As mentioned, we'll use a modular approach for building the environment geometry. We'll need assets such as the gameplay booths, various background elements, interactive items, and other components, as needed, to build the mood. But instead of fully visualizing each asset, we will use a level design technique for blocking out the design.
Gray boxing (also known as blue boxing, white boxing, blocking out, or blocking in) is a game development term used to describe an early layout phase of level design. Designers use standard modeling primitives (cubes, planes, columns, spheres...) to create rough layouts of gameplay areas. Environmental details are limited; there are no textures, rough shapes, and flat lighting, just gray shapes used as placeholders to help designers reference scale, identify navigational pathways, look for choke points, demonstrate physics functionality, and test object colliders.
This approach allows for quick iteration because layouts can be implemented and tested by one person in a few minutes, rather than days. The term gray box comes from the primitive object's lack of color, textures, or materials.
In October 2017, a few level designers at Naughty Dog started the hashtag #blocktober. It quickly caught on and designers from across the world started revealing a part of the design process seldom seen outside of development studios. A few examples from Twitter are shown in Figure 7.7. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. We urge you to search the #blocktober and find some examples of your own:
For our Midway project, we will take a similar approach and gray-box the scene. Instead of fleshing out the complete GameObject details, simple Unity primitives with basic gray materials will be used to demonstrate how users play with the carnival games:
- Create three materials called BackgroundGrey, ForegroundGrey, and InteractiveGrey. Set their colors to dark gray for the background, a medium gray for the foreground, and a lighter gray for the interactive material. These will be used to help identify various GameObjects and focus our design efforts.
- Move the new materials to the Materials folder.