Blog #7
BLUEPRINTS!!!!!! RPP!!!!!!!! LEVEL DESIGN!!!!!! This week has felt like that. Many different projects going on. Lots of learning. But most important taking what I learn in one area and applying it to another. In level design we have been creating simple blueprints. Below on the left is an example of a door that requires a key to be picked up. It also changes the button to green when it’s unlocked. This was done by creating two actor blueprints in UE5 and adding trigger boxes around the static meshes. In the blueprint an event trigger was added when the third person character blueprint (the robot) overlaps with the trigger box of the key or the door. When the character walks inside of the key’s trigger box the keyboard button E becomes usable. When E is pressed it will change a variable created inside of the ThirdPerson Blueprint called “HasKey?” to be true. Finally when the player walks to the door’s trigger box a check is done to see if the “HasKey?” variable is true. If it is true the door will become interactable with the same E key. The automatic door is much simpler and simply activates when the player walks into the door’s trigger box.
Level Design
Rapid Prototype Production (2 week games)
This week in RPP we are finalizing the fourth two-week game. This game’s theme: narrative. I have finished up adding the assets to dock, house, and boat as well as adding the key and door blueprint to the opening area of the game (see below for the video at the end of the pictures below). This is the same blueprint as above although slightly tweaked to be a swinging door instead of a vertical door. In terms of narrative the goal was to make this world feel immersive and engaging and to tell a story with the environment itself. While I don’t think the environment completely tells the story alone, I do believe that it does a good job of immersing the player right from the first scene into the world of ships, fishing, and sailing. The boat was hand modeled (see last week’s blog), but the assets and materials came from the store. This was my favorite project so far!
One random note the boat that is encased in a block below was my idea! The TD’s and Programmers were struggling to figure out how to get such a complicated static mesh (the large boat) to sail. So I added a cube at the bottom which will be turned invisible later and attached the boat to the cube. This allows us to have simple physics apply to the boat instead of the complex physics that would have been needed otherwise. For a two-week project it worked perfectly!
Do you remember the key and door from earlier? I implemented that same blueprint here! (this is a previous version of the map without the assets on the docks)
Level Design (Continued)
I wanted to add one more section to mention the upcoming project that I’m working on for level design: a first person shooter level in the call of duty style. I have created a Level Design Document to outline the map. Check it out below:
