Week 4: Working in engine

Now that the Level design has been established thanks to Freddy, Amber and Braden, we spent this week planning and preparing for the final outcome of our project. Namely, what we want to achieve for our deadlines.

This week, Freddy was able to visit the British Library to meet with Game City representatives and Library Curators. In her trip she was able to take many reference images that we can use in our level. Most importantly she was able to learn a great deal about the original Lewis Carroll narrative, and gain some advice from the curators. Freddy was even able to touch the original copy of Alice’s adventures underground (Wow! So lucky). Great job Freddy!

However, Freddy didn’t stop there; Freddy and Amber were able to get some fantastic book references from De Montfort university library to be used as textures. They took particular interest in the book ‘Mongst mines and miners, underground scenes by flash- light’ by J.C.Burrows. We used this book for inspiration as our; level is based on the underground theme.

Paper texture reference from the library

After modelling these books in 3ds max, they unwrapped the books and applied the textures.

Amber's modelled books

Denzil has taken it upon himself to work on the water effects in our level. He has started by researching into water materials in unreal engine and looking at the water material examples from the ‘Water Planes’ demo by Epic Games. Like all engine work, it will not be an easy task and in working to create the pond material he had to create numerous iterations. However, we are sure he will get it right.

Among other things, Denzil has also worked hard this week to model the tree stump and mine cart for the team.

Denzil's minecart model

He has also created an interesting waterfall prototype effect, using the panner node in unreal engine. He found it an easier process than expected, compared to the respawn mechanics. Now we feel it would look better if we incorporated paper textures into the work.

Dan has been working hard, sculpting our Alice model. At the moment he is sculpting the body, aiming to get Alice’s body right.

By the way things are going, Dan’s Alice will look great when it is finished

Dan's base sculpt

Braden has also been working hard on creating our user interface for the level. He had developed some great designs for the pause and start menu. We are all excited to see how it looks when Braden completes the UI.

Braden's pause screen concept

Of course we are still white boxing at the moment, Amber has done a great job of putting our level together.

As it was decided, the house would be a focal point for our level, Amber helped create a camera zoom system. This should highlight the smaller details such as the ‘drink’ me bottle and door key.

Here is a quick video of our progress:

As you can see, there is still of work needed to be worked on, however we have made good progress this week. Hopefully, next week should be even better.