The Writer’s Nook
3D puzzle game | | Help your roommate find his forgotten glasses!
Overview
Summary: Your roommate, Sam, has rushed off somewhere but without his glasses. He's asked you to find them for him. Search his office for the glasses and just maybe you'll uncover where he was going in such a hurry.
Tags: 3D, Unreal 5, Level Design, 3D Modelling
Duties
Designed the space and the narrative the environment is meant to convey.
Modeled and Textured all the assets in the scene.
Programmed the functionality of the game using Unreal’s Blueprint system.
Created an online shader to highlight the interactable objects.
Development Highlights
Asset Creation - Modeling, Texturing, and Lighting using Autodesk Maya
The aesthetic of this room is heavily inspired by the dark academia aesthetic: vintage and art nouveau furniture, vintage books and papers, and ambient lights. I really wanted to try to replicate that kind of cluttered feel these rooms have that makes them feel lived in. The main hallmarks of this room are the desk and its chair, a small armchair and bookshelf, and a vanity table. Some of the smaller props are books, a desk lamp and floor lamps, stacks of paper and loose-leaf paper, tea and coffee cups, a tea kettle, plants, and an area rug.
All the assets present in this level were custom-made using Autodesk Maya. Custom textures were made using Adobe Photoshop.
Designing the Level Using Established Design Patterns
The player is intended to wander through the room and discover the things at their own pace. In light of having this exploratory game play, I pulled design inspiration from Alexander Christopher’s Principles of Design.
There are three main “centers” (marked in the accompanying image with blue numbers) that draw the player into them. While these centers are relatively contained, they are not separate from each other. They interact with each other and their traits merge. You find tea cups from the tea area in the other space. You find papers from the desk area in the sitting area. And so on. Each area still has its distinct identity but each area/center intermingles with each other making the level as a whole like a space in and of itself rather than 3 separate spaces in a room. It makes this room feel like a space that someone uses rather than just a space designed for a game.
Those centers only stand out as centers because of the lack of furniture in the other spaces of the room. These “voids” or empty spaces provide the environment with the contrast needed for those centers to stand out as such. If there were things in these spaces, the room overall becomes less pleasing and the intention becomes convoluted and chaotic.
Incorporating Interior Design Concepts
When I designed the space of this level, enrichment was a big aspect of it even if I didn't know that that was what I was doing. There's a lot of complexity to this space that makes it enriching and enjoyable to look at with out being too much. That complexity comes from a lot of the smaller details of the room (the trim on the floor and ceilings, the props around the space, the paintings (all highlighted in the accompanying image)) but there's not so much complexity that it is disorienting.
Top Down Planning Sketch - Used to visualize how the space would be laid out before asset creation started.
Perspective Sketches of two of the level's "centers" - Used to visualize how the props in the space would interact with each other.
Wireframe of Modeled Out Scene in Autodesk Maya.
Process Screenshots - Importing assets into Unreal and staging them.
Top Down view of the completed level.
