Level streaming in Kin

This method makes for a good workflow since artist can work on each level while at the end they are all in the same world. Optimization wise this is also a good because we can remove levels that we don't need anymore. So we don't have to update/render/calculate stuff from the previous level.

Layout:

At first I went over this as a programmer and wanted to call the 'Load level' upon entering a portal. This didn't work because in order to access level streaming functions the level should be marked as always loaded. As this is the first time I am using this system I found a quick way to fix this. I made the level boundaries of a level overlap with the previous level. This way if you are in level A, level B is loaded so the portal can render a place in level B.

Encountered problems:

When loading up the game the Player was just falling trough the world. What happened was that the player spawned before the level streaming could load the level. Disabling the gravity of the player until the level is loaded fixed this problem.

Directional light, skylight, Atmospheric fog, Exponential height fog... These are all things every artist puts in there environment right at the beginning. Since each level or so called 'world' in Kin is so different from each other, it makes sense they each have their own. This doesn't work with level streaming, because this is used to load in pieces of the same environment. A solution could be to disable the previous scene-objects and enable the newer ones. Sadly this will mess with the portals and will cause some weird effects and visual stutters. Once teleported the whole world will have different lighting then what you saw on the portal.

Bad portal effect:

We used as much post processing and use only one of each scene-object mentioned above. Since post processing works with volumes we can have blending towards to portal so being near portals shows the post processing of the next level. This doesn't give use some stutter or changes the level completely when teleporting.

Example post processing blending near portal:

Kin article:

https://thibautlemmens.wixsite.com/portfolio/post/__kin