An overhead shot of the dungeon. The dungeon uses a fork pattern with three distinct wings, resulting in it being more akin to three separate dungeons with a shared entrance.
Another overhead shot of the entire dungeon, viewed from the southwest. In the northwest corner, you can see a river that connects two rooms. Since an in-depth boating system was out of the scope of this project, the river's path has been simulated by a spline that generates static mesh platforms.
An in-game shot of the forked path at the beginning of the dungeon. Per the original module, the majority of the dungeon is completely devoid of lighting, as its inhabitants can see in utter darkness. In order to better simulate this aspect, I disabled the automatic exposure feature in UE5. The dark platform in the middle of the hallway is to signify an uninteractive pile of bones that a Sphinx enemy would rest on.
An in-game shot of a documentation actor in front of the entrance to Area 4. In order to communicate to other designers, each area is assigned an interactable "Documentation Actor." When a player interacts with these actors via the 'E' key, text appears that describes the nature of the room.
An in-editor shot of one of the Area 15 setpiece. Here, the player would combat a giant crab enemy within a giant bubble. Outside of the bubble is a cavern filled to the brim with boiling water. As I was only using geometry I had created myself, I opted for a simple box surrounding the platform to provide the scale for the level artist who would then model the cavern interior.
An in-game shot of a series of flanged doors. These doors connect to the above setpiece and are flanged to be water-tight. The white color of the doors signifies that they can be interacted with by pressing the 'E' key. All interactable objects share the same parent class that has a blueprint interface attached.
An in-editor shot of Area 7, another cavern. Here, the player must cross the platforms to the other side without falling into the steaming mud below. Unlike other rooms, this room has lighting due to luminescent algae coating the walls, hence the mint material on the walls. In addition, the boiling mud and all other environmental hazards have been colored red to signify their lethality.
An in-editor shot of Area 19. This corridor is lined by a series of copper plates that heat up the player via induction as they travel north and reverses the effect while they travel south. To do this, a collider with a front and back end surrounds the entire hallway. While the player is within the collider and travelling towards the back end, the heat variable ticks up, and while the player is travelling towards the front end, the variable ticks down. This variable resets whenever the player leaves the collider, so a player who enters from the back end is unaffected.
An in-game shot of the same area. The water coating the floor is present in much of the dungeon, but is set to invisible in the editor for visual clarity. The green color on the copper plates indicates that they can affect the player, but the player does not interact with them directly.
An in-editor shot of Area 22. This room consists of a low-friction floor, spiked pits, and an illusory wall at the far end. As the player character for this project uses a modified version of the default UE5 first person character blueprint, it is unaffected by physics materials. To simulate the the reduced friction, the room is covered in a collider that modifies the character movement component's braking friction and acceleration. The illusory wall at the back is colored blue to show that the player can pass through it.
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Blockout Practice: White Plume Mountain
A personal project with the goal of strengthening my level blockout and scripting skills. This is a first-person remake of the 1979 Dungeons & Dragons module "White Plume Mountain."
This involved using Unreal Engine 5.2 to fully recreate the dungeon as faithfully as possible using the original room descriptions and environment. To do this, I created a modular kit of different static meshes to serve as floors, ceilings, etc. Functional elements such as doors, breakable objects, and slippery surfaces have been color-coded to indicate how they interact with the player.
This project also involved a good deal of scripting and blueprint communication, which I used as an opportunity to experiment with different development patterns such as utilizing actor components, child blueprints, event dispatchers, and blueprint interfaces.
