The time to reflect on part three is upon us.  I had predicted that this section would get completed much faster than the previous one, the type of prediction that usually curses a project.  In most ways it did go faster than the previous level, even though the overall time I put in was probably more.  This level is both larger and more complex, so my previous experience helped keep development from getting out of hand (I will talk a little about that later).

I have to admit that it wasn’t as smooth as I had originally hoped though.  Most of this is due to SunkenTemple tileset, which comprises most of the level.  I thought the transition to this tileset was going to be a straightforward as was to move from the Crypt set to the Cave one.  It didn’t really work out that way.

The original plan for the Jungle and Village, with the ending incomplete.

The first problem is how the floor tiles fit together.  The trim pieces for the Cave set are really simple to work with and I had gotten used to planning a level with those pieces in mind.  The SunkenTemple ones do not fit the same way, so the first parts of the plan I made could not be perfectly recreated.  The second problem is that the floor pieces are poorly organized, so not all of them show up when “floor” is checked in the editor palette.  I also recall some pieces not having a collision mesh assigned to them when I started.  These are the type of little things that add up to a larger pain and it slowed me down near the beginning.

Overview of the final level, much different from the last one.

There are other irritating things about how the walls fit together (which are organized in full, half, and quarter sizes) that make transition not as smooth as I would have wanted.  This complaint may have been amplified by some of the things I did with the walls, so I could have made it a bit easier on myself.  My last complaint (getting too ranty here) is that the diagonal walls don’t display correctly on the map, instead it shows the opposite diagonal which makes the map look terrible.  I’m still looking for a fix, but I don’t know if I’ll find one before I finish the dungeon.

A closer look at the Jungle Shrine area.

I mentioned before about keeping development from getting out of hand, this mostly concerns the organization of the level.  Well labelled groups are a must when making a layout of this size.  I have dozens of them breaking the level down into areas (8 of them) and type of piece.  Since the editor does not have a way of locking a group like one would in photoshop, it pays to have everything properly organized so that visibility can be toggled.  It is also very helpful when cleaning up the map to have pieces split into groups that will or won’t show on the map.  I had organized the Crypt and Cave sections with groups before, but it took much more to keep from getting lost in this level.

So I am moving on to designing the last section of the dungeon.  I only hope that this one hasn’t gotten too large, the load time in the editor is getting a little long.  Still, it is worth it because the result looks really good.  I have also been updating my progress on the Runic forums little by little, so check that out for additional screenshots.  I will make a gallery on this site soon so that there is a more complete collection.  Finally, here is one of the videos I uploaded to my Torchlight Development Playlist on YouTube for this level:

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