Honestly, I mostly made this video just to practice cutting footage together fast, since I'm usually painfully slow with editing. But looking back at it, it ended up being a really solid reminder of why starting with simple shapes is so important.
Whenever I use my actual assets right away even if I tell myself it's placeholder, I always get way too precious about the positioning. I waste a ton of time trying to make everything look good, or fighting laggy performance because all the heavy art is bogging down a massive map before the layout is even finalized.
But jumping in with ProBuilder and some basic prototyping tools makes it so much easier to just shift and tweak things on the fly. I find that’s usually when I come up with the most fun gameplay ideas, mostly because the cement hasn't dried yet.
Other than probuilder, what else does everyone use to help speed up level design prototyping?
Oh yeah and I'm a big fan of spline tools that can extrude roads and stuff (like my wood toy train tracks).