Day 4: Terrain and path nodes

Hey Everyone.

Had a pretty slow day today. Spent a lot of time mucking around with pylons trying to get a navmesh to work however for some reason when I try to generate paths no navmesh appears and the bots dont move

So I went back to using path nodes.
I got it to a stage where bots are walking around and occasionally go up the upper section. however mostly spend there time inside the church or outside.
Probably has something to do with all the spawn points being in that area.
But from a bit of basic testing things seem to be working pretty well.
Made a few minor adjustments and cleaned a few things up.

I then moved onto terrain generation for the outdoor area just wanted to have a bit of Noise so it looks a bit more organic and add some cliffs on the edge.
This is my first time trying to use Terrain since the basic tutorial. Having a few issues trying to get grass texture to appear on surface seeing as most of the grass textures in UDK dont seem to be terrain materials
Hopefully I can get it sorted out tommorow.
Also cutting the small hole down to the lower level through terrain is proving a pain due to the fact that it makes me delete a massive chunk

Hopefully get it quickly fixed up tommorow and can move onto the fun part of placing static meshs and making the level look pretty

Day 3: Finished basic blue box

So Today I tidied up the blue box a bit more and worked on fixing some scale issues.

I also fixed the tunnel underneath the water so that it was no longer visible.
Ive added a pre-existing waterfall and water into level along with a tree to help show where things are going to be.

I think its starting to turn out pretty well and feels fun to play when just running around.
I had a few bots in the level earlier however until I go through and fix up all the path modes its a bit hard to test by myself.

Instead of including a bunch of pictures today I thought Id make a short video showing how the level looks when running around it.

Biggest issues so Far:
Having a few issues with getting brushes to line up exactly. Should have made sure I stuck with the same movement increment. Oh well something to remember for the future.


Favorite parts of level so far:
My favorite part of the level so far is the top platform near the waterfall. I love the feeling already of being able to run along side a raging waterfall.
I also love taking the leap of faith through the waterfall. I deliberately left a gap so if the player doesnt jump correctly they will fall into the water below to there death.

I also like behind able to jump down through the floor in the main area. think it all flows together fairly well.

I still need to do a lot of work and the main yard in front of the church especially is going to change a lot depending on how I decide to decorate it.

Plus the room underneath the courtyard is going to change shape a lot when I turn it more into a cave.

Video Found at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvFfkJ7X55I


Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Starcraft VS Level design

So unless you have been living under a rock you will know that Starcraft 2 was released today. :P
As a result I failed my will save to work on my level and just had to play some starcraft seeing as Ive been waiting for it to come out since forever :P

I still did manage to get a the basic bsp blockout of my level done in a few hrs.
However I did run into an issue in regards to the tunnel leading behind the waterfall.
As it currently is the tunnel is to high allowing the player to see top of tunnel when standing outside.
However if I make it to low it makes for a very long set of chairs.

My plan is to spend the rest of the night in starcraft 2 and get it out of my system a bit before starting fresh tommorow.

Dm-Waterfall - End Of Day 1

So its 11:52pm and I've been working on my level for the last 12 hours so calling it a night :)

I feel that I accomplished a decent amounttoday. I managed to get a stack ton of reference on churchs caves and waterfalls I created basic top down of my level.
However was finding it a little hard to visualize in illustrator so I jumped into UDK a day early and started blocking the level out with basic bsp brushes so I could start testing scale and get some gameplay testing done.

I have gotten about half of my level blocked out however everything is very rough at the moment and still a bit messy.
Biggest issue im having is stair cases Omg spiral staircases are a major pain in the ass.

Im looking forward to tommorow where Im going to finish blocking the whole level out and work on getting all the gameplay in the level working with bots which should be interesting as I've never se tup bots before.

Here are a few really basic Screenshots of the level so far.


Some Top down sketches in Illustrator









A shot from the main courtyard in front of church the upper platform is area where waterfall is going to be




View from upper platform back down




Just inside church doors



Stairs leading to upper level



The big cave room where the player can jump down from the above well or travel through bottom of church. This room will end up looking a lot different when I make it properly as it will be all cave wall with rocks and be partially filled with water and a small water fall.
There also is meant to be a tunnel on that far wall leading up to the upper platform





Upper part of church

New Waterfall Unreal DM map Project

So I have decided to try a 11 day self set challenge inspired by the World of Level design.
Over the next 11 days I will aim to Design and bring a small unreal DM map to beta stage using UDK and existing assets.
I might attempt to create a couple of assets in 3d s Max will have to see how the design phase goes today.

I have started day 1 today.
After doing a bunch of searching around for ideas I have settled on a waterfall themed map with an abandoned church located on a cliff side.
Im currently in process of gathering up reference material and getting my head around illustrator to get the top down images done.

Ill do another update later today when I have things more finalized :)

Main room Improvements

so the second room was really annoying me it looked to square and boring with all those pillars everywhere.

So I decided to revamp it to make it a bit more interesting.
I adjusted to roof to make it more angular and made up some make shift chairs with a bit of creativity and existing static mesh's. I was going for a kind of church feel.

I'm thinking of moving over to L4D2 editor or more likely gears of war 2 after this map because I want more assets to work with.
reckon I could have made this room look so much better with some candles book cases and general stuff.

I think this will work out well if I can get the enemies working as well because they have cover on the top altar section and the player can use the bench's to hide behind when approaching the altar.

Looks a lot better I think. Still needs a lot of lighting work. Think that's the main thing I need to improve. Might need to do a few more light mass tutorials.

Anyway here are a couple of shots of the room.

Research and Improvements

So didnt really get a lot of level design work done yesterday as I was busy doing some reasearching.

The only thing i've really done is add a fog volume outside to see how it looks. I am still not sure if Im happy with it or not. gotta be careful that im not just adding things because I can. Atleast on the bright side I now know how to place fog volumes :)

Also added a post processing region in the main room to change the atmosphere a bit.

Played a bit of gears of war and omg the levels in that are insane so open and so much detail really helped to give me some inspiration and reference on whats possible.
I also have been recently checking out http://www.worldofleveldesign.com
This site is brilliant and has a lot of awesome reference and articles. Im pretty keen to try the design and building a level in 11 day thing as I think that would help keep me a lot more focused.

So I think my plan for the weekend is going to be to read up on a stack of articles and tutorials and sign up for a number of level modding sites and communities and try to get a bit more active.

Plus decide whether I'm going to continue in UDK or try using the gears of war editor where I have a few more assets.

On a side note Im really keen to try Hammer editor in l4d2 some of the levels Ive seen done for that are really inspirational

Then first thing monday I will decide whether I want to continue my current level or start a new project and design it properly instead of of getting caught up on what looks cool in UDK.

Update on UDK Level

So over the last few days I have been continuing work on my first UDK level "Into The Cave"
I did up a rough design map in Illustrator that shows the basic layout of the level.
Also started work on the first few rooms.

Its proving quite challenging only using UDKS limited assets.
Really looking forward to making another level in either UT3 or Gears of war UT editor so I have a few more assets.
Either that or i'll try making a level using my own assets in UDK.

Either way I'm really enjoying how easy to pick up UDK is and how quickly you can make a level and load it up and see your work in game.

Here are a few WIP pictures of the first 2 rooms. I still have a lot of prop population to do and the lighting is still a bit off

Yay I have a blog

Figured I would start up a blog so that I could post updates on how my level design work is going.

Im currently in process of making a single player level entitled. " Into The Cave" where the player travels underground through a series of rooms encountering enemies and various platforming puzzles.

Its mainly just a test improve my skills and have something for my portfolio.
Anyway stay tuned :P