Final Major Project Research

Going into this project I knew what the general theme of my level was going to be, I was heavily inspired by STAR WARS Battlefront’s Hoth map which personally is my favorite video game level of all time because it was fun to play and very appealing to look at.

A general rule of videogame level design is that they follow a 3 lane rule, my level is going to follow this set rule as it is a tried and tested method and so I feel that if my level is based around this rule I can have a good recipe for a good level.

The level is called “Outpost Beta” and yet again follows this 3 lane rule with one of them being a tunnel system in the mountains, the middle lane being this large open trench based warfare area and the final route was used primarily for flanking routes as it took the longest to get around but had lots of cover and good places to hold to close off routes the enemies may use.

This level heavily inspired my final design as I liked the idea of using a longer but safer flanking route and so I followed this same path of having the open middle route, the medium semi open route which is occupied by a watchtower in the center for teams to fight over and finally the longer flanking route which connects each cliff by an icy bridge which is open but allows each team to sneak up behind each over to get the jump.

My level design as you can see uses this idea as the main basis of the layout.

In a sense my whole level is 3 lanes connected by open areas which have small bits of cover for players to hide behind when fighting.

In my opinion a good videogame level has to have a constant stream of action which is reinforced by fun routes for the players to take in order to prevent the map from becoming repetitive and will always have something around the next corner to make it appealing to the player when there is downtime, this is why I decided to add the snow particle effects to my level.

Another game that uses a 3 lane rule but basis its entire gameplay around it is League Of Legends, a game that I have spent many hours in playing and is what gave me the idea of the level itself being 3 lanes circling the whole map.

My original main building was inspired by the overwatch map Lijang Tower but I decided that this style of building wouldn’t fit into my USA themed secret research base so I simplified it down a bit and added a few different levels which gave me my final design.

 

Hadleigh Castle – Evaluation

With the Hadleigh Castle project concluded I can say that there were many things that I am unhappy with in our final result, the first of these being that our textures on everything   completely messed up and all came our stretched and just did not look good at all, If we were doing this project again I would definitely put a bigger focus on getting everything textured once they were modeled instead of leaving it so late which really messed us up in the end.

 

 

The castle itself’s shape and models though came out perfect in my opinion and all went exactly to how we planned and to scale. I am also very happy with the lighting in the castle with the torches flames being the primary sources since a lot of the castle was shadowed by the forest around it. We added a forest and perched the castle on the hill so that it doesn’t look as plain outside of the castle and I feel that this was reflected very well in the final video of the project in which we displayed our finished project.

Our models for the building, and interior decorations I feel were not as important and so I feel that we wasted a bit of time on making things no one would see rather than focusing on the main parts of our actual castle and so we had all this detail but the texturing just wasn’t there and it truly showed.

I am proud of my teams time management and how we all stuck to our roles though, we all assigned ourselfs tasks that we would complete and put together for our final project. The models in my opinion were the strongest part of our castle and hopefully is what made our group stand out most.

If we were to do this project again I would say to my team that we should texture as we go to save time and prevent the issues we found on the last day when trying to add textures to the models. Next time I would also start working on the lighting and the other small details around the castle earlier so that we had a finished “shell” of the castle with all of the features such as lighting and backgrounds but just needed the final models imported, which would have made us finish our project earlier which would have then given us atleast a week or two to iron out all imperfections and make our project the best that we could have.

All of this being said, I am really happy with our result still as for our first main project of this scale we handled it perfectly and worked as a team to the best of our ability, This for me was a very fun project to work on and a very unique one.

One of the most interesting parts of this project was visiting the castles ruins and planning mentally how we would reconstruct it in Unreal Engine.

 

How we used Audio, Visual and Interactive elements in this project

In this project we created a video with overlaying audio tracks of myself and Carl reading facts about the castle when the camera pans to the appropriate area, our original idea was to interact with signs dotted across our castle which would then queue a voice line corresponding to whichever sign it was that was pressed.

We did not have enough time to implement this feature though so we settled for the audio during our short video displaying the castle.

This would have helped tell people with no history on the castle understand why and when it was created and the purpose it served.

Final Major Project – My Evaluation

After the 6 weeks of working on this project I am happy with my finished level which I have called frostbite. The level was a good learning experience for me as I learned many new things in UE4 and Maya that I previously was unaware of.

