This is the 1st of a 13 part development diary for my final year project at Teesside University.
I Decided on the base idea for this project around December last year and the idea hasn't really expanded much from that point over than narrowing down into exactly want will be built. I will be creating a photo-realistic environment of Iceland based on the TV show 'Vikings'. The story will goes as follows;
You play as Floki, a man tormented by his own madness. You have stumbled across new lands, lands gifted from the Gods that will provide for true believers for many a lifetime. Whilst wandering the vast land you have stumbled across the eyes of Odin, a Raven. Follow the Raven across Iceland to discover what the Gods have in-store for you.
So that I had a clear path for my idea I created this mind map to score out all details of my FYP and to view all my options.
I then went on to create a mood-board for my project. I am inspired by such games as everyone is gone to the rapture by its ability to capture such a great story using very little mechanics, the same goes for What Remains Of Edith Finch. Art wise Death Stranding played a huge part in me deciding on my FYP the huge landscape with massive mountains, the lush green grass mixed which the damp rocky environments what exactly what I was looking for when it came to inspiration.
Design
I have started with creating the Footpath within Maya for Floki to follow.
I started By creating a plane and moving segments around to make it look used by animals. I didn't want the feeling on a man made pathway as Floki will be the first one to walk this route. Once I made sure that the general shape was good I started to tessellate the shape so it can be displayed in Unreal Engine without any problems the and that it tiled well I then moved on to creating the Sides for my pathway.
For the sides I got a cube and deleted all the side bar the front and the top. I wanted them to be high enough so i could place to detailed foliage and scatter assets on and around the footpath without it seeming flat. I wanted the sides to be well tessellated just like the path so I got to work using the same technique to create a more realistic feel to the path.
Once I was happy with how the shape was looking I then duplicated the side, Rotated the shape 180 and made sure it fit with the other side of the path. Once I was happy with this I combined the shapes together and imported them into UE4 ready for use later on.
Unfortunately due to problems with software I have not been able to make as much progress this week as I wanted too. I have sent out the emails that I needed to for these problems to be resolved ASAP.
Tomorrow I will get back to work, hopefully on the landscaping and Level design but if the problems I am facing still are not fixed I will shift my project plan around to fit with these changes, probably getting started on the mechanics first.
My apologies for this blog being so short the first time around. With better planning and communication with the University hopefully this project wont go stand still again.