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How I designed my environment

Video I used

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How I designed my sleeping system

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Making a main menu with graphics settings

here is my main menu, it's fairly simple and it's concept was ripped from one of my previous games, using button presses instead of a mouse since that's easier to code.

I made a settings system using setting game user settings, it was fairly simple but should be good for people with low-end hardware

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Making my sleeping system.

To transition the player smoothly between the dream state and awake state, I've added a smooth sleeping system using set locations and a fade in and out widget. I experimented with using a pawn instead of a standard actor to create the individual beds. During the writing of this part my computer decided to freeze, I restarted it and all of the progress of this has been wiped, as it was nearly finished it has made me very angry >:(. My computer had a BSOD during my attempt to recreate and record my process.

After getting everything completed, I added a way to teleport between two maps, this idea is ripped directly from FNAF: Security Breach - Ruin as it is what the developers used to teleport between their two maps, and I believe it will be effective for me too.

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The process of editing textures to look better in the environment.

A lot of the time, textures from quixel bridge or megascans are never perfect first try, therefore I edit the textures to fit in more with the environment I'm putting them into. Usually this includes just brightening or darkening the texture, which this video shows my process.

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Experimenting with pre-made assets

To add an actual environment to my game, I started adding pre-made assets I found from quixel bridge.

They're a little hard to work with and feel a tad off in some way, although i believe having these old looking stairs looks a lot better than default Unreal Engine textures I have furthered this by replacing my railings, this makes the room's theme feel much more whole and visible I believe, as well as properly looking like railings.

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Making the decision to abandon VR

Virtual Reality was way out of my possible scope as a first year student, therefore I have made the decision to abandon VR as a choice to increase the amount of progress I can make on my project. I may add VR as an option towards the very end of my project, but I have made very little progress towards a viable final outcome due to me deciding to experiment something way out of my skill range.

I've scaled back my project to just creating the maps and a base environment that can be expanded on,.

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Increasing performance in my game to prevent it from running utterly horrid

My game was running incredibly poorly, even for VR standards which are typically low as the game has to render twice, to remedy this I followed a guide to turn on forward shading.I had to rebuild lighting but this gave me a 40% increase in the lows of FPS, making my game very smooth and much more playable. Having smooth performance is imperative for a VR game, as roughly 40%-70% of VR users experience motion sickness within the first 15 minutes. This can be delayed or prevented entirely by having smooth performance and frame rates.

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Very early level design

I'm using greyboxing to sketch out an early design for my level, it's very work in progress at the moment but I plan to make the house much bigger. I've decided to put aesthetics behind me to make a practical layout that is fun to play and makes sense first.

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Inspiration for my house

I plan for my house to be based off of Carl's house from Detroit become human. I love the massive auditorium he has full of expensive art, taxidermy animals and pricey furniture. I wish to recreate the same kind of style for my game, giving opportunity for some of the animals to maybe come to life in the dream sequence

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Plans for today:

I am going to build out my level more and try to get it into my vision

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Finding inspiration for my nightmare / night-time theme

I've done a decent amount of research into environments for my game, and when speaking to my friend I got another spike of inspiration through the film "Coraline" and McDonald's play places.

Coraline

These tunnels from Coraline are the perfect vision of how I want the tunnels in my nightmare environment, the colour scheme is perfect, being the purpely blue I want in my own game. I may have them light up like they do in the film for added effect in increasing fear in the player, as it's both a sign they have to go down this way and a sign that the tunnel is almost living in how it's colours pulsate and change from a miserable blue and pink to a bright blue and purple.

Mcdonald's Play Places

These twisty turning tunnels serve as another form of inspiration for me, the uncanny liminal environments that can form from these places.

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Video Game Level Design Essential Tips (youtube.com)

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Perspective

Scale

Environment

Consistent Visual Style

Navigation

Performance

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To Do List:

Bugs:

Only forward movement hands point the wrong direction hands on the arms do not do animations attach arms to the player camera without making it buggy, so they do not just float infront of the player if they step away from the central spot in their playspace

Features

make a way to turn off the post processing and a setting to make it less intense for visually impaired players add height configuration so all users get their height correct (possibly a sitting down option too?)

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Adding arms...or trying to.

Following a tutorial I tried to get arms into my VR character to be more immersive experience. The arms work although currently there is a bug where the hands point the incorrect direction. I also need to add animations to the hands that are attached to the arms, although I believe this will not be too difficult.

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Nonny de la Peña - International Women's Day

Nonny de la Peña, often referred to as the "Godmother of Virtual Reality," is a pioneering figure in immersive journalism and virtual reality (VR) experiences. Born in 1969, she has been at the forefront of using VR and immersive technologies to tell compelling stories and evoke empathy.

Nonny is considered a trailblazer in the field of immersive journalism, using VR to bring attention to real-world issues. Her work often focuses on creating experiences that allow users to witness and empathize with events by virtually placing them in the midst of the story.