After finding inspiration, I went about using the terrain tool to shape an area that looks like it belongs in the Himalaya
Things were beginning to take shape, and I then went from shaping the world to planning out a route for the player to take. I planned to have two temple areas.
The player had to go through the temple in order to get to the long bridges taking them to the next temple. After painting the terrain, I went on with constructing some basic blueprint objects I could use several times over.
It then went on to planning out the first temple and iterating on my ideas.
As I went on, I started constructing more and more stuff, adding some decent lighting.
I had finally reached a state where I felt like I should start making some changes to the player character. I had designed some areas to need double jump and crouch. But I wanted sprint to be added as well because the level is quite large and getting around faster felt right. I also went ahead and added an elevator which was easily made with the matinee system. Just made the movement and put it on a loop.
But the level needed a bit more than that. I went for a banjo-kazooie esque feel with collectables. For the level was designed to have combat in it, but there wasn't time to add that kind of thing, one half would do, collectables. I created a ring and attached the script where it gets destroyed when colliding with a player, along with playing a sound.
And as the last detail to give my level some atmosphere, snow particles. I made a system for snowing and added it across the level.
Finally, my level was ready to be photographed, played, and fine-tuned.
And of course, a video clip of me playing the level. When I come to the stairs I wanted to demonstrate how it is really easy to screw it up the first time around with the way the character jumps, so it helps teach the player how jumping works in this game before they need it for real.
Snow particle system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cnRh_sE1x8
The pickup rings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNueIWCKoco
Elevator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THCR9p5mIz0