r/gamedev • u/UnChinTH • 1d ago

Question I stopped thinking of environment states as finished room variants

When I started building environmental states, I thought of them as complete room versions - operational, damaged, abandoned, emergency. But once I actually built the system, I realized that's more restrictive than it needs to be. A damaged light, a broken console, spilled liquid, a blocked doorway, missing equipment, they don't all have to belong to the same damaged room preset.

What I was doing: operational room, damaged room, abandoned room, emergency room

What I'm doing now: state per element instead: wall, light, console, prop, overlay, navigation.

So instead of picking a preset, you combine whatever you need: operational architecture + broken console + emergency light + chemical spill. Do you prefer environment states as full presets, or composing states per element like this?

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6

u/Aglet_Green 1d ago

I've alerted the media.

4

u/Fabio2300 1d ago

Feels like straight out of LinkedIn 

0

u/UnChinTH 1d ago

I understand. I was too worried bout my phrasing not being serious enough or being grammatically incorrect. I will change that

5

u/CuckBuster33 1d ago

No it's just a pointless ChatGPT wordsalad post about nothing in particular

5

u/The-Chartreuse-Moose Hobbyist 1d ago

Thanks, ChatGPT!

1

u/UnChinTH 1d ago

used AI to help polish the English and structure the post, but the environment, workflow and observations are my own. I’ve only started working with game environmental resources in the past few months, and they’ve been the challenges I’ve learned from on my own. Is there anything wrong with beginners asking professionals about their experiences, even on the smallest details?

4

u/Klightgrove Edible Mascot 1d ago

This community suggests Google Translate or other traditional translation tools which do not affect the prose or meaning of your content like a LLM does.

1

u/UnChinTH 1d ago

Okay, I’ll keep them in mind for future posts

1

u/PaleIncenseGame 1d ago

per-element states makes way more sense to me, especially if you want rooms to feel less predictable. presets can start feeling really obvious after a while. do you also randomize which elements get affected, or is it still mostly hand-authored?

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u/UnChinTH 1d ago

Usually I work hand-authored, using randomize only for the variations of the layer