Devlog 1: Nathan Thorpe

Author: Nathan Thorpe

8/16/2024

Map Prototyping

Today I focused on build out the map for our 1st level in Guardians of the Keep. I made the level in blender using the Low-ploy castle pack from Creative Commons. It has been a while since I used blender, with the last time being when I worked on recreating the game Defender in 3D, so I had to get used to the swing of level creation once again. Along with that, I have upgraded from Blender version 3.6 to 4.2, however the two seem near identical from my time so far. The main issue I faced was learning how to import the level from blender into Unreal Engine, as before the level was exported using a script that allowed it to work with the render we had made Defender off of.

This wasn't as bad as I had expected though, with the process simplified thanks to a tutorial I found on how to import objects to Unreal from the Youtuber Ion. The process required me to make an empty arrow in Blender, and then parent every object to the empty which made sure that the level would be imported as one whole object. The method still allows me to move each individual object as in Unreal, each object was still considered its own but now a child of parent empty. From there, I imported the .fbx as a scene instead of a singular fbx file, which helped Unreal maintain collision by auto generating it for every single object. The only object that did not get this treatment was the floor, that was made using a basic plane in Blender but was solved by just giving it a collision box in Unreal. The other issue currently present in the level was its scale. I had doubts that the regular scale of the objects would be smaller than the player, so I scaled everything by 5, with a few exceptions in stairs and the wall that goes into the curve of the castle. This proved to be an overestimation, so I have gone back into Blender to rescale in order to better match the size of player. Finally, I am still in process of finding a new player model, one that will match better with the art direction we plan to take with the world and enemies, but that will be done alongside the work I am doing on the level.