like the idea of “cook first” and then proceed, that you are suggesting.

I think Phoenixes should have that as an innate power, but maybe they need some energy (from feeding) to do that?

Good call!Maybe the ascending path could be changed to be at the other side of the gulf where the Bard Hare currently is, so that he stands in front of it then.

PS: I wonder how we could proceed for the other levels as well. Should we continue the level design discussions here on the Whiteboxing thread or on the previous Level Design one and use this thread for work showcasing? My proposal is to close the previous Level Design thread as it is a bit outdated and overwhelming for a newcomer. Use this Whiteboxing thread for the continuation of the discussions and actual design implementations. And just add one separate new thread just for the Town because it’s gonna need some discussions mainly focused on that. What do you think?

 

This ... right ... HERE! 10 out of 10 would play again!

Oh no, Phoenix energy meter? Does @ChemaDmk approve?

If the path is moved to behind BH, it's still a good goal in the distance, but then does the previous space become wasted (e.g. what would encourage the player to turn in that direction to notice the other side of BH's house)?

Since Gregory already linked the old thread as an intro thread up above, I'd agree to close it for reference and then build from here. As to making new threads, the UI Wireframing is all being done in 1 thread, so why not all level designs done here?

Also, for the few maps that I've drawn before, I've never used ProBuilder or PolyBrush, just sketched something out flat on a 2D surface. Is that helpful here or not?

 

Definitely! We should first discuss on paper before going 3d, as @GregoryLane suggested:

Please share here everything you do As for the threads I just fear that this one could easily get piled up and the Town needs a special attention I think without other level discussions distractions. Anyway, let's see what others think in regards to all the above concerns mentioned.

 

This is a GREAT start, I love almost all of it
That said, here I ask a few questions (and make an attempt at answering them)
1) Why are those canes there? If they are so high that the player cannot pass through them, then no one else can too, right? So why did nobody did cut them already? As it is now, the BH is the only one allowed to get to that part of the island (using his own house). And since that is the most accessible part of the island (for you can dock boats there) I'd consider this a little weird;
2) How exactly does the tutorial happen? Is there a textbox telling us what to do, with words spoken by no one but the game itself? Or is there a character speaking to us? And what event makes the dialogue box appear? Us getting close to the BH house? There is a sign with written instructions that we have to interact with to read?
3) How do we know that there is a cooking festival going on? Does the BH know about it? And what is he doing under that tree?

There may be many answers to these questions, but here is a solution that tries to answer all of them at once:

My first drawing represents whan the player sees when the cutscene finishes and Hamlet steps on the island: a wide beach with some trees, and a more detailed point of interest (very noticeable also thanks to the rule of thirds) in the distance.



The player can explore this area, but there's not much he can do (if not maybe collect some random low-value ingredient from the ground) and after learning the movement controls he heads to the point of interest.



Here I merged down the BH's house and @itsLevi0sa 's idea of the bridge between the beach and the rest of the island. BH's house is build (or better, digged) on two levels, with two doors. The great obstacle this times aren't wild canes, but some crates and chests that someone put there. There a sign on one of them. It reads "Bard Hare's food supplies. DO NOT TOUCH, STEAL OR INTERACT WITH IT IN ANY WAY". Immediately after the player stops reading, a popup appears, in the middle of the screen, saying "Press X to destroy the crates" (I played it in my mind and tbh it could be hilarious).

When the player destroys the first crate, we hear a scream from somewhere. I don't have an exact line in mind, but something like "Who is stealing my stuff?"
Camera shifts and we see the BH, looking at us. When he comes close, he doesn't recognize us, so he guesses we're foreigners. He realizes that with all his stuff obstructing the road he wasn't allowing anyone to pass, and he apologizes, adding that he has too many things going on on his mind. He even alludes to some kind of event that could make him famous in the whole island, but he doesn't elaborate on that.
He says that if we want further details on what he was talking about, we must do something for him. Somewhere around the beach there should be a "rare" ingredient that he can't find, and he needs it for a special recipe. We have to get that ingredient and bring it to him. We can take all the time we want: it will take a while to remove all the crates from the passage, the're pretty heavy...

Here we can explore the the island again, this time with a bit more freedom: we can destroy stuff, and even burn canes with our chick (maybe the BH tould us how to do that), and behind some canes is exactly where we find the thing that BH was looking for.

