Now that we have experience in working on all parts of the game in 2D and 3D, let's spend the next few chapters creating a full-featured game. We will be creating a first-person shooter; however, instead of shooting a gun to damage our enemies, we will be shooting a picture in a survival horror environment, similar to the Fatal Frame series of games and the recent indie title DreadOut. To get started on our project, we're first going to look at creating our level or, in this case, our environments starting with the exterior.
In the game industry, there are two main roles in level creation: an environment artist and a level designer.
An environment artist is a person who builds the assets that go into the environment. He/she uses tools such as 3Ds Max or Maya to create the model and then uses other tools such as Photoshop to create textures and normal maps.
The level designer is responsible for taking the assets that the environment artist created and assembling them in an environment for players to enjoy. He/she designs the gameplay elements, creates the scripted events, and tests the gameplay. Typically, a level designer will create environments through a combination of scripting and using a tool that may or may not be in development as the game is being made. In our case, that tool is Unity.
Note
One important thing to note is that most companies have their own definition for different roles. In some companies, a level designer may need to create assets and an environment artist may need to create a level layout. There are also some places that hire someone to just do lighting or just to place meshes (called a mesher) because they're so good at it.
In this chapter, we take on the role of an environment artist who has been tasked to create an outdoor environment. We will use assets that I've placed in the example code as well as assets already provided to us by Unity for mesh placement. In addition, you will also learn some tips and tricks when doing level design.
This project will be split into a number of tasks. It will be a simple step-by-step process from the beginning to end. Here is the outline of our tasks:
- Creating the exterior environment—terrain
- Beautifying the environment—adding water, trees, and grass
- Building the atmosphere
- Designing the level layout and background
As in Chapter 1, 2D Twin-stick Shooter, you will need Unity installed on your computer, but we will be starting a new project from scratch.
This chapter uses graphical assets that can be downloaded from the example code provided for this book on Packt's website:
https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support
In addition, the completed project and source files are located there for you if you have any questions or need clarification.