The Village is the hub world for Broken World, the player will find out where to go, and why this world is in shambles.
While the Village didn’t change a huge amount, there were some changes that need to be noted.
Recap of the Whitebox
Here is the last showcased image from the Whitebox.
Castle Changes
The first major change to the area was making the castle smaller again. The reason behind this was because a smaller castle fit the art assets we had better, and the previous castle was just too big – making it awkward to walk around.
Looking at premade assets
In one of the asset packs we gathered for this game, this was a demo scene in one of the packs, and was a massive help in figuring out how the effectively use all assets.
Huge changes to The Village
As shown by the image, there were huge changes to the Village in this project. Instead of the Village being split into an upper and lower section like it was in the demo, it was transformed into the upper section only for scope reasons.
Adding Props
Next was time to add props including harvestable trees, and different areas where NPCs are.
The Portals Location
As mentioned in the updated gameplay loop section of the main Broken World page, the way to traverse through the lands was now through different portals in The Village.
Castle Changes #2
While the castle did have to be reduced in size, it was a bit over the top in the original changes so once again, we scaled it back up.
Finishing off 1st props
For the final version of the first round of props, we added in castle walls to stop the player from jumping into the water below.
“The Basement”
The basement was the tutorial area of Broken World, which was a replacement for the underbelly of The Village first showcased in the Whitebox. This was created by Hugo of the programming team as I was working on other sections of the game.
Timestamp: 0:12 – 1:55
Painting the environment
One of the next steps was painting the environment with new materials to give it roads, and thinner grass for nicer aesthetics.
More Props
Another prop pass so the world didn’t feel so empty (grass & flowers + extra walls).
Post Processing & Lighting
Post Processing was another big step for this area and made it feel much better with nicer shadows and better fog in the distance.
NPCs with animations
One of the biggest changes was adding NPCs that walk around the world – some being ones the player can even talk to.
More NPC Animations
Almost all NPCs were hand animated by the three of us working on the game, with the exception of walking NPCs.
Adding new NPCs
And finally, a large amount of NPCs were added to give the player people to talk to, and to get quests from.
Noah Rigden 