When we bring the item to BH, we found out that he has removed all the crates (until now he was standing in front of them, blocking us from destroying them) and the road is clear. As a reward for the ingredient, BH tells us about the cooking competition and wishes us good luck in case we want to participate.



Edit: Ok maybe the bard hare is't competing in a cooking festival (or is he? Who said we can't have more than one passion?), but this could still work. Maybe he was asked to write a song for the cooking festival, or one dedicated to the Elder Chef, or to do something else. All details here can be added/removed/changed

 

hey I've been having a few ideas for level design tools, submitting my first one. If you've ever used UE4 you may be familiar with being able to right-click on a position in the editor and start from that position, this works similarly where it lets you set a Spawn Location with only a mouse click

https://github.com/UnityTechnologies/open-project-1/pull/138

 

Seems like a pretty handy tool! Even coming from...You know who. Nice to think of such tools and start discussing ideas like these.

 

this would also be a good place for a PR to enable the URP support in progrids

 

Being an engineer, living with the conservation of energy all the time, I definitely think that poor chick needs some feeding. No wonder it doesn't grow (or does it?).

But there is another engineering question. Which building technologies does townsfolk (the Eyes) have to hold the ceiling of the temple up? Do we go for a post and lintel construction, like e.g. the Egypts (By René Hourdry - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83565824):


or will there be vaults? Corbeled vaults, wich are no real vaults technically, were already known in bronze age, in india and by the Maya. They look like that (By Disdero (talk · contribs) - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3354118):



or real vaults and arches, like - of cause - in gothic cathedrals, but there are earlier examples too, like this (By Unknown author - "Wonders of the Past" vol. 2, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4186752)
.

In my opinion a people that only has blunt weapons can't have the understanding of forces working in a building to construct real arches, but they might come up with corbeled vaults, so I would suggest the entrance of the temple to be something like this (By Emilio Labrador from Davie (South Florida), USA - Temple Entrance, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39288952):
.
Inside I could imagine rows of columns holding the ceiling up in addition.

I also can't see the townsfolk have the technology required to build cars. So I would imagine they have carts, pulled by some tamed critters perhaps? The carts might be passing now and then or can even be used in the story.

 

This is really good research, thanks for sharing.

As for Phoenix chick growing/being fed, seems like we've decided to not mess with it due to introducing yet another system in our limited time project. Would definitely be something cool to do if we could though, maybe later on if time permits.

Also, if you check out the latest game flow Miro board, looks like the temple is not a thing any more since the story changed drastically.

The idea of townsfolk with carts and tamed critters is a cool idea, just gotta figure out the impact on existing systems and if new art/animation assets need to be created for something like that.

 

Maybe the chick just get's some - unaccounted - scraps from the cooking e.g. after an ingredient has been cut up. We could make an animation of some scraps being thrown into the chickens cage (where the ground isn't seen) and the chick picking on the ground some few times. Another idea might be that the "phoenix chick burner" is started with a feeding animation. In the animation a scrap is thrown at the chicken which catches it with it's wide open mouth, then it closes the mouth and opens it again with flames coming out.

We would also want to define the townsfolks lighting technology - if we go for interior scenes or night scenes at all. I feel electrical lighting is far to advanced. So we would be left with torches and candles. But how about some special lanterns filled with caged fireflies (I imagine a particle effect at LOD0 but some pretty normal point light or spot light from LOD1)? The fireflies don't necessarily need to glow orange but possibly greenish or turquoise so we might have some cold color for lighting in addition to the warm colors from torches and candles.

Of course I also imagine the phoenix chick to emit light, yet I assume Hamlet's phoenix chick is the only one around. It wouldn't credibly emit enough light for lighting entire scenes.

 

@itsLevi0sa went over this in their blog post.

You have to enable a menu option to make the probuilder materials work correctly with URP.

 

aargh so many pros!

 

Hi @Amel-Unity, I’ve been trying to do it, but unfortunately I run into an issue I do not think I can tackle myself (I have watched the Dapper Dino video). The issue is that the scene file is too large (at 128MB) which exceeds the 100MB threshold that I get as a warning on GitHub Desktop whenever I try to commit. I managed to commit by using Git LFS which is used for large file objects. But now I’ve run into another issue regarding the push by getting the error: failed to push some refs. This regards again only the large scene file, if it’s excluded I can push anything else with no problems.
I have been following discussions from other people having the same issues ( link1 + link2 ) and it seems that “you can't push LFS assets to a public fork unless the original repo already has LFS objects, or you have push access to the original repo. This is a server side rule to prevent abuse.”
So I guess the option for now is to give you the GoogleDrive link with the scene as an exported package with all dependencies included so that you can add an LFS object to the project and thus enable any following LFS pushes by the community, if this is how it goes? At this point I am not even sure if it’s worth discussing how to tackle the LFS issue or to find a way to keep the file size under 100MB. Maybe I should retry making the Probuilder planes smaller or lower their divisions..

Apologies if some things are too obvious, it’s the first time I go through the process. Let me know if there is something else I can do

 

Argh, you've hit the LFS file size limit

No, it's not. I had to learn it the hard way a couple of years ago too.

Basically, to allow files bigger than 100MB each on the repo we would have to enable Git LFS, which is an extension to Git which treats these large files in a different way. This would be no issue in a small, organised team, but with the amount of people we have here we would quickly, very quickly hit the limits imposed by Github and then the cost for the repo would quickly skyrocket
So... no Git LFS for us!

So the solution is that we need to keep all files under 100MB. Is the scene the offending one? Can you Prefab some of those scenery geometry? Would that help? (thinking)

It might also be possible that even if you make the scene smaller, to open a PR you'd first need to remove LFS from your fork repo.

 

that seems to work

 

@Zold2012 thank you so much!! I had no idea that would make such a difference. You + ciro made my day

 

other things im noticing: if these cliffs are all duplicated objects, you could prefab the object before duplicating it, that would save a lot of disk space. Also whitebox geometry doesn't need to be this detailed, just think about the general shape or silloutte and use the minimum amount of geometry needed for it.

use wireframe mode to find detailed geometry that could be simplified

for instance, the ground is mostly a plane, the extra verts are just adding to the file size

 

@Zold2012 thank you for the tips, I knew the divisions were going to cause a problem, they just made Polybrush look a little more fun as I was making the cliffs, but this should definitely be more optimized at this scale. I really appreciate that you go through the process, this is really helpful. Did you end up using purely ProBuilder for the cliffs at the left image? Also, if you'd like to make the scene more optimized should we better have this version added then? Or should we have both versions (initial+optimized) to show the improvements? I leave it to team.

 

It's definitely a valid way for getting an idea out. For sharing, and especially since we're up against the git size limits, it's probably best to only upload an optimized scene. Even with the prefabs separated, the scene data is >100mb as it is.

Yeah, mostly the New Poly Shape tool (good for drawing out walls) then Triangulating the faces of the top of the geometry and fiddling with the elevation to get some good shapes.

 

Cool, I'll leave the pull request to you then!

 

alright, got it down to 1 mb with no external prefabs

wrestling github rn. when i switched to the whiteboxing branch it killed the tree prefabs, so those will have to be replaced

 

okay. i had to do it through gitgui cause the github desktop client wasn't able to fetch the new whiteboxing branch and was being generally difficult to use.
https://github.com/UnityTechnologies/open-project-1/pull/145

 

what do you mean by killed? any idea what might have caused the issue?

It worked fine for me (meaning I could see the upstream/whiteboxing branch if that's what you meant), just saying, but glad you found another way.

 

i think the whiteboxing branch moved where the prefabs were? idk. i had previously forked the project before the whiteboxing branch was created, i think that caused an issue.

 

Me too, but I don't think this should cause a problem. Once I clicked on fetch I got the new branch with the "upstream/ " in front of it.

This is how it looks like. But maybe you should look at ciro's post on the "Git questions" thread, that went through the git fork-branch-pull workflow if it helps, and post any issues there for the more experienced to help.

 

Nice idea, I merged it and renamed it because it can be used for more than Spawn locations.
Actually, one thing: it's in the main branch now, since that's where you opened the PR

 

Given concerns with the camera angle I ended up roughly whiteboxing the town. I will raise a PR if you like it. First painted a map of the town on the terrain (these of cause aren't intended to be final textures):
and here is some overview:


Here are views from the players perpektive, on the left side can it be seen where the player is on the map (albeit tiny). The first shows the players perspektive coming from the beach:

Next he is standing in middle of the market place in the town center where the cooking festival is to take place. He is looking towards and over the lake (the lake is in fact there to make it logical that there are no houses on that side):

The last image is to show that it is possible to achieve some town-like look even with comparably few houses:

 

To give to all the things we're making a direction, I thought it could be useful to have a general idea of how the island should look, so I made a rough map using this method.

