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So I’ve finished the map! I recorded everything I did as well, so you can watch a time lapse of the build! I also have a fly-through and walk-through of the level at the end of the video, so skip around to get to a part you find interesting! If you don’t want to watch a long video, I’m going to talk about my design decisions on the project page, found here.
As I said above, I am going to talk about my design decisions on the project page, found here.
I also have a quick post-mortem on the project. I spend a lot of time with it, and looking back, there is a lot I want to talk about.
What went wrong:
- Making a map on a 45 degree scale really messed with Unreal’s snapping system. I’m not sure if I messed something up from the start, or if rotation changes the snapping tool, but I was having a lot of issues trying to get snapping working once I got to the Mall section of the map. Because of this, I have some ugly walls where I had put two blocks on top of each other. Combine that with the odd extension that subtractive blocks seem to have on them, and it made it really hard for me to accurately line up the walls and props, and later on, getting textures to look/fit right.
- After looking back at my original sketches, I realized that I should have added much more verticality to the general map. For example, in both the first and last points, the path going up to there is supposed to be sloped slightly. I didn’t do this. I only realized it now, after I had finished the video and taking pictures.
- Either my assumptions in the game weren’t right, or I had the scale wrong, or probably both. Because of this, I had to eyeball the heights in the map and make sure everything looked better than it did on paper.
- Lighting is not my strong suit. I looked up a tutorial on how to use it in large indoor spaces and came up with something that at least shows off the map. This is something that would need to be drastically improved is order to make this a proper map.
What went right:
- Since I’m doing this while working on my other school projects, I was worried about juggling all the work I needed to do. Luckily, I was ahead on the work I needed to do, and spending so much time on this project had no effect on my other work.
- I made a map! This is something that I am really proud of, and I think the map would fit nicely in Overwatch. To top that, I’ve never been really confident in my Level Design skills. This project made me infinitely more comfortable making maps, and I realized that Level Design is something I really enjoy!
- I took a video of the entire thing, and made an amazing time lapse that looks great on my portfolio!
- Taking pictures of Montreal and making a reference folder was a really great idea (thanks past me). I was able to draw on that as inspiration whenever I was wondering what to fill a space with.
- Texturing the map with the basic wall asset was really easy. I was worried that it would take me a long time, but once I got a rhythm down it was fine.
What I would change:
- Make the 45 degree part separate , and then rotate it once I was done. This would save me time in the long run.
- I would spend less time on my sketches. However, I’m not sure if this was bad or good. To quote Dwight D. Eisenhower, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”. While I ended up going off track with my plans, and even adding entirely new things once I got in the map, having my sketches beside me as I worked was a really great reference.
