UDK - Mine Level -WIP
This is my first attempt at designing a level in UDK. It is to be a indoor/outdoor level. The outdoor portion will be what you see in the image below. The indoor portion will be mine tunnels running through the terrain. This level is going to be the deleiverable for two different college classes, Level design and Special FX. The textures were created in Genetica and Crazybump. The water is simply UDK premade particle system and water material that i put in to get an idea on the waterfall and river but will be replaced later. Please feel free to offer any criticism or tips, that's what i'm here for. Thanks
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Just a trick try to use more of your content and less what comes with udk, it will be more personal and more unique.
Your environment as a whole looks way too uniform. The mountains almost look like steps. The world we live in is random and chaotic, its features in and around waterfalls are even more dramatic. A great example of a video game demonstrating realistic terrain comes from the Rock Star team that created Red Dead Redemption. Every time I play that game, I am in awe with how beautiful there environments are.
Another thing to consider is your screenshots. This is something that I recently learned and I am waiting to finish my current project to really put the techniques to use.
http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/udk/udk-how-to-take-high-resolution-screenshots.php
Its just simple things like hiding the HUD and taking great screen shots with a simple code inside of UDK.
So give it a try and I look forward to seeing more of your progress.
Good luck.
I would also recommend a bit more asymmetry. I realize this is for a design class, so the level has to be balanced and whatnot, so the asymmetry could just be visual or whatever (ie make half of the map a building or scatter debris, or have some sort of landmark or set piece).
Lastly, the entrance to the mine shaft has the same problem as the rest of the scene - not believable. Entrances to mine shafts don't look like that. Google image search "mine shaft entrance". Most of them feature man made supports and things like that.
Overall, I feel like this wasn't planned out well. I feel like it would benefit you to gather more reference, and maybe rethink some of the terrain.
@Polygonfreak - I had actually wanted to do the terrain like giant steps, but it didn't turn out the way i expected, partly because it seems to be impossible to do with terrain. What i really wanted was more like cliffs, with overhangs and such. Ultimately i should have just modeled my terrain but i was afraid that with my inexperience and lack of knowledge, i wouldn't be able to figure out how to get the materials to look right on a huge terrain model. Thanks for the link by the way, i'm sure it will come in handy real soon.
@SgtNasty - You know what, i just looked up mine shaft entrance in google and not only does my mine shaft entrance not look like a mineshaft entrance, a real mine shaft entrance would have probably been a lot easier to do than what i have there so thanks for point that out, i'll definitly work on that for sure. Also you are correct, the level did have some planning, but it was minimal due to time constraints. I do however think that the idea here has a lot of potential and I'll probably continue working on it even after the class is over. Really i would like to replace everything with custom content since i didn't have time to make everything for the class.
@erwilly - yeah, i still have quite a bit to go but i do plan on putting some big rocks and such in there to help break things up.
Thanks for the comments guys, I'm going to work on some of this stuff and hopefully will have some more screenshots soon. Also, I'm still open to any tips on how to get the lighting build time down, right now it's totally ridiculous, i know it's all the trees, i just don't know how to optimize it.
Also while i was on a short break from school i started working on a water material that I'd like to get some opinions on. I started it with a tutorial by Chris Albeluhn and a material by John Heeter. Neither material really worked for me, so i combined them and heavily modified the whole thing to work for my purposes, ultimately I'd say about 50% of the original materials are intact with the other 50% being created by me. I have to say that in my short time working with UE3, i think probably the most fascinating tool I've worked with so far is the Material editor, Cascade is pretty cool too, but i found it a bit frustrating. Anyway, below is what i came up with for my water shared, which Is still incomplete and i'm sure is far from optimized. The terrain is just part of the test map i created.
Alright, that's all the updates i have for now, thanks guys.