Devlog 2: Building Worlds and Breathing Life

This week, our team focused heavily on world-building and animation, sound design and UI improvements to strengthen the foundation of the gameplay experience. Work included modeling a prototype a maze for one of the later levels, completing animation cycles for our zombie enemy, adding sound assets, improving the games interface and creating environmental signage to add atmosphere and detail to the world. All work has been uploaded and integrated into our Unity project through version control.

We continued our team discussions on Discord to update each other on progress and address technical challenges, especially regarding material baking for assets and refining movement animations.

Level Design

This week we have modeled a detailed maze layout using Blender, which was then imported into Unity and placed within Scene number 3 (level3), our designated maze level. The maze is designed to be easily adjustable in Blender, allowing changes to size, wall height, and materials depending on gameplay needs. To help speed up future maze creations, We experimented with the Maze Generator extension for Blender, offering the team flexible options for level design moving forward.

Zombie Animation

We have completed key animations for the zombie enemy using blender, creating idle, walk, and attack animations. These animations will soon be implemented into Unity to bring the zombie to life. The team also discussed potentially adding a running animation to give the zombie behavior more variety and increase tension during gameplay. 

Asset Creation

We have also worked on creating several sign models to populate the game world. Two signs have been successfully imported into Unity so far, with more assets ready once final material testing is complete. A technical challenge arose when baking metallic materials, but the issue was largely resolved through careful adjustments.

These signs will contribute to environmental storytelling and improve the visual richness of the levels.

Sound Design & UI improvement:

THe project, also integratedvarious sound assets, including background music, player and zombie sounds, and object interactions. Music was added to the Main Menu and all game scenes, with a different track for the EndGame Scene. For UI improvements, we added a Play Game and Exit button to the Title Scene, with button click sounds for feedback. The EndGame Scene was also updated with a Game Over panel and Main Menu button, along with a coroutine to ensure button sounds play fully before scene transitions.

Overall, this week marked strong progress toward making DEAD ZONE's world feel more alive and immersive. Over the coming weeks, we plan to integrate the new animations into the game, continue populating the environment with assets, and begin refining gameplay mechanics for the player and enemies.

Thanks for following our development journey!