Many months back, we switched from Unity to UE4 for our project, . I wrote a blog post on the decision, which ended up on Hacker News and Slashdot and got a fair amount of attention.
Our first few months on UE4 were really just spent learning. Once we started understanding the tools and engine code and had a feel for the basic process, we switched to an iterative approach, blocking out all of our levels to a powers-of-2 grid, and then continually testing the levels, tweaking them, and upping the level of detail with each pass.
We’re now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and are ready to begin doing regular screenshot Saturday posts of our progress.
We’ve been working on seven levels so far, with two others in very early concept stages. Today, we’re going to show our progress on the first two levels of the game, dubbed “Training Day” and “Hangar”.
Training Day was the first level we ever worked on for . It’s a training and rifle range on a very large spaceship called the ERS Oberon. These screenshots actually represent our third version of of this futuristic shooting range. The first version was created in Unity and was a playable prototype and proof-of-concept. Our second version was done in UE4 and it’s what our artists and level designers built to get comfortable with UE4’s tools. We didn’t pay much attention to playability or story while building the second version, though. This third version is part of our new, constant iteration approach. These comparison shots show where the level is now compared with the blockouts we did a few months ago.
is actually a small piece of a much larger universe we’ve been fleshing out for several years. Our story bible, scripts, and universe guide contain over a thousand pages of back-story, character history, and sundry details about technology, politics, and universe in general. We’re not ready to share much of the story yet, but to help set the stage for this first Screenshot Saturday, here are the first two draft pages of the Training Day intro cinematic.
Training Day progress comparison: (click for full-size)
http://7.t.imgbox.com/YJ4pKXa5.jpg http://1.t.imgbox.com/ql4hOWLC.jpg http://7.t.imgbox.com/KT5A2yy0.jpg
If you’re interested in seeing the previous version of Training Day, it’s shown in the blog post linked above (or right here).
Our second level, called simply “Hangar” is a cavernous flightdeck and hangar bay from the same ship. From a story perspective, this level was put in to convey the enormous scale of the ship to the player. The script and signage will tell the player that this is one of many hangar bays on the ship. To give you an idea of scale, the little red shapes on the hangar floor are people-sized scale reference models.
Hangar progress comparison: (click for full-size)
http://7.t.imgbox.com/XVBCCR2h.jpg http://0.t.imgbox.com/uIbMZGOC.jpg http://5.t.imgbox.com/4OIaxJBh.jpg
We welcome any feedback, criticism, or comments. Thanks!
