Having the opportunity to construct one of Italo Calvino’s invisible cities was an interesting experience. Being able to read and develop a concept based on Italo’s city of Zobiede was inspiring. It fueled my creativity to grasp his concept and make it my own. When I first began I was given the task to choose a story that appealed to me the most. As I read through the book I found a extremely difficult to select a city of my liking. There are two reasons that caused me to think this way. The first reason had to do with the complex and almost literal description of his cities. I felt that I would choose a city that everyone has chosen and my project would not be unique because of that. I eventually noticed that italo’s descriptions were not made to be too literal; they were made to paint personal a picture in the readers mind. Anyone who reads his book has the ability to personally build each city inside of their mind; creating it within the personality of their own imagination. I think its great that many different people can read about the same city and come up with many different renditions of the concept. The second reason I found choosing a city difficult was because of the level of detail described in each of the stories. We had an extremely tight time restraint on the project so I had to stay away from the stories that would have driven me to construct a really elaborate idea that may cause me to develop an incomplete concept. My goal for this project was to try and keep it as simple as I can.
When we began to construct the map I ran into a couple issues measuring the proper unreal units. The unreal characters are beastly jumpers and if you do not design your level properly, the player will be able to cover your entire level in three leaps. Constructing the proper map was important to me because my level has a lot of plat forming elements. To solve this issue I had to increase the size of a lot of the place holders in my level, and I also had to spread the level out in every direction. With that taken care of, I created a newer map with a better sense of how the level is spread. I personally think that thing started to get fun when we actually started building the level from the given place holders. While construction I felt a strange sense joy that I haven’t felt in a while. This stage of creation reminded me of times when I used to play with legos as a child ,as well the times I used cheap software like rpg maker to build my own cities and worlds. I believe if we had more time, I would have probably constructed a whole nation from the placeholders.
Getting into the kismet editor in unreal was probably the hardest thing for me to do. I felt way too attached to the construction of my level. Whenever the professor would teach us new tricks in kismet, I found myself only worried about the building blocks of my city. I was constantly making changes and avoiding to practice the laws of game play. I believe that things changed as soon as I learned how to create moving meshes and particle effects. Only at that moment my mind shifted, I began to think about the ways I can use kismet to make my level fun and challenging. In the back of my mind I wished that the class was longer so that I can further explore the kismet switches and nodes. It was almost like I dipped my foot in freezing water and as soon as I started adjusting to the way it feels, the water park shuts down and its time to leave.
Now that the project has come to an end, there are a lot of things that I could have done to make my level more appealing. Things like modeling the place holders a little better, or exploring the use of normal mapping and specular maps to generate awesome quality textures. When we started we were told that time would become our enemy and it proved itself as a true foe. I lastly have to add that I had a great time working on this project. I did not only learned how to create within the unreal engine. I also learned how to work smart and problem solve.
