terranigma1-blog

[terranigma1-blog]

 When the word site comes to mind, one may usually think of various locals or specifics which exist in our world. Although this is true, I wanted something different. I wanted people to experience something that was familier, but Alien at the same time. Something based on reality, but clearly fictitious as well. I thought that the best way to approuch this is through the use of the virtual reality space, because what’s a better way to experince a site, than to be in it.

 I had the option between Unity and Unreal to make my sites, but ultimately decided on using the Unreal Engine due to its user friendlyness, and sheer power of the engine itself. I had seen what it was capaple of doing and thought it would be a perfect match for what I had in mind. Unreal engine can be completely used through its use of “Blueprints” or a node based system which can be used to create anything you desire. Unity, however, uses code based systems, and since my coding knowledge is limited, Unreal Engine looked even more promising.

 I then decided to do research on various odd sites around the world to potentially base mine off of somewhat along the way. Those well be mentioned below along with the photo’s. I did, however, take some creative liberties with them. There was one aesthetic, however, that I, for some reason, really love to see, that being a single tree in the middle of a large field. Playing off this idea, I made the same, but in the middle of water instead. The picture above is a very early version of the hub world. The hub world will be the connecting area between all my other ones, almost like a safe bastion. For this reason, I wanted it to stay nice and simple. I made the water very metallic like, almost like mercury, and made the sky green, in order to create that familier, but still alien, atmosphere. I was very pleased with the way this turned out, but, as you will see, the design would have drastically changed by the end.

  This Hub world was made up of a water texture, which I then edited to include larger waves at longer distances, to give it a more realistic effect. I then added in a tree mesh, and applied a leaf material with a wind sway added within it. The Bark material also includd the wind sway but I did not use it here. I then changed the postition of the sun within the skybox and colorized the sky to be a green hue, as well as the water, somewhat. Finally, I added in a exponential height fog in order to cut off any rough edges of the horizon, making it look more realistic, as well as adding a box around the scene that limits various lighting details to get a certain look, called a Post Processing Volume. This level, sadly, was not in any state to be playable at that point in time.

 Each individual world will also include its own unique song in order to build on the atmosphere of the levels and make it more into its own thing. Each composition includes very strange and alien sounding sounds as well in order to add to the effect. The hub world, again, since its a place of bastion, has more of a structured and tight composition compared to the others, with more obvious cord changes.

 Finally, the goal of the game is to collect the fruit which is hidden in each level. Going in post order, easiest to hardest, I took much care in placing them, some even requiring some thought to acquire, as opposed to just going up to it and collecting it. The levels, again in post order, get bigger and bigger, and allow more and more freedom. As structured as it may seem however, the player still has absolute freedom over the order in which they play and experience it. Each fruit also has a part of a phrase, which when put together, reveal a secret hidden within the game.

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 This level, simply names the “Ice Level” was directly inspired by the blue ponds in the town Biei, located in Hokkaido, Japan, as seen above. The ponds are famous for their neon blue and sometimes green colors, specifically visually stricking during the winter times. The explanation for it was that a dam was built in order to redurrect a volcanos magma, in order to prevent too much damage to the wildlife. The dam, however, ended up moving water from a near by hotspring into a field, making this pond. Along the way, the water picked up particles of limestone, aluminum, and sulfer, which all came together to give it its hue.

  My rendition of it, initially, had a bright neon green icy pond, but then changed it to a pastel blue, because the green was way too harsh. I added in pink snow in order to create that alien atmosphere, and added in the dead trees that are present in the real life counter part. This level, in my opinion, ended up being the simplest becasue it was really the first one in which I seriosuly started to work on. For example, landscape making, painting it through use of creating a world material, and create foliage with the foliage tool, was all started on this level. It was quite fun descovering all the tricks of unreal while making this level.

  I then ended it off by adding a bounds box for the vr player to step and walk around in. Eventually, after testing and finding areas the player can go out og bounds with, I added bound limiting blocks, the yellow ones shown in the photo, in order to limit the player somewhat in their travels. The music is a single melody/ chime being played, almost as if the environment itself is making it, with ambient electro sounding animal hows in the back, and ice scratching like noises, all moving in to add cords the second time the motif is played, this method becomes a common theme throughout my songs. Another is that fact that all the songs are in Am, mainly because I find the 7 cords that can be dine in it to sound very calm and comforting.

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This world is titled “Rain Forest” and takes inspiration from the boiling river in the Amazon. Although there isnt a specific explanation for the phenominon, there are a few of note. One is that many hot springs feed into it, another is that abandoned oil gas lines heat it, and finally, and the most likely, is that very hot water from deep within the Earth, rises up to the surface.

 My take with it, although the colorization is very true to life, was that instead of the water boiling, its rising, sort of like anti-gravity water. Although its hard to tell from the photo, there are rain dropplets rising up, as well as that waterfall which is “falling.” This location also features a lamp to explore the very dark forrest, not completely shown here. 

 The music here is a little more structured than the last, in that it features a solid cord progression throughout. It has ambient alien like animal calls, almost ape like, with very electro sounding bird calls about. I really enjoyed this song personally because it is very calming in structure, making it a good contrast for the scary darkness of the forrest.

 The build for this was basically to shape the initial area with the landscape tool, then”paint” foliage with the foliage tool. I then created the water and rain with Unreal’s particle system. I must admit, however, that I’ve needed to lower the tree count many times due to lagging issues.

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This level is “The Plains” and has no real point of inspiration. I was mainly inspired by neon lights, and how stark they looked in pure darkness. (And maybe a little inspired by Dr.Seuss). I colored all the trees and grass, and even flowers, with a high emissive material, meaning it produces light.  

 The music in this level has a very loose cord progression with a strong melody. The melody sounds very orient in nature, almost like a monk singing it, and really fits the plains mood. During the second half of the song the wind joins in to harmonize with the main melody, adding more structure to the song.

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 My final level, entitled “Volcanic,” is by far my most massive. Inspired greatly by Blue Lava of Kawah Ijen, I still applied a great sense of uniqness to this level. The  secret behind this natural wonder is the fact that that specific area has an extremely high amount of sulfer. The sulfer evaporates in the lava and looks bluish in color as it flows down with the magma. Sadly, this can only be viewed during the night. 

 My take on it made the lava purple, instead of blue, with very rocky and mountainous regions all about. I all placed many odd and strange monuments around in hopes that the player may wonder what sorts of civilizations exited here before they were destroyed by magma. I basically built the level like normal, but used the noise tool to create these rough ridges and mountains. The magma texture is also a combination of two fire textures and a rock normal map. The player than finds an abandoned building to get there fruit reward. 

 The music here is very ominous, featuring deep drum pounding, a clave that gets drastically faster and slower, and a “hot” sounding since that adds to that hot atmosphere. The underlying cords are very deep, almost bubbling sounds, almost like immulating the lava itself. Due to the sheer size of this location, I decided to add a path to the fruit, rather than having the player look for there own routes around the mountain; I found that people were getting lost and giving up otherwise.

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 This is the final version of the Hub world, I decided to simplify it a lot more in order to make it more comforting for the player. There are 4 portals lying about, and the player has their own choice of which to go through first. The completed version will include some randome fruit that can be thrown by the player in order to add some more fun to the center hub. In the Hub, I mainly added a water plane ontop of the standard landscape, and for the portals, I executed a open level command on player overlap. 

 Overall, this was a very rewarding experience and I learned quite a bit about what goes into game developmenrt and how to put everysingle aspect of that together. There are still many secrets in this world which I have not revealed in this post, secrets which I leave to you to find.