Zachary Baptiste - Game Design
Game Name
Adventure Project
Engine
Unreal Engine 5.3
Dates
Jan 2024 - Feb 2024
Single level project produced on Unreal Engine 5.3. Created an adventure-based game that stayed within the creative bounds given for the project. This project began with the creation of mood boards, which were then referenced in the construction of the blockmesh. This level was iterated on from the first blockmesh until a gold build was made with a lighting and art pass with free Unreal Marketplace Assets. All work shown below was completed by me.
Mood Boards
Level Start
Focal Point
Level End
Level Progression
Below are a couple of in-progress and final iteration images of certain areas that changed the most during development.
Level Start BM1
Level Start BM2
Level Start Gold
Focal Point BM1
Focal Point BM2
Focal Point Gold
Level End BM1
Level End BM2
Level End Gold
Level Walkthrough
Post-Mortem
What Went Right:
01
Mood Boards– The first thing that went right was my establishment of a mood board for my level. This initial mood board allowed me to stay consistent with my creative vision, and provided references for me to base my level design around.
Comfort/Confidence – The next thing that went right for me was my increased experience and confidence as a level designer. Beginning with my first iteration of blockmesh, I had little confidence and took a while to make my first iteration. As time went on, I found myself able to make minor changes to blockmesh quicker and without issues as I understood the principles and practices behind blockmeshing more and more.
02
03
Version Control – The third success I want to talk about is my experience working with revision control software. For this project our team utilized Perforce as our revision control software and this went on without issue. Even when our release candidate build had a resolution error on the server, we were able to resolve the build without loss of any content.
Asset Implementation – A fourth success in this development process was my progression from Beta to Gold build. I was able to utilize unreal marketplace assets to encapsulate the theme I portrayed in my initial moodboards. I was happy with my utilization of free assets and felt I had made all major improvements I sought to make within my level.
04
05
Level Bounds – The last success I was happy with was finding creative ways to keep the player in the level. I talked about my initial trouble with blockmesh itself but this was a big component of it. I had a hard time at first visualizing why areas would be blocked in a level, and giving these shapes form and function. As time went on, I got better and found myself finding creative and natural looking ways to block the player off rather than using an invisible wall.
What Went Wrong:
01
Beta Progress – My first area that needs improvement was my progression from Alpha to Beta. I had a personal emergency that had taken a fair bit of my time, but by the end of beta development, I still had too much blockmesh leftover both in my opinion and in feedback received. Although this issue was due to exigent circumstances, I believe my experience in this development process will allow me to work at a more effective pace in the future, allowing me to feel satisfactory about all stages of development in future projects.
Standup Meetings – My next area of improvement is also in the beta phase, and I would say that was my usage of Beta standup meetings. I feel that although they did showcase the progress being made within the level, I feel I didn’t utilize it to its full potential. Again, this was somewhat due to external forces, but I hope to be more in-depth in future standup meetings to keep my teammates up to date on my current development progress and goals. Looking back on development, I see how crucial these meetings can be to keeping the team on track and aware of any issues that need to be prioritized.
02
03
Gold Build – I feel there were also further improvements that could’ve been made to my gold build. Although all major improvements were made, there were some hard seams left in my level design as well as some issues with the fire particle effect. Although these issues exist, I feel confident I can deal with them in future projects and was happy with adjustments I was able to make such as the lighting temperature for my fire effects.
Metrics Level – The next improvement I could have made was my understanding and usage of our metrics/gym level. Although I understood it was a showcase of basic game mechanics, I never understood the value of how it shows set limitations for the game mode such as maximum player jump and fall. My original iterations were done through trial and error, so I hope to take full advantage of metric/gym levels in the future to better plan out my original blockmeshing.
04
05
Time Management – The last improvement I hope to make in the future is better time management. This goes hand in hand with some of my other points about lacking my progression from Alpha to Beta. Overall, I hope to commit more time to the development of my level, to not only hit all major areas of improvement but also focus on the minute details such as the seams mentioned earlier. I believe with more time committed I can also focus on even smaller details such as making sure the cliffs surrounding my level don’t look like repeating assets while still keeping all striations looking natural and consistent.