Week of the Deadline

Techno Towers

This week we worked hard to meet the release deadline for the 1.0.0 release of Techno Towers. This week I finished polishing and adding VFX to the relics, created 3D versions of all of the projectiles, created VFX for death, made icons for various UI elements, created an enemy model, tweaked the game's post-processing, made various materials, tweaked game balance, reworked the acid tower, decorated level 4, and many other general bug fixes and polishing.

Relic VFX

Here are some images and videos of some of the VFX I created.

Death VFX

When creating this I wanted the effect to be dramatic and in your face.

Elemental Enemy Model

I wanted the model to have a large area that would change color but my limited modeling ability forced me to choose something simple. These factors lead me to this design and I am happy with how it turned out.

Post Processing Tweaks

I adjusted the post-processing so that it would use different settings when rendering large and small objects. I achieved this by using UE4's custom render depth stencil feature. This adjustment was to make it so that small detailed objects wouldn't turn into black blobs when zoomed out.

Lava Material

I created this material for the lava rivers in level 3. I also made the lava able to flow in any direction, be scaled, and have any color.

Level 4

When decorating the level I wanted to tell a story and for every prop to have at least some vague purpose. I wanted it to tell a story of some desperate but once mighty civilization. On the right side of the map, there are massive circuit boards with some unknown importance, perhaps it was the purpose of civilization. All along the top of the map, you can see craters and bombs; however, they are stopped by an energy wall. This wall has been broken in one place and you can see bombs scattered sparsely about the rest of the map. One of these bombs is massive and enemies will spawn from it during the level implying that the bombs were sent by the same enemies that you are fighting as the player. On the left side of the map, you can see some buildings with various industrial machinery. One of these buildings appears to be powering the wall along the top of the map. In the bottom right you can see massive scrap heaps implying that the civilization that built this place was wasteful but could do mighty things judging by the size of the parts in the scrap heap.