We have a character, but they are

trapped in a void. To make a true back

rooms game, we don't need just a room.

We need a labyrinth. So, today we're

going to learn how to paint 3D levels

using GDAU's grid maps and then how to

handle the one mesh per cell limit.

Welcome back to GDO dev checkpoint. In

the last video, we built our player.

Today, we're building the world. We're

going to use grid maps, but with a

twist. Since GDAU only allows one item

per grid cell, we're going to build our

world in layers, just like Photoshop

layers, but for 3D. First, we need our

pieces. We need a floor, a wall, and a

ceiling. But we need to make sure they

align perfectly. So, back in our project

here, we're going to make a new scene.

So, scene, new scene, be a 3D scene.

And we're going to rename our node 3D to

mesh pallet.

There we go.

And we need a child node. It's going to

be a mesh instance 3D.

Now rename this to floor.

And the mesh we're going to use with

floor selected and the mesh empty. We're

going to use a plane mesh.

We'll click on the resource here and

change the size from 2x two to four to

four 4x4.

Now to give this some collision, we're

going to do here is go up to this mesh

here in the top toolbar with the floor

selected. So mesh, create collision

shape. And we don't want to be a

sibling. We want to be a static body

child. We want to be a try mesh. And

then create. and it automatically

creates a static body 3D and a collision

shape 3D. That way our player will be

able to walk on it. Now, make sure we

keep this floor at 00 0 where it's

transformed

here. We want to move it. That'll make

more sense when we start placing the

tiles in our level. Now, we need the

wall. So, back in the mesh palette,

right click, add child node, another

mesh instance 3D. I'm going rename this

one to wall.

And for the wall, we're going to use in

the mesh in the inspector, we're use a

box mesh.

And click on the resource here. For the

size of this one, we're going to use

this 4x4

by 0.2.

There's a wall. We also want to move our

wall up so it sits on the floor. going

to scroll down to the transform here.

And we move our Y to two. Since it's

four and go half, we'll bring it up

straight to the floor.

For the walls, we don't want them in the

center of the floor. We want them on the

edges. So, for the other transform,

we're going to use Z2.

That's going to push our wall to the

edge of the floor.

All right. Now we need a ceiling though.

Oh no, wait. Before we do that, we need

a collision. Back on the mesh here with

the for the wall selected. Create

collision shape. Static body child. Try

mesh. Create. Now we have collision for

our wall. Now we need a ceiling. So

right click, add child node, mesh

instance 3D. This one is going to be

another plane. So in the mesh, plain

mesh, we're going to rename this one to

ceiling

ceiling. There we go. Now in the mesh

here, I'm going to change the size to

4x4

and scroll down to transform. You want

to bring this up to the top of the wall.

Our Y is going to be four.

And then we notice here we go down. we

can see right through it. We actually

need to flip this healing tile over so

when our player is in the room, they

look up, they don't see right through

it.

We do that by just going to our rotation

X and 180. There we go. Now our ceiling

is facing down to the player. Great. Now

we need to do the same thing and create

a mesh collider. With the ceiling

selected, mesh, create collision shape,

static body child, try mesh, create. Now

we have a collision on all three of our

tiles.

Now our tiles are made. Back rooms is

known for its yellow wallpaper

and yellow lights. Just the atmosphere.

And here's what we're going to use for

that. On openr.org

is a CCL, so you can use this for

whatever you like. is the back room's

materials. It's even got the pool,

something we can add into there. Also,

the yellow wallpaper and the office tile

ceilings. So, it's perfect.

Either download it from here or I also

have a tutorial assets folder that I

made that's going to have all the files

we reference in this tutorial. So you

can download it from here and just get

everything which has fonts and sounds

and stuff and also the PBR texture pack

or you can download them individually

and put them wherever you like. The

links will be in the description.

So once you have that downloaded from

whichever one you choose, we're going to

go ahead and right click on our file

system, create a new folder called

assets,

and then right click again on the asset,

create a new folder called textures.

