Reflection

 This is a screen shot of the completed level and below is a reflection essay on my experiance with this project.

Kyle Parrino

Reflection Essay

This was my second time using Unreal to create an open space, my first opinion of the program

was far from a good one but as I've learned more about it my mind has changed. It still feels clunky and

a little unorganized but with all the tools it has I couldn't find a better way to do it than they have.

My levels background is about a city of people who plan so far for the future the unborn

already have graves in the grave yard for them. I took the idea of the grave yard for the scenery and

made up my own story to make it into a short mystery game. I'm all about explosions and destruction

but I don't have the knowledge of how to do that kind of stuff yet nor the time to do it all in. I found my

experience with Unreal this time around to be much smoother than before and the transition from

model to the level to be much faster, most likely due to the work flow with place holders. I did think

my one trouble with this project being the kismet editor but I will say I found it to be one of the easiest

parts of the project to work with. The difficult part of the kismet editor is using the right actor or

movement type mesh but once all those are in place its just drag click and test.

One thing I look forward to learning on my own is programming I enjoy creating all of the

assets and the scenery its one thing that has always facinated me, but I like to know how things tick.

I've also always found anything technical to come to me rather easily, I picked up on html code rather

quickly and realize as school goes on more people ask me for help when it comes to anything technical,

I just seem to absorb it easier than anything else.

While working on this project I did learn about the wonderful time saving ease of use program

speed tree. I was planning on creating and texturing my own trees and that would take forever seeing as

it would be a first for me with a tree.

My overall impression of how this project turned out was fantastic, after seeing the others that

we saw at the beginning of the course I was surprised at how well mine turned out. I don't think it

excels much above them but it does appeal to me a lot more than the other ones and doesn’t look as

repetitive as I thought it was going to using modular design. I did find some trouble when it came to the

terrain editor, after I placed my terrain down I couldn't lower it to put in the water due to the constant

crashing of UDK when I tried to delete the original BSP geometry placed for the ground. Every time I

tried to delete it, it would freeze up and crash. All in all the experience with this level design was a lot

better for me than I thought it was going to be.