Terrain Topology (19th April)

This weekend I have revisited the North Melbury Forest again with the intensions of taking notes on the basic topology of the woodland, I scetched out how the land was formated and which areas of the forest I wanted to cut out of my recreation. With this information I got started on creating a basic layout in UE4 having already got the size of the map sorted (which I had done a couple weeks ago) I set out constructing the height of the terrain. With the sketches that I had made from my visit I was able to create a overall strucuture that I believe resembles North Melbury wood.

Construction:

Before starting constructions I looked into useful tools offered by UE4, one particularly useful tool I found was the blueprint layer tool which allows you to easily construct large chunks of land with ease and is a great tool for creating things like lakes and mountains. I also used the ramp tool and started using layers which is a great way to construct an environment in a none destructive way (a way that doesn’t affect the rest of the map). The way that layers works is that any changes you make in a specific layer will be saved to that layer meaning that if you were to come back later and not like a specific layer then you can delete that layer and the rest of the map will not be affect only changes in that layer will be deleted. This is great for an iterative work flow.

Example of the layers feature:

Having got a basic layout for my map sorted, I started adding in pathways. Pathways are critical for my design as they give the user a sense of direction and reference point without holding their hand. The goal now is to create tree group prefabs for the level, as in North Melbury wood there where different layouts to the tree e.g. areas where the trees were densely populated and areas that there was a lot of room in between the trees. By creating different group prefabs I can easily set different types of tree patterns up, which will help to speed up development. Once the trees are then all set up I can start adding the animals.. Overall I am happy with the progress I have made this week and hopefully should have a build ready for testing in approximately 2 weeks, which will allow for some early feedback.

#GAM704ExperimentalGames