Dream Factory Development - 003

Took a short break from developing this game for a while to try and keep my mind fresh, also been working on a few other things as well but I am back into this game again and started developing more of the first level again trying to find routes and pathways for the player to follow whilst also building out the aesthetic.

I failed to mention something from the village I created in my last post. I tried to add pathways to the village to show where villagers have crossed off the main path that happens in society called 'desired paths.' where people find a more direct route which can impact the landscape. This is easier to see in the newer village I created with a path that's heading up towards a more residential area.

I have fixed the headwaters of the mountain containing the waterfall, adding a stream that goes off and out of the player area and going through the headwater so it isn't as jarring the transition from still water to flowing. I'm not sure if the top of this waterfall is going to be playable area yet but will definitely be visible to the player.

I have also changed the cliffs from the smaller rock faces which gave a bit more detail and precision to where I was placing the geometry. I think less is a lot more in this case as it feels more like a huge mountain now than how it did before and saves a lot more time when it comes to filling in all of the cliff faces.

This game is going to be a lot of getting from the bottom of a level to the top, so I've added some giant stones to the middle and toppled over one of the windmills which can be used in some way for the player to climb and jump across later on in the level.

I used clusters of stones near the castle walls to indicate the walls crumbling down from the force of the windmills. It was a lot faster than actually remodelling the wall so I can focus my time on other parts of the level.

The bottom of the windmill's textures were all messed up so ive used another asset, the lid of a barrel and enlarged it to fit the bottom, even though the bottom might not even be seen by the player it looked a lot better giving it a bit of a lip from the front.

I have also duplicated one of the windmills and edited the mesh in unreal to deleted faces of the mesh in certain areas so the windmill is still spinning but has lost most of the rotors arms. I am also thinking of using the singular arm left at some point as either an obstacle or something that can give the player a lot more verticality when it comes to getting around the map.

Also I have tried using the level sequencer to record a short video (Above) and it doesn't seem to be playing in real time and the FPS are really jittery. I have sped this video up a bit in post but will need to figure out why this is happening if I'm going to implement cinematics later on.

When it comes to traversing up the rock's in the middle, I wanted to add some kind of old cobble stone stairs that seem to be falling apart due to age with some obstacles/gaps so it isn't just a linear experience running/walking up the stairs.

I have had some issues with the stairs I've created at the moment though with the player character seems to be sinking into the steps as he runs up them and floating above the steps when going down them. I am thinking of adding a plane collision to help out with this issue or maybe playing around with the character animations a bit, maybe making it so the character is slowed down dramatically when climbing up stairs or directions of a certain degree.