Welcome to the Dungeon

Remember Thomas? He’s working with instructor Mike M. as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program. His latest project, a dungeon crawler, keeps getting better and better. Watch the video to see his finished first level for yourself!

It’s all about the details when a designer polishes up a game or a level. See the skull? Thomas finished that model in Blender, the 3D modeling software, and imported it into Unity as a game prop. Evil, old dungeons like the one featured in this dungeon crawler of course have skulls lying around, so Thomas placed several around his level. Just that one detail goes a long way towards creating the atmosphere Thomas wanted for his game!

Another detail, lighting, carries equal weight. To accurately recreate the visibility of a dungeon, Thomas experimented with Unity’s post-processing stack. The stack offers two lighting effects, ambient occlusion and bloom, that can improve the realism of a scene. Ambient occlusion controls how much indirect light can illuminate a surface. Bloom imitates light’s reflective properties by diffusing glare. With Mike M.’s help, Thomas applied both effects to his level to darken cracks, crevices, and corners, and to soften the glow of any reflective surfaces. Look at the difference lighting makes to the dungeon’s realism!

With the level nearly finished, Thomas organized his game objects within Unity’s file system and fixed some flaws in his dungeon geometry. (Because even the smallest details matter.) Then he finalized his work and declared the level complete! Next time, he’ll continue with level 2.

Congratulations, Thomas. Your dungeon crawler looks amazing and it’s still only the first level! Keep up the hard work, and let us know how the next two levels go. We’re eager to play the game for ourselves!