Howdy folks welcome back to another episode of fuck me I’m tired. As promised in Devlog #02, I’ve been focusing on the map itself, and making it more playable. I’m going to dive straight in so stretch your back and tell your family you love them, then get your butt ready for some spokes.
What changed
The big thing I’ve been working on is the world map, so hey, guess what the Deep Dive is going to be about? That’s right, so I’ll keep it snappy here. The map now has a center, a few buildings, pathways, a MOUNTAIN with a snazzy viewport, a little beach, some mysterious ruins, a cave, treehouses, and a chunk full of goodies that make the map more interesting to explore than just a flat plane with a bug spawner on it.
While making the world map, I also realised that I could gamify daily logins further than just quests, through interactive puzzles that act as gates to specific collectables. By collectables, I do mean lures and hats and the like. The easiest possible way of doing that is physical mazes, so I spent a bit of time figuring out how to make a little hedge maze that changes route every day. It’s not overly complex, and it uses today’s date as a seed to generate a route.
Because a big chunk of this part of the project has been creating assets, I’ve kept that fresh by making some more bugs, and I realised, as I was adding a cute little jumping spider to the game, that I didn’t actually have a jumping option in my random movement system, so I’ve gone ahead and added that. The sad thing is I didn’t realise this when I added grasshoppers and crickets, but hey ho – pobody’s nerfect.
Deep Dive – Designing a Garden
When I first started thinking about world design for Bug Game, I wanted to create the sort of back garden that I’d dream of as a kid. And I mean like – no limits. Whatever I’d have wanted to explore, I wanted to include it, so I opted to go big. Early versions of the map had a big list of biomes and points of interest, but no actual structure to how those pieces would fit together.
Look, I’ve got the original sketch that I did. Doesn’t it look underdeveloped?
So, I started looking at better world map design. I knew I wanted to stick with that Hakoniwa (Box Garden) design mentality, but I needed to go further. I decided that I was going to plot out a few rules and use those in design choices.
Every biome must be easily distinguishable. There must be a colour palette, POIs, bugs, and textures. A player must be able to see where they are in the game at any one time, just with a quick glance. Still working on this one.
Exploration needs to be prompted, and it needs to be prompted often, so every 3 seconds of walking, there needs to be a decision point, and a chance to change direction. Every path should split off in different ways, leading to different points, and loops that players might often explore should allow further exploration outside of these comfort routes.
Rather than have some spaghetti vomit of paths that lead from the bottom of the map to the top right, I shifted the central hub to the centre, and decided to draw inspiration from theme parks. There is actually a website with a massive backlog of theme park brochures and maps, where I was able to pour over decades worth of map design.
I decided I wanted to use a circles and spokes system to branch out from the central spawning point, which made the whole thing feel much like a theme park. Rather than go analogue with a bit of paper, I made some nice shapes in Photoshop and bonked a load of icons for the purpose of getting my thoughts down as quickly as possible, and after 6 months of development and over the course of an hour and a half, I finally had a map that I felt happy with.
With a newfound sense of clarity, I got to work. In the evenings, while watching Parks and Rec (brilliant comfort show, go watch it if you haven’t), I’d sit and make 3D objects in Blender for the scene, then in any spare time I had, I was barrelling through Unity, piecing things together and shaping the terrain.
It’s only been 10 days since the last update, but I’m really proud of how things are shaping up. The world feels more explorable, but it doesn’t yet feel as full as I’d like. I’ve got some very specific ideas in mind about this jam-packed forest, packed with layers of trees and shrubbery. I’m going to keep trying to build this. I expect there’s a lot more polish needed.
What I’m doing next
Good question. I’m going to keep picking away at the map. I tried making walls that would follow a spline, and it worked pretty well, until I ran it on mobile and my framerate dropped FAST, and that was with only 5 walls in the game, so I’ll be getting to grips with some of the finicky bits.
I’ve also decided that I’m going to use that mighty fine-looking Edwardian palm house (that I’ve named Victoria) to act as a showcase room. Players will be able to enter inside and select a few of their favourite bugs (including shinies, and iridescents) and have them fly around in their, happy as a clam with some nice tropical plants.
I guess I should also make a start on bugspeak, I can’t imagine it’s a massive ordeal, but I should definitely look into doing it now rather than later, as I might need to make changes to how my bug prefabs are set out, and the idea of doing that for 100 bugs fills me with dread.
| 09/01/2026 | Designed new map in photoshop |
| assets for: | |
| Bamboo | |
| Fern | |
| binoculars | |
| chapel | |
| pondeck | |
| ropebrdige | |
| treestand | |
| umbrellaa | |
| victoria | |
| waterfountain | |
| well | |
| added water fountain prefab with water | |
| added old chapel | |
| added pond decks | |
| added victoria greenhouse prefab | |
| added treehouse and bridge strucutre (needs more) | |
| 10/01/2026 | softened entire new terrain |
| Added Hedge Maze: | |
| randomly generates a maze every day using the date as seed | |
| uses hedge prefab shapes (need to make these) | |
| Added camera change trigger on entry and exit to move above the player | |
| Built maze to have universal material | |
| added camera movement trigger to Victoria Greenhouse | |
| Built viewer for top of the hill | |
| built cave | |
| built cliff face | |
| fixed binoculars normals | |
| built car | |
| added viewer to game | |
| added cliffs | |
| added cameratrigger to viewer | |
| added cave and black container for dark, then added cameratrigger to cave | |
| built stone circle | |
| made boat 3D model | |
| made bike 3d model | |
| 11/01/2026 | Added stone circle to map |
| added boat to game | |
| fixed a load of terrain | |
| added beach | |
| cleaned up scene into proper hierarchy | |
| added tropical bushes | |
| added cliff containers | |
| addd hitbox containers east cliffs | |
| fixed pinetree height problem | |
| fixed cave camera trigger | |
| added ferns to game | |
| replaced bug 2 music with Sunny Day music | |
| moved greenhouse | |
| added more paths | |
| fixed center area paths | |
| added steps to victoria | |
| drew some more bugs | |
| 12/01/2026 | added jumping to randommovement.cs |
| added bug88JumpingSpider | |
| added bug89PeacockSpider | |
| added bug93BlackWidow | |
| added spline walls to game, with walls.cs | |
| drew some more bugs | |
| 13/01/2026 | added SW garden wall |
| added bug79yellowjacket | |
| added bug80hornet | |
| added trees to the out of bounds pit and put invisible walls in place | |
| fixed bad fern placement | |
| added more lamposts | |
| built up west raised garden and fixed hitbox problems | |
| added hitboxes to river | |
| added dock along river | |
| added more paths | |
| edited bridge to have deeper supports | |
| added all existing bugs to a set of spawners |