My level has a snow particle system that covers the map and is set a nighttime which I am very happy with as it makes certain ares of my level stand out from the rest and redirects the players to the main lit area where most combat will occur.

Creating a particle system for my level was a good touch as it has helped me bring my level to life and will restrict vision a bit more when combined with fog so that all gunfights will be in close range and will hopefully keep my level exciting.

I am very happy with my levels landscape as it features high cliff faces connected by snowy bridges all the way to frozen interiors of a dome and room with set paths for the teams to follow. The level is surrounded by an ocean which is occupied by submarines and more icebergs even including an ice shelf to give my level more life and not just have an empty horizon. I am very pleased with how this came out.

The thing I am not too happy with in my level is my main research building as it was one of the first models I made for my level and so as time went on I learned many new techniques that really would have helped me when creating this and gave it a bit more life and structure as it only has one room on the bottom floor, the reason I kept this is that it ultimately worked out better for me in the long run as it opened up many routes around my level and prevents people hiding in many different floors of the building meaning that there is a quicker flow to my level which I would prefer than  having to actually search for the enemies.

Another thing I would change is the tent area I made, I originally wanted igloos with tunnel systems running underneath but thought that they would have hindered game play and make it slower as the map was already big enough in my opinion, I also could have added the NPCs I originally wanted but decided that they could be a nuisance and block pathways thus yet again slowing the pace of my level.

My favorite part of my level is the snow and the lighting, this came out so much better than I had originally anticipated as it was going to be set during the day but whilst making the level I decided to experiment with lighting and figured that a nighttime theme with a sole campfire will give the level the abandoned and mysterious feel I aspired for. Once the sky was dark and I had the warm lighting for the campfire I decided that adding snow and fog would be the next step and overall help my game look appealing, both physically and when playing it as there is always something around the next corner instead of an empty space. This was a big target for me as I didn’t want there to be downtime in my level and big unused spaces and so there were many spontaneous routes that were opened up which inspired many ideas which I am very happy with in my finished product.

Some of my models could have been improved though, I would personally say that my weakest models were the observatory, the tents and the main building as I feel I could have done so much better with these and really made them stand out but when playing it feels like they are just background decoration which I did not want them to be.

The design process for my models all started with a rough sketch of what I imagined they would look like, After this I used google images and a source of inspiration and started to create a block out for my level which was very basic and looked very dull,

You can see from the above image the original block out and design for my level, there were many things that I changed but for the most part you could tell this is my level.

From the block out I started to create the models to fill my world in and add some basic textures which gave me something that looks like this,

Still a very bland level but as you can see there were new routes that were opened up by the constant development and production of my level which ultimately benefited my final level.

During the creation process I changed each spawn a total of 4 times purely because I couldn’t get the design I wanted and so kept thinking of ways that could look good on my map.

The watchtowers on my level went through a completely different design compared to the original concept which I used in my blockout, the original designs looked something like this –

Compared to what they are now at this –

The new design of watchtower is so much more player friendly and actually serves the intended purpose now, be usable and provide sight lines for players to shoot each over from.

If I was doing this project again there would be many things that I decide to change, this time around I would allocate myself time slots to focus on certain parts that needed it most as my creation process was just everywhere and I put a lot of focus into the smaller things rather than into the main features of my level and I really feel that this does show. This being said I am very happy with my final result as it was everything I expected it to be and more, with all of the lighting and particle effects I can really say I am proud of my project.

This is my final result, of which I am very proud.

Final Major Project Week 6

So far in week 6 of my final major project I refined both spawns, adding a submarine at one and remade my RHIB boats on the other, using far more detailed models. I also added many crates scattered around the map and put tents instead of igloos in the center of my map so that it feels more like a military base.

For the rest of this week I have to remake my observatory and add a snow particle effect to the map to give my map more life, I have a few ideas so far such as replacing the observatory with a geo dome, which will be enter-able and will serve as more cover or a new spawn for one team, since i’m not too happy with my submarine.

This week I also made my own Iceberg model which I am re-using to create  detail to my level in adding rocks and cliff faces etc.