I'm going to folder. Actually, I'm going

to rename, right click this, rename

textures to just materials.

Make it a little more

universal. All

right. Now, with the materials folder

selected, I'm going to drag in all the

assets,

select them, drag them in, and drop.

That'll import all the ones we need.

Now, I have the carpet and the ceiling

tiles and the wallpaper. Now, if you

download the pack completely from the

open game art, you'll have a lot more to

choose from. Now, I chose specifically

ceiling tiles, too. And you can choose

whichever one you like.

But if you want to follow along, these

are the ones I'm using. Now, you start

with the carpet or floor selected.

Scroll back up to surface material

override. Now, there is a material

section here in the resource mesh.

But I noticed that doesn't work very

well with how we're going to do the grid

maps. So, we're not going to put the

material in here. It works better if you

put it in the material override here.

So, we're going to do the carpet.

We're going to use the carpet color.

Drop it in here.

And then open up the resource here. Then

we need to go into the roughness.

We're going to add the carpet

material in there.

And then we're going to go into the

normal map. We're going to activate that

and drag the normal map here.

gives our carpet a lot of depth.

Now, here you can change settings and

make it more rough, less rough, right in

the middle.

Also, if you want it less brown, you

could actually use this carpet normal

and then drop this into the texture.

Oh, not the texture, the actual material

drop here. This makes it super yellow.

You can actually turn that down in the

albido

and darken it

quite a bit. Depends what you're going

for. A lot of people have the yellowish

carpet in the background stuff. But for

now, we're just going to keep it at a

default. I'll control Z all that.

Oops.

That didn't do the other thing. Put my

carpet color back there.

Our texture is all back to normal. We'll

keep it like this. Make this zeroed

again. And then we want to do the wall.

Have the wall selected.

And the surface material override.

Go into my wallpaper.

Wallpaper color

here.

Then go into my roughness.

Wallpaper rough

normal map

normal map. Perfect.

Then we're going to go into the ceiling.

Select the ceiling surface material

override

and then our ceiling tiles

the main texture.

Then into our roughness

and then our normal map.

There you go. You can also bl the colors

there if you like, but we'll keep it as

default for now. You might notice how

big our wallpaper looks. That's

stretched out. If you compare it to what

it's supposed to look like, super small.

Well, why? Well, it's because GDAU

stretches one image across the whole

wall. So, we want to actually separate

this into a bunch of smaller images. So,

if that's our 4x4,

is making it one by one. They call that

a UV mapping issue.

And to fix this, we need to activate

thing called triplaner mapping.

So with our wall selected here, we need

to go to the UV1

which is in the surface material

override and click that and expand it.

Scroll down to UV1.

Then we have this thing called trip

planer and select that to on.

automatically you'll see how smaller it

gets. But we have it too small. So our

offset scale here. Actually what we're

going to use is 0.5

across the whole thing.

And that is about the same look as we

have here.

Perfect.

That's what we're going for. Now the

charter can sometimes have performance

costs or weird artifacting on the

corners. So if you notice you have that,

you can actually deactivate this and

then

just set this

scale to four, which is the size of our

our box mesh here. It'll kind of do the

same thing, but the track planer works a

little better like a set it and forget

it kind of solution because they have to

manually adjust

corners and those kind of thing for the

grid map walls. So, we're going back to

0.5

then turn our trier back on. Perfect.

So, either way decide the word works for

you, that's what I'm going to do. All

right. Last but not least, now that we

have all of our tiles, at least the ones

we're using so far,

we need to actually get these into the

world so we can use them. And to do

that, well, we grid maps aren't going to

use a tscn file, which is the scene

file. We need to use something called a

TR file. So, it's a basically a

resource. So, the way we do that is we

go into our scene

uh tab here. We need to go to export as

and we're going to export it as a mesh

library.

And from our root folder here, we're not

going to put in any of these folders.

We're going to make our new folder call

it resources.

And what we're going to call this is

mesh

pallet

there. We're going to tr.

