Container City:Post Mortem

With the Container City Project I found a lot of my time was spent just designing the layout of the assets, making sure all of the exported assets worked correctly, population the level, making blueprints, and just building the level in general. Though I'm now more confident in engine the experience was very stressful with the added pressure of group work. In some respects I actually feel like I put too much into a project that should have been more of a fun learning experience, being the first time that Iv'e even touched level design.  Ironically on the day of the hand in there was a talk by Del Walker and Ben Keeling with one of the main pieces of advice being not to work yourself to the ground with projects. Something I definitely did for this project, but will not (fingers crossed) do for the next.

Post Mortem Q&A

Q: Did my end result represent what I wanted for this project?
Yes and no. Visually I had no idea what I wanted for this project, nothing was really set in stone . It felt like we kind of stumbled into the end look for the level and the just built on that, which turned out well, but I would have liked some more planning to have been done. Though we were encouraged not to put a lot into concepting, I found that actually it's something that is needed regardless.

Q: Strengths I found during this project
I tried out texturing realistic assets as opposed to the hand painted textures I normally do, and found that I'm pretty good at it, though realistic still isn't my first choice when it comes to style. I've found that I'm not to bad in engine in terms of blueprinting and level building, though again not a task that I would choose for myself again.

Q: Weaknesses I found during this project
Not really a weakness but there is a lack of improvement on my modelling, it's about the same as ever, and I didn't really challenge myself in terms of 3D.

Q. What stressed me out the most during this project?What I found so difficult and stress inducing about this was just the difference in work ethics within my group. That caused a lot of problems with the amount of effort that was put into this project by some. Unfortunately that's something that couldn't really be fixed .Though as a silver lining, being with those that don't share your work ethic for a project has definitely made me appreciate the people that do.

Q: What did you learn?
I learnt a lot about blueprints mainly, and though I'm no master at UE4 I feel confident enough to just mess around with it and figure out mechanics. I learnt a bit about  creating texture decals (as well as fixing the issues with placing them) and basic level design. I also learnt a few tricks when it came to modular asset building, though It's not something I used much in this project.

Q: Things I'd do differently if I were to do this project again
I would have passed in my assets to a team member to do so I could focus purely on engine.With the extra time I think I could have populated the level a lot more, polished things up, and figured out how to make extra blueprints and particle effects, to really bring the level to life.


Q: Was this project successful?

Definitely, though there are things that I would tweak and add, the basis for the level is there, and I'm happy with.