Overview

This project started out with the simple intention of having an explorable level showcasing my level design and environment designing skills. It started with a simple sketch and a random post I saw on Pinterest.

Story

Usually when I start out with a scene I like to start out with the story, some context about the land because I did not want it to feel like some generic location. I wanted the place to have some significance in its world, some history of its own, some stories linked to the place. This is when I turned to my work in progress book for one of its locations.

I called the place Vilmar, which roughly translates to "“Strong-willed and famous” or “renowned for determination”. Time for some storytelling. You can skip to the next section if you don't want to read this hahaha.

In the lore of my world, there exists a major waterlocked continent and some various island states. This is a world where monsters and demons and gods are canon to exist. In such a context, the people of one of the islands flee from their homeland escaping from deadly diseases and a demon raid to the shores of the place which would later on be called Vilmar. But they were followed in stealth by monsters who could swim. When one of their own is lost to the monsters, they flee to the grasslands through the woods. The chase lasts almost an entire night, and at dawn they come across a grove on a mound. They hide in the trees in hopes of safety. In their desperation one of the men cries out for help from the gods of the land whose names he does not know in exchange for tribute. An ancient goddess of the land hears his call, and mighty wolves show up and save them. After the skirmish, the goddess shows up far away in the mist with only her silhouette visible and asks them to protect this border of the land and an alliance is formed with the wolves and the new settlers of the land. They build a small settlement on the beach and over time several other settlements depending on strategic importance and resources. Over time a fortress is built with these walls spanning across the grasslands and the entirety of Vilmar, keeping the continent safe from all hostilities. The settlers gain renown as the Wolf Keepers of Vilmar. A small altar is built in the grove for the goddess who helped them.

Eventually it's revealed that the goddess who had helped them who was considered to be a nature deity was in fact the Goddess of Winter and War and in this revelation the altar changes to a place of offering tributes of arms for peace after war. The area I'm building is a few hundred years in the future where the wolf keepers have reduced in number, there has not been any hostile activity in the region. Most settlers have moved to the east in search of different jobs due to lack of game and their lack of fishing skills. Only a few remain to hold the gates. So, this is a small fable that is referenced in my book as a story told by a character showing the significance of the place, both its political and emotional importance to the people who live there.

Getting down to work

Settlement

So naturally once I had expanded on the original idea from the sketch I got to work in unity, shaping the terrain to the way I wanted it. I used the assets from Blazing Highlands by Manastation for the rocks and the mountains, well pretty much everything infact haha. Village and Nature - Blazing Highlands | 3D Fantasy | Unity Asset Store - Much love, absolutely lovely package, amazing support. Not really meant for mobile, but I ended up modifying the shaders to be much lighter. I'll talk about it in another section or blog post since this is a design post.

Once I was fine with the scale of the terrain and the rock assets, I went all in.

From the previous image you'll notice a significant number of updates. Mountains, Trees, some actual settlement props, houses and other props etc. My original idea was to show some massive fortress walls in the distance, but I thought it wouldn't feel that real, it would just feel like a background prop in the distance. So, I decided to add walls right at the end of the woods.

Gate

I didn't actually white box this part, I found an interesting ruins pack and I just looked at some of the pieces and just arranged them in a way that looked interesting to me. It was quite a modular pack.

Link : "Old Church Ruins" (https://skfb.ly/oIw8S) by H.Foucault

I wanted to give it a feel that the gates are not completely useless, but there hasn't been any upkeep in years with the amount of foliage covering its base.

Added some minor details, some banners and some lit braziers to show that it's still somewhat being maintained.

One of the major things that makes this look good is the post processing, the fog particles and some butterflies which makes the area look active.

I also ended up adding clouds.

This was the one which I used : GitHub - jiaozi158/UnityVolumetricCloudsURP: Volumetric Clouds for Unity URP (Universal Render Pipeline). Here's the comparison for without global volume, with global volume and global volume + local volume.

Altar of the War Goddess

The next focus for me was the altar of the war goddess.

The vibe I was going for was one of tranquillity and peace and beauty contrary to what one would expect from the altar to a war goddess - which is usually dark and terrifying.

The major factors contributing to this is the lighting, the grass, the flowers and most importantly BLOOM and LENS FLARE. I really like these effects cos it makes the view a lot more cinematic, and the bloom gives it a dreamy effect. I have tried not to overdo it though because it definitely is tempting to make every area full of bloom. The sky is slightly desaturated blues so as to not take attention away from the greens and also it looked kinda bad.

The altar is a simple design, the swords are old and rusted, showing that there has been peace for a while, keeping true to the lore. Originally, I wanted to lean and keep some swords on top of the altar, sticking em in the ground made it look more dramatic. And the flowers just made it more serene, a bit of colour splash.

Movement

A simple flyby camera similar to unity's scene controls is what I wanted for the area to be explored from higher elevations as well as from players height.

Demo builds

Controls

WASD - Forward, Left, Backward, Right

E - Up

Q - Down

Esc - Pause menu