WEEK 8: Learning how to make stuff move!
Welcome back friends! It's been a while, I know, but I finally found time to work again on this series! This time, I'm gonna be talking to you about what I learned during the 8th week of the course "Level Design For Games" on CGMA.
For this week, spoiler alert, I didn't finish my assignment. We had a holiday week that was scheduled since a while, so I only had about a day to work on something and watch all the lectures. The fun part was that the topic this week was:
"How To Bring Your Level To Life"
So with that, I decided I would focus on learning how to make stuff move in Unreal Engine and explore different approach that could be beneficial to other levels I would do in the future. So this one will be a short one, but a fun one! 😃
ASSIGMENT
Here are the requirements for this week's level:
- Create dramatic scale
- Use a new blueprint (Robot from the StackOBot Unreal project)
- The style is free
- Focus on adding life to your level with animations, FX, SFX, etc.
So you guessed it:
My focus was on adding life to this level (that never got fully made)
Let's get to work!
LET'S DO THE WORK!
1. BRAINSTORM / MOODBOARD & INTENTIONS
For this week, the big topic was "scale". I'm a big fan of Goro Fujita's work and also, I love the game "Stray". I love how cute the robots are in Goro's artwork and I think the colors and the sense of scale is really interesting in "Stray", though, I was thinking more about the little robot that follows you than being a cat really. There was also a game on my radar that is called " Endling". I haven't played yet, but I find the art style captivating.
References & Notes Board, all cleaned up!
I settled on this idea:
You play a little reforestation robot called a Seedbearer that just got dropped on a location. Your objective is too plant new tree seeds to help the forest grow back, but be careful of hazards like fire (can hurt you) and crows (can steal your seeds).
WHO: A little reforestation robot (Seedbearer)
WHEN: Now/Near Future
WHERE: In a burnt forest
WHAT: Planting SEEDS TO REGROW THE FOREST
WHY: Because you want the life to return there
HOW: Exploring the forest, finding seed beds, avoid open spaces (crows can steal your seeds).
2. LET THERE BE LIFE!
For the time I had, I explored a couple of things that I would like to see in this level:
🔥Make a moving ennemi
- Explore animations along splines
I made a crow that can move on a spline
🔥Play a little more with the character blueprint
- Have a mesh that can be attached and detached, in my case, a seed.
🔥Play with character animation
- Make the robot go slower when you have a seed (you need to be more careful) VS make it go faster when the seed is gone.
The robot walks pretty slow when carrying the seed. It can run when it drops it
🔥 Have moving FX
- Moving grass
- Fire particles
I used grass that came with the StackOBot project and tweaked it to my liking
🔥Play with camera collisions so it is more free
- I feel I had trouble with that in my previous levels
I learned how to not affect the camera so you can freely move in a forest
🔥Explore simple materials and atmosphere
- I wanted to explore gradient material for the trees (the bottom par is burnt)
A little snippet of what could this environment feels like
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Overall, I learned a ton and this was very fun to do! It's pretty simple, but still, I didn't know how to do any of it before now and I'm pretty happy with the result. I think this idea as some potential and I may try to make a complete level out of it somewhen!
I made a little video where I talk about all of this if you'd like!
See ya!
- Caro
