autumn adventure
Overview
Stylized fantasy, playable level set in a outdoor environment.
Role
Level Designer
Tools
Unreal Engine 4, Adobe After Effects
Skills
Level Design, Set Dressing, Landscape Editing, Composition, UE4 Blueprints
With this month's free assets on the Unreal Marketplace, I found a lively asset pack of stylized fantasy elements and I wanted to use them to make a Top-Down level environment. Many of the projects I have worked on in the past have been smaller and more focused solely on prop placement or set dressing. This time through I wanted to spend some more time working on landscape editing and working through creating a larger playable level that would allow you to walk through it and see the various points of interest throughout the level. Additionally, with some of the included assets I decided to simulate a tutorial level, as if a player was getting their first understanding of core movement and level elements.
Shown below is some documentation photos of the various stages of progression as I went about creating the level environment. As usual, I started with drawing out a simple sketched map to get a good idea of where I want certain level interactions, pathways, and alternate pathways to be. I then start with painting out the general layout of the roads before simple landscape modeling. After getting a rough base, I will go through the various points of interest and flesh them out before doing a last pass over it all for polish.
Finally, listed below is some detail shots of the various points of interest in the level. While the level itself doesn't have many gameplay elements, I wanted to simulate how a player might be interacting with an initial tutorial for a top down RPG. With this I included some simple combat, and showed how simulating alternative routes might affect a players movement, despite the level mainly having one desired route for completion. I think it is important in world building for the environment to encourage exploration, without creating confusion for the player.
