Week 04 - UE4 White-boxing and Mechanics

For this assignment I tried to use the blueprint skills I had picked up over the last few weeks and to make something interesting. I focused more on white-boxing and making sure most everything was mechanically sound, while next week we will focus on the aesthetics and pushing in asset pack resources.

My initial idea was to have a level that was half-boxy, cold, and rigid - while the other half felt a bit more organic. Squares to circles. I ended up mixing and matching a bit. I settled on the theme of Futuristic Power Plant.

The first area is the loading bay, the piston-like cubes moving overhead are energy cores.

We see some robots fly by, depositing new energy cores for when the old ones need replacing.

The doorway to the fusion area, watched over by a tracking red sentry eye.

I imagined these as bubbles popping with electricity. They change color from purple/yellow to red when you get too close, fair warning! In the next iteration, touching the bubble will kill you.

We can walk over this area because perhaps we are a robot ourselves.

Elevator to the maintenance platform.

The maintenance platform is made of pure energy, when we reach the top, it forms to connect the loading bay and the fusion area. The blocks trying to push you off were to make the bridge expanse more interesting, but I plan on changing them out and instead having the bridge "form itself" underneath your feet as you walk across.

Back atop the loading area, we must traverse the energy cores, being careful to avoid the security beams.

We can also collect a few duckets on the way! These are tentatively slated to be power cores that preserve your energy as you traverse the level, in which case they would be more evenly distributed throughout the playspace.

The level certainly has some good scale to it. I chose to make the clouds move quickly and the sky a deep bluish-purple, I'd imagined the power this plant is generating would suck all the bright light from the surrounding area. Plus it just looks cool.