Hello all! Firstly, I'm happy to report that I worked on Nightfall during the afternoon today, as opposed to just at night!! I'm pretty sure I haven't done that at all these past two weeks? Regardless, I'm glad I did! It means I'm really making progress on my work ethic, and I'm spending more time on the level without getting burned out. Unfortunately, it also means I have to think a little harder than usual to remember what I was spending time on. I'm still not recording my Pomodoros either, so maybe in the future I can tie that in and jot down what I spend each Pomodoro on as I do them!

Today's focus ended up being buildings. I know I said I wanted to focus on track layout, but the buildings here are the shell: they define the boundaries of the player's vision from the track, and as such are very important to how the track feels. I can't know what the "key frames" of the track are if I don't know the surrounding scenery; otherwise, I'm just adjusting track nodes arbitrarily.

If you recall from one of my first notebook pages, I noted a number of key points regarding building placement that I gathered from observing other levels. I've mulled it over a bit more while placing buildings today, and I took some research trips to other levels, Hexopolis and Contraband Delivery specifically. Here's some expanded building advice:

• Buildings' position in relation to the track is most important when it comes to the feel of the track; buildings close to the track produce a tighter atmosphere, whereas distant buildings naturally signal an open environment.
• Similarly, building density also plays a role. Lots of buildings close to the track will make it feel much more like a closed area, especially if you fill back multiple layers from the sides of the track itself.
• Vertical viewing area matters too! If you're up near the tops of buildings, you have a much better view of the sky than someone on the highway far below.
• Since those factors are the most important, the actual type of building doesn't matter; no one will notice whether you used EmpireBuildingBlock004 or EmpireBuildingBlock005. Really, all you need is a box with a few details to make it look believable, so slap on whatever arrangement of cubes strikes your fancy in the Buildings folder. Just try to maintain somewhat of a uniform aesthetic, and don't be afraid to aggressively reuse the same few buildings. (I know, I hate repeating things too!)

With this in mind, my approach with buildings at this early stage is to focus on location, not aesthetics (or at least not to the point where I'm spending lots of time detailing). In effect, I'm painting broad strokes with the buildings; or maybe "outlining" would be a better art term to borrow? Whatever it is, I'm sketching the general backdrop before I fill in the details, as far as the track perspective is concerned.

Since I really want to hammer home the feeling that you're in a large city, I jam-pack the sidelines with buildings as soon as you enter. The initial "country road" is around (what I think is) an average height relative to the buildings, maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the way up them. It's a little tight, but not unreasonable, and you still have a bit of breathing room. Then, you drop down to the highway, which is pretty much ground level when it comes to the buildings. They're a bit tighter now, but the wideness of the highway offsets that a bit; yet, the increased relative height of the buildings signals a greater scale. The arch lamps take care of distracting you from the more open sky. This far in, the city is "locking you in", in a sense.

The section I'm going to work on next becomes more open, where I want to draw attention to a larger scene, mostly below the track. I'm not sure exactly how I'll do that yet, but we'll find out!

I did some more busy work relating to biodomes and light performance today, but there's not much worth mentioning there. I'll certainly need to do a huge optimization pass before I can call this level done, but premature optimization is tedious and distracting, much like my penchant for detailing too early.

And with that, I've finished my first 11 days of regular Distance level editing! (I do have some time tomorrow, but I'll be preparing for my trip.) It was certainly a journey through various aspects of level design, as well as my own work ethic, but it was definitely worth it and I'm glad to have made it through! I've learned a ton from this experience, and hopefully I'll be back here soon once I get a bit more free time! I might even try to continue on during school by making this a weekly update instead.

Phew, I've been typing for at least 45 minutes and I really wanna catch a break and actually play a video game before I need to sleep. Thanks for following this far, and I'll be seeing you again soon~ ^_^