Welcome back!

Decided to combine 2 weeks posts as I didn’t make much progress last week. The reason is my ignorance caused by the iceberg principle (e.g. steep learning curve and availability of overwelming material combined with inadequate planning).

Regardless I jumped into Unreal engine in order to start creating the game map. After a lot of frustration and a bit of research (great talk) I discovered terrain makers which will eventually save me lots of time and produce a much more interesting map. After spending a bunch of time in L3DT these are the results..

.. which is a map of 315 square kilometers which is quite huge (DayZ for instance is 225 square kilometers).

Having put some thought into it I decided to keep it as huge as it will enable me to combine a cinematic experience of iconic landmarks while allowing for a true “survival” experience.
My goal being 100 people servers I’ve decided to work from the environment up and tweak the game mechanics accordingly to promote teamwork and exploration (which I will touch upon in a later post).

As glad as I am for these early results unfortunately exporting to Unreal has been more than tricky and after another bunch of frustration I’ve decided to rework what I’ve done so far in World Machine which is apparently an industry standard but costs money. Hopefully eventually I will be able to buy a single license to legitimise any future creations.

Furthermore I will continue to research hikes and mountain trails as I still haven’t been able to form a clear picture of how I would like the mountain sides of the game to look like (ideally a mixture of accessible, functional, realistic looking and awe inspiring).

Cya again in 2 weeks as next week I have a couple of tech interviews which I am currently applying for and would like to quite intensely prepare for (thus spend much time not working on Cold Steel).

Nick out.