Getting Started

Proxy/Whiteboxing

My entire layout and proxies were created in Maya. This gave me better control of my overall aesthetic as well as the freedom to setup proxies in a way to my workflow as I needed them.

Scripting/Sequencing

I was able to express conveyance in such a desolate setting implicitly and explicitly through the use of data logs, strong silhouettes, and environmental storytelling. If the player got ahead of themselves and ventured to areas in the wrong order, I ensured that all data logs hinted back to the critical path to steer them back in the right direction.

One of the main objectives is to get the obelisk shard at the bottom of the pond to charge and activate the main obelisk. An obstacle that the player faces is that the water is hazardous and will kill the player if they jump in before completing the proper sequence of events. However, this wasn’t immediately obvious. By putting a warning barrier when approaching the water was one way to alert the player, but just in case it went unnoticed and the player did take the death plunge, I respawned them right in front of the barrier to explicitly communicate why. The series of events that follow, lead to acquiring an infrared visor that will outline quest items required for the player to complete their objectives.

Puzzles

The player comes across two logic puzzles that when solved will acquire key items that allow them to progress the level. The first one in the power station is solved by activating power panels in order to match all three in the on state to repower the main facility and charge the infrared visor. The second one in the science lab continues the same logic of the first puzzle, but adds a twist of requiring a specific formula (found in a nearby datalog) and adds one extra activator to increase the difficulty.

Upon completing the level, the obelisk comes to life and emits an ominous glow that grows, engulfing all that the player sees until they too vanish into the blinding light.

 Takeaways

General:

• Getting Out of the Bowl: feeling closed in didn’t quite match the tone for this open-ended exploration level and led to an uninspiring encounter. Opening up the canyon walls gave a better glimpse of the world at large and it’s isolated place in the environment to better match the tone of desolation, not just a random encapsulated pocket. Moving forward, I would like to add more to the skybox and surrounding terrain to show more of the technological imprint in the world as a whole.

• Silence/Static Structures != Desolation: although I wanted a desolate tone, a lack of sound just makes the world feel empty, not desolate. Adding ambient sounds like whirring wind, energy hums, and creature howls would help build up the tone and atmosphere, while dynamic sounds and events like mechanical structures powering up and activating give a sense of the player bringing the area back to life. A step further could be to add sandstrom particles and timeframes in which the player will take damage when not in cover to push the harshness of the planet’s surface.

Technical:

• Texture Painting Isn’t Limited to Just Terrains: I was concerned that because I sculpted my terrain in Maya, that if I wanted to add pathing I’d have to model it into the mesh increasing my pipeline. However, I discovered that I can vertex paint in Unreal on a mesh to get a variance to distinguish a path to help break up the monotony of terrain as well as create leading lines quickly. Unfortunately the vertex painting can seem rather aliased if the vertex count is too low, but for an approximate it gets the job done.