Mapcore's UE4 Whitebox Challenge

Awesome entries!

What I've managed to get done by 4am tonight. Fuck it, close enough I guess.

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Oohh i haven't finish properly but it's enough (i've moved this week son i'm KO).

I had some issues with the ligthing and the brushes. It's not very polished, it's absolutely not optimized but i'll do that an other day.

Anyway, i wanted to Thank you all for this challenge. It bas been a great time, i've learned so much things from you guys in LD techniques and process. Thank you.

So, here are somme screenshots of my map.

http://imgur.com/a/2LAFx

I'll post a walkthrough vidéo in a few days when i'll get back the internet on my PC.

And the working files will be in the submission thread. It's probably not the more interesting map to analyse, unless you want to see all the things that you shouln't do.

And once à gain, THANK YOU.

I'm posting my work here rather than in the submissions post because well, I don't feel it's finished and I also don't feel it's good enough.

I had hoped to have all of last week and up until tuesday night this week to work on this but preparation for a job interview as well as some other outside factors have made that impossible. With that said here is what I've managed to achieve.

As anyone who's been following my progress through this topic will probably guess this is my fourth of fifth almost completed map for this challenge (I'm actually losing count!) but while it is disappointing not to have finished something it has been a pretty good learning experience for me that will make a big difference in my work going forwards hopefully.

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This version of my map takes place in the middle of the ocean, 3 tall towers stand in close range of each other with only a few boardwalks and posts for tying up boats between them.

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I tried to keep the verticality of the map from previous iterations but also to add multiple routes and escape points from almost any part of my map. It was also the first map for this challenge I created which wasn't symmetrical and it certianly helped with keeping the sight lines from getting too outrageous although I'm sure some points could still be improved upon.

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I also spent some time thinking about routes for advanced players and included some skill jumps that would require a bit of thought and skill (hopefully) to get some of the better out of the way weapons and pick ups.

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( I didn't actually place anything here, but a rare weapon pick up was intended for this hanging area)

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Another example are these stepping stones, it takes skill jumping to get across the gap between some stones, it can be used to go from one tower to the other avoiding most of the conflict above but falling into the water is instant death.

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Were I really ran out of time and I think it shows the most is in the lighting. As new as I am to level design I'm even newer to lighting a level and another few passes and some research on the subject would of helped a great deal.

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Finally a view from above.

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Overall I think this has been a good learning experience for me and I can take away a lot from it, including the following!

* I need to try and stay away from using long, tall and thin pieces as often as possible, it's the quickest way to make my levels look boxy and unrealistic. I will try and work with a lot more varied pieces in the future to get the desired effect.

* I need to break away from the grid a bit more. Everything I created except my first map was first drafted out in photoshop on a grid with each box representing 400 by 400 units. As such everything would always end up feeling very boxy again and it always added to some of the problems with sight lines I had in other maps. In future I should probably use the grid to start and get a base line for the size and shape of a level but branch out further as I get further into a project.

(This map as it looks in my photoshop grid, different colours represent the three different floors)

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* I also need to break away so much from having defined 'floors'. Looking at other peoples work it seems that the height of a platform is simply decided by the context of it within the level, mine were pretty much set in stone before I ever opened Unreal and it leads to not enough height variation in my maps, which again leads to lots of line of sight issues.

I might update this post later if I can think of anymore but for now that is my map.

Thanks to everyone who helped me along the way, as always I'm still open to criticisms of my work as it'll only help to improve it. Also if anyone really does want to have a look around this level I can upload a video or maybe even the file itself later if requested.

When will we know the results of the challenge ? Getting curious

will there be any organized playtest?

I've uplaod a walkthrough video of my map (DM-Elysium )

Great entries all, and great job Sprony organizing everything. So impressed by the productivity on display.

Help, it's too hard to choose what to vote for, it's all so good!

Jesus so many amazing maps, you all did so great!

like a Civilization, a golden age has just begun.

A lot of awesome looking entries, I will be abstaining as I can't actually play them and this should be entirely about how they play.

Noooo I missed it!

True. Was kinda anti climactic, though.

I was at least expecting them to show the entries, I mean we had to sit around watching some guy trying to double jump around his map. I was waiting to see everyone's great work.

NOPE.

"Maybe we will remember to send a t-shirt to some guy who bothered with this." Was basically what I took away from it.