This level is designed as an introductory quest, something the player is meant to work on within the first few levels. It is a small zone where it is easy to keep control of your character. The quest is to catch four wisps, more detail is provided below.
The player begins on a slope leading downward. A high rock boundary on both his left and right funnel him in that direction. The first stone lodged in the ground provides a bit of color against the grass, the player will be drawn towards it, the cliffside on the left reveals a forest of trees, while the right maintains the zone boundary. The first wooded area provides some depth, but with minimal research the player should find a ramp leading to the remainder of the map. From here the player finds the forest and steps fully into the light. The forest is atypical for an MMORPG. It is full of trees of standard size bunched slightly closer together. From what I have seen in other games, they generally attempt to keep the FPS by making single detailed static meshes the focus of the terrain. As well as making it easier to navigate. The static meshes for trees in the Unreal library are not particularly detailed, as they need to be drawn quickly in an FPS environment. I made the conscious decision to make many, smaller trees rather than fewer larger ones. The forest area links to the river. The river, followed in either direction will take you to a wisp. One at the waterfall, the other at the island with the dead tree. I wanted the instance to open up after the initial slope into the first ruins area, and allow the player to complete the quest in his or her own fashion without leaving him blind as to what a wisp looks like. Thus the initial encounter brings the player right past a wisp. The four wisps are all currently in game, acting as placeholders.
A journal the player receives from the questgiver has a list of simple facts about the different wisps the players are trying to catch. While these wisps are certainly not difficult to locate, the clues add some definition to each one and help the player along in case he's missed one. The questgiver essentially asks the player to go to a remote valley deep in X forest. There he will find an odd collection of wisps. Collect four different shades of wisp by dazing them with a magic bell, and putting them in enchanted bottles. If the player agrees to go he or she will be wisked away to a loading screen and the beginning of the map. The player may return to the entrance area at any time in order to leave. A number of lesser combat encounters exist here. I would prefer the encounters to be more along the lines of wolves or bears rather than populate it with humanoids. I want the valley to keep its remote feel. Additional quests given here could include collecting mushrooms in the forest.
The initial area is the slope leading down right past the first wisp, after that the order is entirely up to the player. This way the player knows what a wisp looks like, and can easily collect his first one before searching for the others.
The only tangible choice the player has to make is which wisps to hunt first. There are no NPCs to interact with inside the valley except for aggressive MOBs. As this was designed to be an introductory quest, I decided to keep things simple.
I want to stir an adventurous emotion in the player. �Oh, whats over here?� I want them to say, or think as they wander around. I want them to feel clever when they find a wisp. I want them to feel more comfortable with the controls and their characters strengths and weaknesses. Most important is a feeling of accomplishment, for having explored the valley and found all four wisps.
The average player should find the valley fairly simple, as it is designed with the beginner in mind. The bell the players are given to daze wisps functions as an area-of-effect so they simply need to get somewhat close to the wisp (within 5 meters) and use the bell.
I think the pace of this level should be slow and deliberate, but I also believe that the map should be finished fairly quickly, providing between 15 and 30 minutes of fun for a single adventurer. That depends of course on monster encounters and how much time it takes to recuperate after a battle.
I think the player will enjoy most the exploration of the map. There are a lot of small details for those looking around. Not that it is intended to take overly long to do. The only challenging portions of the quest should be the physical combat encounters with the wild creatures of the valley, bears, boars, wolves and mountain lions.
I had worked on a modification for Unreal Tournament 2004 called �The Zionite War: Manifest Destiny� While we only completed an alpha of the mod, I learned quite a bit. Unfortunately, as ZW was a space-fighter themed mod in the vein of TIE Fighter I didn't learn much that applied to this map, save for the placement of static meshes, lights, emitters and sound effects. Terrain mapping, layer texturing and smoothing as well as adding water surface, water zones and deco layers was all new to me. I found tutorials though and threw a test together very quickly. This was my first attempt designing a heightmap based level, and I learned quite a bit.
Of all the work I completed I think the most fun I had was in placing static meshes. I really enjoyed scanning through the Unreal library, adding and detracting to make the envionment come to life. Generally however I enjoyed all aspects of building the map, from creating the heightmap, adding the layers and the lighting. The toughest part must have been the decolayer, as tutorials and good documentation for decolayers is somewhat scarce, and I'd never used them before. I had a drawing issue, where tufts of grass that were farther away from the camera would draw through tufts of grass that were right in front of the camera. Essentially they were being drawn entirely backwards from the player. Additionally, I found that deco-grass was drawing through the boughs and leaves of the pine trees in the lower valley. After going through zone properties I found that I could reverse the draw type and everything worked out. However, I did have a very frustrating hour as I tried to determine what the nature of the problem was. It makes much more sense now that I know how they work.
The section I think I like most is the ruins just east of the waterfall area. I think the tiles just look great, but I wanted both sections to be somewhat unique, so I didn't replicate the effect in the lower valley ruins.
