Today was one of those days.

After having some success the past couple of days, I hit a bit of a wall. When it comes to writing code or making something work behaviorally, I’m right there. When it comes to how things should look, I’m less so. I keep hoping something will coalesce, come together in a scheme. But perhaps it doesn’t work that way. Perhaps you have to actually make it happen. It ended up just being frustrating, almost to the point of wondering if you can even do it in the end.

I spent some time looking at 3D tile sets, many of which were nice.

I tried a couple of things in the game itself, including some block CG meshes, a stab at hexagonal tiles (won’t work for numerous reasons) and even just having a straight up texture behind the level.

Looks nice, but I’m not sure if it’s what I want. I’m not really interested in having either the same texture behind everything or just random ones not tied to some sort of purpose. But I don’t know what the purpose is yet.

Hexagonal tiles pose some interesting problems. First, you have to be really careful to make sure they meet up properly, which involves some mathematics that may not end up precise. Whereas rectangular tiles are really straightforward. The main problem with hex tiles, though, is UV mapping. The default mapping of a texture is… well, let’s just say it’s interesting. And unusable. And I haven’t worked out either how I’d want it to be or how to do what I don’t know yet. Overall, it adds complication with no perceivable benefit.

The game graph is on a hex grid, but there is absolutely no reason that the environment needs to be as well. And keeping them separate that way (in terms of different methodologies) helps to reinforce how unnatural the game’s “machine” is.

I had planned on exploring restricting node dragging, but I didn’t get to that experimentation. I did go through the 2D game and document all the levels I have so far, because those are the sort of “training” levels so far, and it will be important to have those, but also to have them organized properly. At least now I know what I’m starting with.

Day 24: time to sleep, perhaps to dream. Aye, there’s the rub. Where’s your muse when you need one?