Week 7

Hi and welcome back to my vlog! This week, I focused all of my time into creating The Alchemist’s Oasis, which the book described as a paradise-like place. I started by importing a displacement map (creating a landscape using a black and white image that encodes depth and altitude). Sadly, it took several tries due to Unreal Engine crashing from the size of the imported map, so I eventually used photoshop to crop out unneeded pixels, leading to a smaller workload on my computer when creating the environment.

I based my map design off of a pool of water that I began the build with. I painted grass around the water and imported buildings arranged to focus on a spread out and developed community until I realized that the society was arranged in a more makeshift way. They used tents and did not build as much of a developed city as I initially believed. I moved all of the buildings into the distance to show nearly civilizations. After developing the environment, I realized that there were many details that I missed, like distant battles, easter eggs (that I should’ve added earlier), and interactions.

From playing the game, I found the game to not have enough content or that players can’t tell what books each environment was from. I decided to create pop-up messages that display information on the context, quotes, and take-aways.

As I develop new goals for myself, I have decided to not create the Whiplash environment and focus on the experience for the two existing maps. I want them to not only be visually pleasing, but also have great content.