The past few weeks working on SuperHero in Training, our in development VR Action Platformer, has been pretty exciting for the team. We’ve been focused on talking to a lot of potential advisors at companies such as Vive, Oculus, Twitch, and more. Outside of meetings we’ve been working on hard on the development of the first set of levels for SuperHero in Training. We’ve done the following:
- Created handpainted Substance Designer Materials to get a more stylized look
- Started blocking out the second set of levels inside of Unity
- Strategizing how we’re going to communicate the world to players
Stylized Substance Materials
After we released our last dev log one of our followers told us that the game was starting to look “dull and boring”. We took a look at the art in the game and released they were right our game’s art had gone from a saturated color palette to a more greyscale palette. To fix this we spent a good amount of time researching different art styles inside of game’s and learning how to achieve a stylized realistic look. To get started with this we created the below substance materials based on what we picture the game looking like.
We plan to start adding them to the in-game levels over the next week. Once these materials are in-game we’ll also be taking a look at the particle FX and user interface (menus, buttons, etc).
Blocked out Level 6
Level six is a bit special to SuperHero in Training’s design as this was the first level where we really started understanding the environmental hazards we wanted to add to the game. Below you can see a few images showcasing the variety of sections inside of level six.
We also used the block out scene inside of Unity as a way to set up an organizational strategy for level going forward. This makes it so that it’s much easier to edit levels and go from a block out state to an Alpha art state. The scene’s design focuses on using “sections” that act as rooms with major features and hallways highlighting quicker and tighter movement.
Communicating the World
As we get closer to releasing an update for the game we’ve been focusing on the overall story for SuperHero in Training. We’ve been creating a lore document and talking to a few people to get feedback on the intended universe and storyline. We’ve also been deciding on what elements we’re going to use in-game to communicate the story. One of the elements will be the Intergalactic League of Superheroes’ logo/symbol being shown throughout the training facility. Below is a draft of what we believe the symbol will look like:
We’ve also been finishing off the design for the player’s anti-force suit (the customizable suit the player’s character uses to do their hero training).
Conclusion
Over the past few weeks, we’ve put more time into the actual development of the game and are seeing some nice results. With the holiday season started we plan to use this “break” time to put more hours into the game’s development so that we can push out an update with more content and new art. Over the next week we plan to:
- Block out Level 7 and 8
- Start adding the new materials to levels
- Prepping to release an update of the game on itch, gamejolt, and indiedb
Thank you for reading this dev log!
SuperHero in Training Dev Log #3 was originally published in SuperHero in Training DevLog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.