Devlog 2 ~ Drake Curry: Level v2.0 and Learning Pains

Problem: This week, I was tasked with fleshing out our level. I thought it would be a hefty task and BOY was I correct. I learned a lot about level building techniques this week. Although I didn't get into any nitty-gritty coding this week, I sure had my share of head scratcher moments.

Flatten + Shape

Starting out, I grabbed my Landscaping tool, hit the flatten button and got to work. I removed the crescent mountain and brought the whole map back to flat. I then switched over to the trusty ol' sculptor and started redesigning the outside edge of the island, giving it more curves. I actually found some great top down pictures that i used as inspiration but i kind of just went with the flow. After finishing up the coasts i plotted out our island center (the end-game area). This was to be surrounded by mountains, a lake, and blocked by some pesky rocks that have fallen. Using a pretty aggressive setting on the sculptor, I created some larger than life mountains, a nice little lake, and created a very poorly placed rock pile to block the main way in.  I also took this time to draw out my biomes (Tundra, Desert, Forest, Beach/ Sparsely Wooded Area).

Materials? We got them

Next step, Materials for this brand new landscape. I opened up Quixel Bridge and started looking. I knew the biomes I needed materials for so this was easy. Desert, Tundra, and Forest returned me exactly what I needed. I downloaded a bunch of materials and waited. 10 or so minutes later i had all of my assets in hand. I channeled my inner Bob Ross and got to painting. I have to say now I am NOT an artist. I gave it the best I could and got some decently shaped biomes textured out using the painting landscape tool. This also required me to update the Dirt Map i had created, I also took this time to tidy it up. Sadly the blueprint is much to large to get a screenshot of and be able to read anything. 

Blend Blend Blend

After roughly butting all the materials together on my island, I switched over to the smoothing paint brush and tried it out. This worked fairly well and let me choose which texture i wanted to be more prominent. I blended everything together and it was really starting to look like the start of an island.  This process was slow but the results were very very prominent. 

Unreal is like an onion?

I realized something after master crafting (joking) our island, It was WAY to flat. To address this i got to researching. I stumbled across a video for making procedural deserts in Unreal 5.4 (Not our version, we used 5.2.1... Bummer). Hesitantly, I took a peek. I didn't even think about using different layers. This allowed me to create the base layer including all of the materials, and a new layer which I decided to try to make sand dunes with fitting for the tutorial i figured. I got to work following this tutorial (thank the LORD for tutorials) and quickly realized this was going to be super simple and I was 100% overthinking it. All I had to do was grab a sand texture, change its tiling, and apply a noise map to it. Using a Material Only brush  I simply clicked on the landscape and poof, the island had a big square of dunes in the center of the desert biome.  Now this tutorial got into some lighting and fog stuff which I figured was overkill for this week so i left it there. After creating the square i changed up the tiling so that it was a lot more spread out, and VOILA, the island was now hilly and almost perfect.

Disaster

So, I am chugging along on the level design. I've got the terrain built, blended, layers created and terrain is ready for assets. As I go to launch Quixel Bridge my Unreal Engine gracefully performed an unscheduled, catastrophic self-immolation. Frantic I boot back up to be met with the original island. I spent the next 5 minutes reciting my favorite curse words, and got on recreating the island. Albeit easier the second time but just as tedious. Brush Brush Brush. 

Why do they make 1 sided assets again?

After master crafting (joking) our island, I realized that we may need some kind of cliff faces on our mountains. I looked in Quixel for some assets and found quite a few assets for ice and sandy cliff faces. I was so excited. This was exactly what I needed. I got them downloaded and added. I moved them into my level and to my surprise they were extremely tiny (1/4 the size of the PC), and they were 1 sided... WHY... they basically cut down the back and turned on back face culling so from the back the cliffs are basically invisible. Not only that, the cliffs all had this weird footing that stuck out a good 10uu. I realized this was going to be a problem because no matter how i scaled, transformed, or rotated them, I had either exposed void because of back face culling, a foot sticking out the mountain, or 1% of the asset exposed.  Not a great time.

Finally, Foliage

12 hours in, 0 foliage on the map, and an approaching deadline. I had already added a bunch of rocks, dead leafless trees, and various shrubs into the foliage tool, but i was missing something. I really needed some trees with life, with leaves. I hit up Quixel to be met with 0 trees. It's got every part of the tree but the tops, and the leaves. Hoping that someone's offering a free high resolution tree asset, to Google I went. I ended up after scrolling Fab with a decent pack of trees, complete with motion and wind logic. PERFECT. I slapped them into our project and slapped some on the level. This pack also came with the exact tree design I wanted for my forest area. Tall trees with with leaves at the top to make a canopy of sorts. 

Next Steps

Next week i plan to refine the breaking system to allow different break requirements for each object, Each object will drop a unique drop as well. I also plan to work on the games save system, loading system, and AI.