Sand Box Level Updates

I've made a lot of changes and additions to the Sand Box level this week. I played around with the Blob Shadow projectors for the Potato Beetles so now they project the blob shadow offset in accordance to the sun's position in the sky.

I added a terrain to the outside of the Sand Box, it's never really meant to be seen, it's more there as a place to put the trees which I figured made a nice touch the the scenic background detail to this level. They cast nice shadows onto the sand terrain inside of the Sand Box and on the accompanying toys inside of the Sand Box.

I'm still working on tweaking the Sand Box shooting robot's fire control a little, it's taking a bit of testing it out trial and error to see what works best. Sometimes if you just keep Bud the Spud moving and zigzag a lot you can usually get by the wildly shooting robot but sometimes he gets a lucky shot in and it's curtains for Bud. I'm trying to get it so it's that good balance between not being too easy but not too difficult.

I'm thinking about adding some more scenic details outside of the Sand Box like perhaps a row of those little garden fences from level 02 perhaps in the form of rendered images on 2d planes to save on the poly count. I'll try it out perhaps tomorrow and see if it looks good for the scene.

I'm very pleased with how this level is shaping up with the new shadows cast into the Sand Box by the trees outside of the Sand Box. I find it breaks up the look of the sand terrain very nicely and makes for a more vibrant environment.

I need to do something with these toy wind up robots that patrol the mote bridge, I need to find some way to make their patrol pattern a little more complex just so they are more of a challenge for Bud to avoid while attempting to cross the bridge. I'm wondering if perhaps I can place Auto Way points onto different layers and have them ignore way points that are on another layer, I've never tried that before so I'm not sure but if I can do it that way then it may be possible for me to perhaps make a more complex patrol pattern for the toy wind up robots to follow. Something else I'll try and experiment with tomorrow as well perhaps.