FIEA Level Dev Blog

In RPP 4, we’re making a story game. In my group’s game, the story is played through the perspective of a dog searching for his owner at night. I used this project to get more experience with landscape sculpting and planning guided path for the player to follow. Using the terrain painter made it easy to iterate on the path and sculpt the surrounding landscape. To guide the player, I used dense trees and other foliage as natural barriers, marking where they shouldn't go, and added colliders as a failsafe to keep the player on track. I also placed a mountain as a weenie. I also practiced sealing off parts of the level as the player progresses, ensuring they keep moving forward without backtracking.

During Hurricane Milton, I was lucky not to lose power and used the time to work on the real-world blockout. I decided to block out my apartment layout at UnionWest in Maya, which I want to use to practice proxy modeling and importing to Unreal. One of the main challenges I faced was balancing a 1:1 scale in engine with the player character's height. Certain areas, especially hallways, became tight and difficult for the camera to navigate. I initially used a third person controller but switched to first person due to how cramped everything felt when it was to scale. This exercise made me realize that in games, a lot of spaces need to be scaled up to make them playable.