Level Design Blog Week 9 - Pyramid building + First Cutscene.

Pyramid

For week 9 I created the Pyramid, this took me quite a while as I had to have a look around and figure out what best way to do it. Using my metric gym I figured out that the pyramid would best fit into the game if it was the main POI. I found that a size of 26 suited best, and then used the cube grid tool to create the block out of my pyramid, by tracing around the simple pyramid.

By the end of creating this pyramid, I realised that I probably could have done it much quicker, the original idea was that the player was going to climb up the side of the pyramid and get to a hole in the top, to then drop down into the pyramid and explore it. This was changed to make the game simpler.

Even more pyramids

The images below shows off what the level looked like by the end of week 9, I added two more pyramids as a way of adding more depth to the surrounding areas.

Creating the surrounding area and adding AI

After adding in the pyramids, I thought the surrounding area needed more, so I added more ground using the cube grid, while also adding in a lot of rocks to stop the player from getting out of bounds and running off, as well as this there are AI within the scene now that will roam around and shoot at the player once they get close enough.

In the middle of the new area, there are two separate size towers, these are inspired by the ones that I used within my metric-gym, not so long ago. The plan for the wall in front of the pyramid is to keep the player from getting to close, I want to lead the player around the side of the pyramid to the left, there will be an entrance here that allows the player to get inside. I have also added in some vehicles to bulk out the scene, showing that the mercenaries travelled there and didn't just appear.

Meeting Cutscene

Going into this module I didn't understand how to create cutscenes at all in UE5, so creating this cutscene was a big step upwards in my overall ability within the engine. It was simple enough to do, I created an "opening level" and added a small cube grid house to it, some small scenery, recorded my voice lines using audacity and then went into using the take recorder. After enabling the plugin, I told it to use the player character as its reference and recorded myself walking into the building, facing 3 separate AI, using audacity I recorded simple voice lines and added them as an audio track, completing the cutscene by moving the camera in a nodding motion, before making it walk off. I even added footsteps as a sound, as the recorded footage wasn't long enough and you can hear my player character walk off, half way through the cutscene. Lastly I moved the player start, to a location near where the cutscene ends. Below is the video:

The cutscene is set in the area below, kept it very simple.