So the TRE file that's what we're going

for. Then we have merge with existing

which is good. Gives me have to reexport

which we will later. We want also want

to apply mesh instance transforms. We

don't do this everything will be set at

0000 including our ceiling and our wall.

We don't want that. Now apply the mesh

instance transforms. Save.

And that's it. We go into our file

system and our resources. Now we have

our mesh pallet resource and we have

access to three of these tiles

individually.

Now there's a little bit of secret sauce

to this one. Now if we try to put a wall

on a floor in the same spot with the

single grid map, GDAU will delete one.

So we need to create separate grid maps

which is where the layering comes in.

So, back in our world, seen here, we're

going to right click the world root node

and add a child node called node 3D.

That's the standard one.

Then, double click that. And we're going

to rename this node 3D to level.

Now, in this level, I'm going to right

click, add child node. We're going to

call something called a grid map. That's

right here. and create that, I'm gonna

rename this one to grid map

Laura.

Then with this grid map selected, you'll

see over here in our mesh library, now

that's what we're going to use with our

mesh pallet because that's going to be

the library we want to use. So in our

resources folder, click and drag and

drop this into our mesh library. Now

you'll see we have our ceiling, our

floor, and the wall we made. We also

want to go to our cell size here and

we're going to change it to the cell

size we chose which is four by 4x4.

Now we want two more maps over right

click and we can duplicate. This one's

going to be called

the wall. We duplicate again. You hold

down control D and it duplicates. Now we

want one called the ceiling.

And now since we're going to make

something new, we do not need our ESG

box we used for testing. We actually

delete this and get rid of that.

And now we can paint our level without

any conflicts. We're going to start with

the floor. Then we'll carve out a maze

with walls. And then we can cap it off

with the ceilings.

All right. Now we can make this spectre

a little smaller. We do our floor here

and make some more room. So you got a

nice grid pattern here. What we want to

do is get the floor section here and we

want to click.

We want to make sure we're in our paint

section here.

You see how we're off center of our grid

map is we are not centered. We don't

want to be centered on Y. Going to turn

this off. Since we have our setup

already 4x4, we turn this center Y off.

Now, our

floor fits perfectly in our nice 4x4

cells. So, we start by doing a like a

10x10.

So, we'll do a 10x10 room here.

I guess that's a 12 x 12. That works.

And now we have our floor. You notice if

I try to put a wall anywhere here. Going

to delete

the cell that it's on. Anything else you

only have one item per cell. Z. Now do

it's why we did the three and click our

wall section. Now we can put walls up.

And then our we're off center here. So

our mesh grid map here. Nope, not that.

Sorry. Use our cell section here and our

center Y and turn that off. So we can

actually be on the line that we set in

our mesh library. We can create a walls

all the way around.

Then you can rotate with S.

S again. Sometimes you got to do it

twice.

Rotate all the way around. There we go.

We have to have the wall away facing

the opposite way of this wall or else it

won't work.

You do S. There we go.

Let's surround our whole area here.

Now we're boxed in. Perfect.

Then we can create a little bit of a

maze here.

Do this.

Maybe we'll do all this.

And for this you can kind of do whatever

you want.

That works for now.

I'm actually make another floor spot

here. Do like a little entryway

about in the corner right over here.

And I want to put some walls here.

Surround this with walls.

There we go.

Right. Now we need the ceilings. The

ceilings. I found it easier to the world

environment. Select that. And change our

color just to white. We can see better.

We go back to our ceiling. Our ceiling

tile. zoom in here

and we want to once again in our cell

section here center on the Y.

That way you see your tiles.

And then if you hover over the floor

where you want the ceiling to be above,

that's how you're going to see it. You

click there. Now we have our ceiling

there.

Then you just keep doing that

there and there.

Now you go through your maze.

All right. Now we have our whole maze

covered.

It's like this. I think I got it all.

Remember, we can't see it from the top,

so it's hard to see that way. I think

we're good.

It works. We have a solid room. Now,

let's apply some maddening buzz and then

some lights.

First, let's turn the lights back out

our world environment. We can

background make it black again.

