As of March 23rd the UK went into lockdown due to COVID-19. Tens of thousands have died directly from the virus, more from the long lasting damage or side effects, so many infected.
As of March 22nd I was told to self-isolate as I had contracted the virus. I live with an auto-immune disease, so where some had it for 2-4 weeks. I had it for just over 2 months. My work came to a full stop, my life came to a full stop, Many times during my infection I was close to the point of no return, however I persevered. I stuck to my path.
Here we are now May 22nd I have long lasting side effects, I am constantly exhausted, but I will not allow it to stop me.
After experimenting with the terrain generator in UE4, I found that the outcome was far too detailed for the look I am going for in my game. so I decided to do it by hand. Which sounds insane but by doing so I was able to get the exact shape and size I want for the main land, and keep it at a low poly count. I can then go in after with the terrain tool to create landscape that isn't to be seen up close. Below you can see the terrain as I made it by hand and the finished product.
From here I then took the terrain into my Unreal Engine 4 project and began experimenting with 2 and 3 tone materials that will be used on the terrain. What you see below is the final product after putting it to a vote on social media:
The three colour nodes are placed into a '3ColourBlend' node that determines their placement ontop of each other, they are then divided and multiplied determining the strength in which they show through the one above. There is then also a world position node which determines where the colour sits on the polygons of a model. The voted options shown below.
May 25th: I have began to import the foliage into the world!
June 3rd: Continued build up of environment. Foliage placement and some side models like a cabin and the bridges. Terrain painted on grass.
June 13th: Since the last addition above, I have been working hard at filling the world's terrain with foliage. I have also been testing the dream-like lighting that will be throughout the world and the fog levels. I decided purple as the lighting colour as it isn't too harsh and gives a nice tone to the landscape.
June 28th: I took some time to focus on getting the world filled to a point I was happy with before focusing on the mechanics, this mean more trees, and rocks. All of which were the originals made in my tests and some alterations and some pre-paid assets to fill gaps.
July 1st: I have been playing with the mechanics the entire time I've been back working on the game, however to no avail. I've had them work for a moment and then not at all for no reason at all. My key skills are level design and modelling but I have studied blueprints through trial and error, gaining a new skill.
The mechanics for the game are a wind tunnel that pushes the character back at varying speeds and a vertigo (Field of view change) mechanic set within trigger boxes. It took some real research to get some of these right and more often than not, what I had turned out to be lots of different pieces to the final puzzle.
For example I knew that for the Wind Tunnel, I needed to know the direction in which the player had to be able to still move forwards but with some speed resistance, then also if the player was still they had to be pushed backwards. In many different attempts I had the speed right, or the push right and yet couldn't work out why the player wouldn't activate the trigger box, and it was because they were simultaneously triggering the event and turning it off at the same time. I also realised that without making a component that represented the Player Character, all of the events would contradict themselves. The end result and and the failed attempts are shown below.
Failed Attempts
Finished Mechanics:
July 2-6th: In this time I was in the midst of moving but still tried to get as much done as I could. More importantly. we have music! Surprisingly I managed to get all my music the same day!
First up, I asked a my friend who is a Berklee College of Music, Composition Graduate, if she would like to help me out, she jumped at the opportunity and created two tracks, one is an idle/opening track that expresses the game world, and the other represents the stress in which the player experiences as a person with PTSD.
The second artist in which I spoke to was another friend. Alanna Matty, self produced musician, Twitch Streamer, but most notably her songs Nothing to Lose, Loose Change and Why I Can't Sleep appeared in Ubisoft's Watch Dog's 2 in the mission titled "Limp Nudle". Alanna provided me with an instrumental to her song 'Distance' and the original track also. I used the instrumental as background music for the game and the original track as the end credit song.
Once this was done, I added some voice recordings to compliment the player's movement and experience within the game, as a narrator. The narrator is to show the player that evidently they need to face their trauma head on to understand it and not bottle it up. I got my flatmate Jack to record these lines as I thought his tone and voice fit the position well.
FINAL IMAGES: