The Open Book -- Diving into the Literary World

Intro Week 0

Hi! I’m Winston, and this will be the beginning of my journey towards making an “educational” game, where it’s mostly just me dumping everything I read onto Unreal Engine.

To start, I had trouble understanding the books we read in class after moving several times between the U.S. to China. I would always spend time and effort imagining the physical spaces and building every environment in my head.

By imagining the setting, I grounded myself in the story, allowing myself to pay full attention. I still remember each room I made for stories I read in 5th grade, even if I forget the plot and even the title.

While reading has always been an exhilarating task for me throughout middle and high school, I’ve helped myself understand more advanced reads. For this project, I will be recreating my representations of settings from the most widely read books at school, to teach other students that everyone can have their sandbox in their head to play around with, and I hope to eventually help students better envision the books they read.

I’ve started training myself in creating 3D models and environments, and I have found several good resources like textures.com, production crate, and art station for inspiration and assets. In preparation for next week, I plan to start the interface layout for my game, from the main menu to the user interface. To do this, I plan to create several concept arts that will be helpful for my modeling process. If I manage to find enough assets this week, I plan to start working further into my project, starting with producing the environment layouts.

Happy reading:D

Stay tuned for next week’s blog!