Now, the backgrounds are scary because

they're dark. They're scary because they

are too bright. Need that uniform yellow

light.

Right click on our level node, add child

node. Node 3D

and call this lights.

Then I'm right click lights. Add an omni

light 3D. This omni light in the

inspector the light.

Change the color of the light to

a yellow. The one I liked was FF

EB0.

Nice cool yellow.

Bring it up to the ceiling.

We are going to need a bunch more of

these. So

click on that. Hold control and then D.

You can duplicate.

Then you can just place them around your

level.

All right, now we have the lights

everywhere. We also want to be able to

hear that maddening buzz from those

fluorescent bulbs.

Do one more thing here with the world

environment. We're going to do is set

the

inspector in the environment tab here,

our tone map. Let's set this mode to

AGX.

Gives a more realistic appearance. Then

we're also going to set the exposure

1.5.

Brighten it up a bit.

Then get these corner shadows that are

less obvious and turn SSAO on.

Now let's add some blending in our

corner our corners.

While over there, check the lights. Make

sure our We're going to turn these

shadows on. So, go to the top light.

Select all the way down to the bottom

one. Let's turn these shadows on.

And then we want to make sure the

attenuation is 1.5.

There we go. We're going to turn the

range up to 10.

Yeah, that's good. Now the shadows

aren't too dark. Let's see how that

looks when you run the game here. Run

current scene.

Yeah,

doesn't look too bad.

Now we need to add that buzz. Let's exit

this. Make the sound in here in our file

system asset folder.

Let's add a

right click, new folder, not a scene.

Right click, new folder. Call this one

audio.

Now, once again, you can get these

assets. I'm going to use the sound one

included in the Google Drive link I have

in the description, or you can use the

resound here

where I got it from the CCO. You can see

you can use it for anything you like.

Either way you get it. Once you do,

I'm going to open that folder up. And

with audio selected, I'm going to drag

in the light bulb buzz sound,

which I named light bulb hum.

And then back up in our

hierarchy here, right click on the world

node. I'm going to use a audio stream

player right here. Now, why not a audio

stream player 3D? Well, 3D player sound

from a specific point. You'd only use

that if you wanted the buzz to get

louder as you walked closer to a

specific light bulb. But since the

background is an infinite mono yellow

hellscape, the global 2D sound feels

more claustrophobic and consistent. So,

we'll select the audio stream player and

with that selected in our stream over

here, we're going to drag our light

bulbs out into it.

Going to make sure we click auto play to

be on. And then in the parameters, we

want looping to be on as well.

We'll see how loud that loud that is

here. Go and select the run current

scene.

There you go.

Yeah, nice creepy buzz. It's bound to

drive anybody crazy. Now, that volume's

too loud on yours. What you can do is

you just turn down the decibels here.

So, you want to go minus 10 and then try

again.

If that sounds better to you, you can go

and do that. Adjust it as you see fit.

All right. And go and close that.

Now we're starting to look a bit more

unsettling. We have the maze and the

player trapped inside it. And by

separating grid maps, we have total

control. We can turn off the roof to

work or swap out the floor style without

breaking the walls. Now, if you're

following along, take a screenshot your

maze and tag me on Blue Sky. I want to

see your level layouts. This still looks

a bit too clean. Looks like a video

game. So, the next video we're going to

make a little more world environment

effects, maybe some fog glow, and also

most importantly, that VHS

post-processing shader to make it look

like real found footage. A special thank

you to our new coffee supporter, ZZZ.

You helped make this possible. And if

you found this helpful at all or fun,

leave a comment on what your GDAU

gamedev goals are. Please like and

subscribe. Hit that notification bell.

It really helps out the channel. And

thank you to all our other current and

past Patreon and coffee members. Your

generous support keeps the channel

moving. And if you want early access to

tutorials, source code, or suggesting

future tutorials, please consider

becoming a member yourself. The links

are in the description. I'm Spaghetti

Syntax. Stay curious. I'll see you at

the next checkpoint.