Phantom Culprit: The Finished Level

The Police Station

The Layout

The police station level is in the last steps of completion with the layout finalised, props added and details placed. All that is left to do is work on the objective system, AI layout with any spare time being used for asset creation to fill in any finer details.

Overview of the ground floor of the police station.

The layout was originally planed to be 'free roam' with the player being able to open most doors and explore the level as a circuit. However during play testing, done by myself and 2 others, I found this approach would mean players could miss over half the level and complete the game too quick. Instead I locked the door to the right of the starting room (The main hall in the center middle) and focused on creating a linear route. 

The Linear Approach

The linear route.

This route leads the player from the starting room, round the left hall, through the briefing room, past the armoury. The player can then go to the end room where they will be notified they need to turn the power on to open the security door or go straight down, past the jail cells and into the stairwell that leads into the basement. The basement only contains one room with the power switch. From there the player will backtrack up the stairs and head towards the end room.

The pro's of a linear approach mean I can create 'scenes' I want the player to see which they could miss if given full free roam. An example is the left hall. When the player enters they will see the light shafts coming from the windows, illuminating the start of the dark hallway. The end of the hall has a torch shinning the silhouette of a zombie onto the wall. Is subtle hint to the player that there is something around the corner.

The players view upon entering the left hall.

The Objectives

The level consists of two objectives.
  1. Investigate the police station and find the fuse box
  2. Escape through the garage door
The three objective areas. From left to right: Starting room, basement fuse box and security door to the garage.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Phantom Culprit: Weapons

Image
Glock 17 Gen. 4 My chosen weapon was the Glock 17 Generation 4. The Glock 17 is an Austrian made handgun chambered in 9x19mm and is used as the main sidearm for most law enforcements around the world. The biggest reason for choosing this gun apart from meeting my needs for a handgun is that it fits the setting of my game. The Glock 17 being the main handgun used by police and military forces in the UK and my game being based in the UK it made sense, giving the game some authenticity. The Glock 17 is also highly customizable with different attachments, such as torches and laser sights, as well as different grips, slide and colour patterns.  A Glock 17 Gen 4 (Image by Buds Gun Shop,  https://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/index.php ) The Model I created the Glock 17 using reference images in Maya 2018. The gun was separated into 4 components to allow animation. These components being the slide, receiver, trigger and magazine. Each component was then  assigned a layer in Maya fo
Read more

Phantom Culprit: Lighting and Materials

Image
The Lighting Lighting and materials play a massive part in the immersion of a player into the game world. I read articles published by Epic themselves on how the lighting system works in the Unreal Engine and the best techniques to light each part of the level. Static, Stationary and Movable lighting - (detailed in Phantom Culprit: Level Creation) Materials and their properties - PBR materials (detailed at the bottom of this post) Reflection spheres - capture and reflect light in a lighting build Post processing - edit lighting, bloom, colour grading, camera effects  Exponential height fog - dense fog with light scattering The reflection sphere captures the light from outside the windows, the ceiling lights and the emissive light from the vending machine then reflects that lighting to the surroundings. The floor has a shiny reflection compared to the rougher walls. The Materials The second part of a great lighting setup is PBR (Physcially Based Rendering) materials.
Read more