Block Building Prototyping
Early on we knew we wanted to improve on one of the most important parts of the game. During pre-production we highlighted a number of areas to investigate, the first was:
Tech building with a controller Prototype
We wanted support for the gamepad from the very start of development. To achieve this we built a number of prototypes to figure out how to best deal with block rotation. One of our favoured approaches was holding Y to enter block rotation mode. Here is a video of some very early stages of development:
Testing holding Y to enter into rotation mode on Joypad
Block Rotation Control Visualizer Prototype
We have made some significant changes to how block building works in Terratech Worlds which meant we needed to prototype the user interface to clear communicate how to interact with their blocks:
Random Block Spawner Tool
Sometimes you want to create tools to help you prototype. Here is a fun one that we used to get block building just right. It helped quickly verify some of the bigger changes we were making. Is it fun to build when you are given a random set of blocks?
Block Hotbar Prototype
We briefly experimented with a block hotbar that allowed you to choose your favourite blocks, the ones you built with the most.
Tech Inventory Prototypes
The block inventory went through a numbers of stages of development, as you can see below.
