Planning and greyboxing

Out came UDK and i started to greybox simply the layout of my map. This would help to flag up any issues and from this i could reassess what needed to be changed before i settled on a final layout.

Here are some screenshots from my greybox;

 

 

 

This shot shows the main atrium staircase to the left, and i have blocked out a few cabin doors which will go along this wall to help break it up abit and not just being a long flat surface. In the center is a revised staircase which leads up to the first floor. When modelling the stairs i encountered a few problems. To ensure that players could run up the stairs with the need to jump up each step, every step had be less than 20 pixels high, thus meaning that the angle of inclination is quite considerable lower than i imagined. To fit a staircase in this are i had to make the staircase double back on itself. This was the first sign, that at this present scale, my map would be too small.

An overview shot of the atrium from a first floor balcony. The balcony wall was intended to be small enough to allow the player to jump over and have easy access down into the atrium. But by making it short enough to do this, the wall looks terribly out of proportion with everything else on the map.

A view from the top of the first floor.

This is a view of the back of the ship. I am yet undecided how to tackle the problem of not having a wall along this side, allowing players to potentially just fall off the side. Ideally i want to keep from having a wall here, so that the players can see out into space, but normal methods of inserting invisible walls to stop players, kind of ruins the illussion and the players immersion in the game.

One of the corridors running alongside the main chamber. I need to rethink my floorplan, as this doesnt offer much space. There is potential for alot more out to the left and at the moment this space is quite poky and dingy. Although having several access points out onto into the atrium does mean the player isnt trapped in the corridor.

The main doors in the atrium.

This first greybox flagged alot of problems. Mainly to do with scale. The whole map is way too small. A player can run the entire length of it in about 15 seconds which is ridiculous. Each room needs to be scaled up, to allow not only the map size to increase but make it easy for the player to navigate and provide each area with more light and space to place spawns and weapons etc.