The Past few months of the Masters have been a pretty rough ride due to our team not making it to the interview stages of Dare to Be Digital. Though some of us felt passionate about the project and so we decided to continue creating it and working it into our Masters degree!
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| The Ballroom Block Map |
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| The Battleship Block Map |
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| Battleship Crew Quarters Block Map |
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| Naval Commander's House Bedroom Block Map |
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| Naval commander's House Living Room Block Map |
During June and July I focused on creating the block maps for 'A Broken Time' as well as mapping out what mechanics would be needed, where they would be needed and how we were going to teach the player through the design of the level (seeing as we were now not using this project for dare it required a little tweaking to work for my MA Theory).
The first was to make things look inviting and important, and so with the first thing you come across being the all-important archway (which is used for a variety of things in the game) we wanted to point the player in that direction and this is what it looks like.
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| The Graveyard Archway |
As you can see, it’s a clear indication of where to go from the start of the game, with not only the archway in view, but also the Crypt in the back ground which is where the player has to go to collect the first item needed to progress. Once the player would have the item (which is a strip of film) they would then need to place it over the archway, an indication for correct placement of this would be the trees behind the archway swaying in the wind. This is a clear indication and the current surroundings are still in time, with you being within 'A Broken Time'...Get it? ;P
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| Archway Before |
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| Archway After |
Another example of subtle teaching is once the player enters the naval commander’s house, they will be able to explore, but once they arrive to his children’s play room, the room will be shattered. There will be a poster on some broken wall with something like (but not exactly) 'When the camera goes 'CLICK!' A picture appears' (due to this being a children’s room) this would indicate that the mouse click is how the player will take a photo of the environment.
HOWEVER! Unfortunately, during august our programmer backed out of the project due to finding work elsewhere, and so the rest of us (Me and Montee) were left with the idea and no way to realise it. This left us in a pretty bad position as we then had to come up with another idea we could create ourselves and finish it in time for our final hand-in.
*CUE BRAINSTORM*
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| Brainstorm One |
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| Brainstorm Two |
Luckily I had an idea already sitting and waiting for a time like this, as before I decided to work more on 'A Broken Time' for the MA, I was originally going to do it (the idea I shall explain in a later post!) but again problems occurred, this time because of my own faults.
So during the final two weeks of August I quickly tried to come up with a Level design and put this new idea in Unreal Engine 4 (which I’m very new to using). Eventually I had the level design ready and I then block mapped it within UE4, just like I had done with 'A Broken Time'. However, I personally believed I could learn the new 'Blueprint' (which is visual coding for designers) within the last two months before the final hand-in...However i was sadly mistaken as it was fairly different to 'Kismet' which is what I am more comfortable with within UDK (unreal Development kit).
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| Main Room |
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| Jump Room |
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| Level Layout |
This is where i got up to within the time spent on UE4, in which all I could manage to successfuly do was get a door opening and some platforms moving...
Finally, I've decided to stick to what I am comfortable with and design the new idea in UDK, though this required me to block map everything from scratch yet again *sigh*
*CUE NEW IDEA*
Laters taters! =D
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