This level was developed for a psychological horror game. The main play area was supposed to be a house which is located a place where a swamp and a forest co-exist. When I heard that description for the environment from the writers of the game, I thought to myself, that is very hard to make or near impossible as it would be very hard to find references for such an environment. But the writers were pretty adamant about it, so I decided to take some references from resident evil 7’s initial section of the game in which there’s a small portion of the game which showcases an area that resembles a swamp. Coincidentally, I was asked to make the time of the map set to dusk/dawn tint to the overall aesthetic of the map. So, RE7 proved to be the best reference for this map.
Figure 1: Screenshot of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Screenshot taken from:
RESIDENT EVIL 7 Biohazard Full HD 1080p/60fps Longplay Walkthrough Gameplay No Commentary
Once I started creating the level, I quickly realised that we I did not have the right kind of foliage for a forest that can coexist with a swamp. But, as I had to work with what I was given, I still pushed through it anyway. The initial part of the process was to map where the house would be located and build the landscape from there. So, I placed a greybox cube as a house and fence around it to mark the house on the landscape and got to work with painting the landscape.
Figure 2: Landscape with the BSP Cube as a house
The narrative starts with the main character getting out of the car and walking towards the house, so I put a cube in the level to mark where the player would start. By doing this, I was able to determine how far the player can see in the level and helped me measure how much the foliage had to be culled or if necessary, deleted.
Figure 3: Cube visualising the place where the player would start the game from
The next step was to make a layout of the interiors of the house based on the plans that the writers had given me. Therefore, I used the BSP brushes provided by the Unreal Engine to make the layout of the house.
Figure 4: Blockout of the interior of the house in progress
Once the blockout of the house and the landscape was approved by the writers, I started replacing each floor with static meshes to construct the house. I used mannequins to determine where the floors were and to have an overall idea of the player character’s scale to make it easier for me to arrange the floors.