While I moved around my dice, in search for a decent-looking shape, I thought it might be cool to have the result remotely remember something related to food/eating.

The first attempt resulted in a distorted and weird pacman with an open mouth, with a smaller landmass as a piece of some kind of food; but it didn't look good, and plus it was something completely different from what has already been done.

Thinking about the whiteboxing of the island, I remembered that the island was given, with the stone bridge connecting a bigger part and a smaller part, the last one being where the game starts.

With that (and food) in mind, I made a second attempt, which I liked better. Here are the stages of the map-making and the (kind of) final result.









Obviously this can be expanded upon, changed or completely remade from scratch, but I think having it is better than nothing and going blind.

(Apologies if a map already existed and I just didn't find it)

Edit: I'm also sharing this article about level design. Haven't had time to go through all of it, but in the meantime here it is.

 

@NicknEmart I empathize with your concern regarding the shape of the island, a sense of the general map would indeed be helpful. Associating the shape with a food or object could maybe add a touch to the starting wide-view cinematic (ie if the island is named after a cheese and we made it look like cheese) however it won’t make much difference to the player’s gameplay per se, as he/she won’t experience it from such a view. So not sure if it's worth to link the form to something yet, I guess it’s going to take clearer shape as time passes!

Also, thanks for sharing @Smurjo, nice to see other people going through the Whiteboxing process.
Since you jumped straight into a concept, I do have some comments: since the Townsfolk are basically the only inhabitants of the island it doesn’t really make sense for the layout to resemble that of a crossroad. It’s definitely reasonable to place a big square in the middle since this is where our main event is going to happen, but the rest of the “town”.. Shouldn’t it create a more “neighbourhood” - community feel? It makes more sense for houses to form “clusters” instead of linear arrays – as this would be more practical to help communication/everyday interactions and add to a sense of protection for the inhabitants.
Generally, I would strongly encourage starting 2d + spark discussions before jumping straight into 3d solutions (even if it’s a draft), don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate your effort and time in this Another thing to keep in mind is that the Town is going to have some Townsfolk activity since we are going to interact with them. So we kinda need to leave some “space” for these interactions to happen, the dialogues that will take place and the animations we might potentially see.

What I want to say: We can’t really design a "town", if we don’t imagine the life in that town first
That’s why I created the updated Level Design thread to start some discussions there first and keep this thread for the Whiteboxing stage that should come as a result of these discussions. (@NicknEmart we are going to need more of those sketches of yours with your dungeon master’s eye!)

PS: I don't mind if continue the Level Design discussions here, I thought it could be more organized this way, but I could be wrong.

 

@itsLeviOsa Sure, with the island being a civilization different from ours, it could have different social structures. But I don't think our player will spend many thoughts on social differentiation or what the townsfolk do day in day out or why the town is layed out the way it is.

Extremly likely - as he has a computer or console - our player isn't part of an indigenious people with a flat social hierarchy and no personal property (with personal property there are inevitably people with more and people with less). The player will recognize our roads as roads and our town as town, because he is used to towns with roads and something resembling a town center. We don't need to explain anything if we stick with the usual, whereas we will have to if we don't. For now, I don't see value in explaining such things, we will already have considerable work in cutscenes or bard hare songs to explain the essential part of our narrative.

I imagine one road coming from the beach and one going into the forest - even if the townfolk wouldn't have any practical use for such roads. For our player the road from the beach is very useful to guide him to town and the road to the forest will help him to find his ingredients. He will not typically question why the townfolk would have build the roads.

 

Yes, you're right about this. It wasn't even my intention to make something that the player would recognize by looking at a map or an opening cutscene, it was more like a limitation I gave myself thinking it would help (and it did). While redrawing the map on top of the dice, I even put thought into NOT making it too obvious that it reprsented something, as it would have seemed too artificial and kind of ridiculous.
It's more like an easter egg for the most attentive players - and something that sets the mood for us making the game