Gone with the Gnome-More

Gone With the gnome

Pre-Planning

The purpose of this project was to demonstrate that we understand the archetypes of architecture for level building.
Another purpose for this level was to make players have a feeling of mystery or wonder in the location.
The setting was based on European forests or Asian forests where the place is just sprawling with trees.
No references to real world locations or game levels were used to create the location and mainly came up with what I would see throughout the level in head or in engine.

Planning

The picture on the left/top below is a planning of what actions players would be making throughout the level.
This was inspired by the methods that Bethesda uses when they worked on Skyrim which was mentioned in a GDC Vault video.
The picture on the right/bottom below is the map layout of what I was going to put in the level with notes on what is in that location.
Map layouts are usually used for me to make my plans before executing on them to make sure I know if the paths made are going to make sense or not.

Implementation

The first video below is the prototype of the game.
When I first implemented my plans into Unreal I didn't have much because I started getting a bit busy trying to understand Maya and how it worked which slowed my progress in placement of some of the locations.
The second video would be the production build which is where I added more to the place like the blockings and textured trees.
The level had most of the plan that I written out laid out where the big tree was there and more of the trees were added.

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Challenges

This project was my first time actually making a level in Unreal but had some familiarity with the tools and knowledge on what to do.
Also used Maya for the first time in the development of this project and didn't do know too much of it.
Wanted to make this world "sprawling" with trees which impacted a lot on performance for PC because of how much trees needed to render.
Spent a lot of time putting details on trees or locations pieces that I didn't focus on creating the mood or creating narrative points in the level.
Although the project was fully centered on level design, the level still needed some playability to it (a start to an end of level).
The feedback of having a "flat" level which I had no idea what it was so I tried to make sense of the meaning when I first got the comment.

Lessons Learned

Became very familiar with Unreal in developing levels and features that would be important in developing a game later.
Learned a little about Maya but would need some time on it to get use to it and also learn it better. (Made the giant tree through Maya)
After the project had ended, learned about merging actors and making geometry into static meshes in Unreal to reduce the high performance in the game which would've been helpful with hardware being behind in most of the development time.
Learned that flatness is pertaining to the change in elevation in my level where I had lots of flat areas throughout the level which needed me to add some height changes.
With the feedback from playtesting the level, learned that I created really good atmosphere to the space and the place was visually interesting.
Feedback from playtesting also told me that I led players to where they need to go without having any instructions to where the level ends.
Learned to focus more on the experiences rather than just the pieces that can build the experience overall.