This week I was put in charge of designing the level layout for our Element Clash demo. This quickly proved to be problem as it is difficult sometimes to get an idea out of your head and into a game, especially when scale is involved. You see, Unreal has trouble scaling multiple set pieces at once, so in order to scale something properly, you want to get it right the first time. So how do you scale a map right without building it first? You draw it.
I started out with a rough draft in Microsoft paint:
Horribly scaled, and not the most detailed, but a wonderful stepping stone.Needless to say, this did give some idea of a final design, but not necessarily what I needed to map out the level. Using this as inspiration though, I got to work on drawing things out in the real world, instead of digitally. I began on normal paper trying to sketch things out but was finding a lot of issues in keeping a consistent scale there as well. Eventually I settled on using graph paper, a ruler, and a circle drawing compass. As the map is too large at this point for a single page, I had to scan each page individually, and splice them together in paint again, to make a new map template.
More detailed and properly scaled, this map is ready to go!From here on things get a lot simpler. I set up a new level in Unreal and created a decal. Then I converted the new map into a material and set it as the decal's material. This allowed me to have an easy-to-use image of the map at all times and because I was using a decal, it would follow the shape of any terrain or blocks I put in the level, and would not be obscured.
I set the player down on the still flat image, and walked around to get a feel for the size. I scaled up and down the image for a while until I felt like the map was the correct size, and then blocked out the first portion.
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