Assignment 3 - Terrain and basic shapes

This level took quite a while to make and I experimented with quite a few things. I didn't focus too much on aesthetics and in large didn't bother with making things extra pretty. The focus was on creating an actual level with obstacles, objects to collect, a goal to get to, and methods to herd the player from one area to the next. So, I started out with coming up with an idea for what I kinda wanted to make, and I ended up with a temple area in the himalayas, so I went to google for some inspiration.

 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.

 After planning, I went on to create a blueprint that would allow me to paint the terrain with multiple meshes.

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.

Play of the level

Tutorials I used
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

Second Assignment: Minecraft Blocks

For our second assignment in Level Design, we were charged with UV mapping a cube and creating a texture for it. Creating the cube was similar to the first assignment and didn't take much time to complete.

Once I had created the cube I proceeded to get familiarized with the UV editor and then promptly cut my cube up so it could be properly mapped. Once this was done I went on to map out a tamplet to use for each one of my textures so I could easily see which parts were the sides and which two were the bottom and top of the cube.

 I then went on to create all the different textures I wanted for the scene I had in mind. I ended up creating 5 different textures. Grass, Rock, Marble, Dirt, water, and Vortex.

 With all of those made, I went back to Maya to connect the textures to the cube, and then test it in some lighting.

I was finally ready to jump into Unreal and make my level! I already had an idea in mind for when I was making my textures. I wanted to create a magical effect gone wild, a vortex cube that was sucking up the ground, the lake, and even the mountains around it. It was then up to the player to stop this vortex from consuming everything in sight. They'd have to jump from floating block to floating block in order to get close to the vortex and add the necessary spell to stop it from eating the world. They themself being protected against it's sucking power, otherwise they would quickly die. I got to experiment a lot with grouping for this one, as the mountains are made out of 4 groups, which allowed me to copy their massive size way more easily, as doing the whole mountain at a time would lag up the system. I also got to play around a lot with the illusion of motion in a picture, and with lighting.