At it’s current state I am happy with where my level is and think that I should definitely have enough time to finish it by the end of this week.

Hadleigh Castle Week 5

For week 5 I looked into the exterior of our castle, it was originally a plain block with a grass texture on it which was very plain and was ugly to look at so I decided to try and model a few trees and other external decor for the outside of the castle so that when it came to making our video the people will have something to look at.

Here is a first attempt at me modelling a tree in Maya:

It was very basic and was featured 2D leaves but I made the call to scrap this model as I thought it was too cartoonish for our castle and so opted for a larger cluster of trees which I could duplicate to create a whole forest. This not only saved time but looked nicer with our project and overall I feel worked out for the best.

This week I also textured all of the castle walls and buildings within the castle and gave all of the houses interiors so that it feels more lived in, this featured stoves, tables, glasses and plates and a fireplace. As well as actually creating the castle using our modular assets and the block out Jake Chamberlain created for us.

The models were created by the entire team and not just me alone.

Towards the end of this week I researched into how to make a video in Unreal so that I was prepared for the final week of our project.

Hadleigh Castle Project, Week 2.

In this week I looked at our levels lighting and used our prior research to determine popular torch ideas for the time. I finished by finding this image and decided to attempt to recreate it in maya for our level.

Once I made this torch I imported it into our level and used a particle fire effect as well as a orange tinted point light to give the illusion that the fire from the torch was lighting up the room that it was in. I am happy with the way it looked in Unreal and so we kept it for use in our project.

I also started this week, a trap door to be used on top of our ladder hatched which the controller would open when climbing up.

The hatch never had enough time to be implemented and so it was scrapped in the final weeks of the project.

Hadleigh Castle finishing touches and youtube video, Week 6.

For the final week in the hadleigh castle project I made all of the lighting and exterior of the castle which was just a hill surrounded by a thick forest to give our world more life. We had to create a short video and so I did this by using the cutscene tool in Unreal Engine 4 and just made a basic fly-by of our castle. Prior to this week our castle looked very simplistic as it was on a flat grass terrain but adding the exterior really gave our castle history and improved the look of it immensely.

Here is a link to the video I created which includes our commentary of the level which describes the breif history of the castle.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FAbmBqMOT6zmeBEqHfvjET4MGmPGVNfN

FMP Update Week 4

This week I modeled a crate asset which I have scattered across my map to create cover and break sight lines to help balance and improve game play, I also modeled my own rock Asset which I am using to create the icebergs in the background of my level. The level is about 85% complete as of now because all I need to do is model the igloos and some wooden bridges. I am happy with where I am as of now because it gives me time to focus on fine tuning my assets and landscape of my level.

As well as this, I modeled a campfire for the center of the camp.

EDIT

I revised my idea of igloos and changed it into military tents instead to fit the theme of my level, I feel that these suit the aesthetic of my level far better than the igloos would have.

They were also much easier to model and saved me a lot of time.

Concept Art – FMP

This is my concept art that I made of my FMP.

 

I used a pencil to draw these images and I will put these on my boards to display the evolution of my level. You can see the development of my level from the concept art to the current state here,

 

FMP Update 2-3

In weeks 2-3 of my FMP I modeled the building for my level and a few icicles to add some more detail to my level, I also textured all assets I made and put them into place. I also spent some time doing concept art for my buildings and refined my levels landscape to make game play smoother for the players. After revamping one of my spawns last week I modeled a few RHIB boats to the spawn to give it life.

As of now I am in a good place to add finishing touches to the level and start to do my programming to the level and add my gun to it.

I am happy with the current stage of my level as it has all of the building assets fully textured in the over watch style which is the goal for our project, as well as this I have also created an ice bridge to bridge the gap between the two team’s starting areas so that it opens up a flanking route.

I scrapped my original watchtower model as I was not happy with my original designs and so created a new one based from the model of Arma 2’s one.

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I used cylinders which I textured as wood and make wooden planks out of rectangles which I added my wood texture to and then combined them all to make it look shanty and worn down, I also added my icicles to these to give them the appearance that they have been there for a long time.

I also made my main research building covered in snow and submerged into my glacier to make it look like it is frozen into the wall.

 

Everything I have drawn has concept art which I will upload to this blog and attach to this post.