When you Can't Go Up, Go Down

So, I've sort of finished up the Western Island to a point where I'm quite happy with it, and so I've kept at the cave system under the island. I have loaded up some more assets into my editor, and there's additional  cavey-stuff now for me to use which is great, just adds that little spot of difference.

I'm still getting into a good groove designing the areas, but I am getting more and more comfortable with the process I currently have, namely sketch out a basic layout in a base texture, get the flow and layout roughed out, then build up path blockers - in the cave, that means cave walls, above ground, that might be level differences, water etc, get those done, then do two or three passes of adding in flourishes, decorations and things to break up the plain-ness of it all. I am get to really work out the right place in the process to do the lighting and interactive elements.

I do also wish that it was easier to get the raw assets into the editor for use. Currently there's a LOT of chopping and saving of files in an image editor. Not sure on that one, and it's not a priority yet. The more I have built up in the library, the easier it is, but once I get to proper world building, not test area, it's going to get moved up the priority list quickly I think.

I'd love the world building process to be quicker too, but even the few weeks here and there that I've been properly building I've been speeding up, and I am very much finding the output quite satisfying, so maybe there's no quick way to get to the quality I want. There'll be plenty of time to work it all out.