Date: 28.12.2022
License: CC BY-NC 4.0
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Nerdotellis

This started originally as a “small and quick Unreal Engine 4 learning project” on the 21st April of 2018. As you can see by the release date, it wasn’t quite as small and quick as we imagined it would be. 😅 But it was a great learning experience in many regards nevertheless.

I’ve set myself the challenge to do this 100% in Blueprints (BP), no C++ programming, because I was curious how far you can get with Blueprints. In the end it’s “only” 99% Blueprints, C++ was required for a small part in the game settings to make them work with our custom sound classes for effects, music and master volume control, but I would call this a success.

I also learned a lot in regards to environment art, including the workflow for baking high-poly model details on to low-poly models as well as working with dynamic and static lighting.

The Game

Download

To download the game you can either go to our page on itch.io or download it directly from here. There is only a Windows x64 build at this time.

Requirements

In order to run Nerdotellis, your computer should meet the following minimum system requirements:

OS: Windows 10 64-bit.
Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD, 2.5 GHz or faster.
RAM: 8 GB RAM.
Video Card/DirectX Version: DirectX 11 or DirectX 12 compatible graphics card.

A more powerful system is recommended.

Screenshots

Trailer

Environment Assets

All environment assets presented in the following gallery have been created by me, including modeling, texturing and, in the single instance of the trap door, animation. The images have been rendered in the Unreal Engine 5 using Lumen.

Insights

Easter Eggs

As is good manners in game development, we placed some easter eggs in the levels for the players to find. There are a total of 7 easter eggs in the game that can be found in some levels.

Spoiler Warning

Don’t look at the Easter Egg Gallery if you don’t want to spoil the fun of searching for the easter eggs yourself or you don’t want to see the last level before playing through the game!

The first easter egg can already be found in the main menu. There's a <a href="/projects/art/companion-cube">companion cube</a> from Portal hidden on the window sill of the main menu level.

The companion cube inside the Unreal Engine.

The polycount is quite high for such a small object since this wasn't made specifically for the game, but as the overall game is rather low on the polygon side it caused no performance issues.

As the creator of level 9, Jan Ripper, is a big fan of the Half-life series, I put a crowbar in the level.

Asset for the crowbar as a homage to Half-life. This time the asset was made specifically for the game, so the polycount is quite low.

Different perspective for the crowbar asset.

The concept made by Jan Ripper for level 13, proudly created in the <a href="https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Hammer_Editor">Hammer Editor.

Level 15 actually contains two easter eggs: For one there's a game boy at the top right corner. Secondly, the whole level is designed to resemble a game boy. Do you recognize it?

The game boy asset came from a tutorial I followed, so it's also not specifically made for the game.

I only wanted to put the game boy into level 15, but due to copy pasta, it ended up in levels 16-19 as well, d'oh! 🤦

In the last level, there are even three easter eggs! On the left side there's a companion cube on the window sill. If you walk on the tile right in front of it (highlighted in green), you will trigger alternate credits to roll with WIP pictures when you end the level. And the last easter egg is the gaps in the floor which resemble tetris shapes.

Work in Progress Gallery

Walls

First (failed) approach to create a tiling wall asset: I low-poly modeled it in Blender and then did the high-poly sculpt in ZBrush.

I learned the hard way that, despite tiling nicely in the low-poly, it is really hard to make the sides match perfectly this way in the high-öoly sculpt.

Half-way through the high-poly I noticed that the sides won't fit perfectly for seamless tiling. So I started from scratch.

In the new approach I created the low-poly for stones in various sizes and high-poly sculpted them individually. Then I arranged everything into a wall. I made sure it tiled seamlessly by cutting the stones on the ends into halfs and placing one on the left, the other on the right.

Back in Blender I retoplogized everything and put a cube between the stones as mortar so there are no wholes in it..

I applied the same approach to the windowed wall tile ...

And the corner wall tiles. Working with individual stones made this really easy as I could simply reuse the stones from the first wall and simply rearrange them.

The next issue was the lighting bake then, which created noticable seams again.

Also in the corners. I tried fixed this by tweaking the lighting parameters but nothing worked out. So time for a workaround: Put a pillar on each side to hide the seam. Worked out well and makes the place look more consistent..

Stone Tile

First step in the material creation for the stone tile in Substance Designer.

Added more details to the stone tiles' material.

Streamlined the material by removing visual noise, to make it look more coherent.

Added more definition and contrast to the shapes in the material.

Adjusted the color tone of the material to fit with the rest of the game. Left is before, right is after.

End Tile

The low-poly model textured in Substance Painter.

Animated material in-game in the Unreal Engine with a pulsating crystal lock.

Pillars

High-poly sculpt in ZBrush with cracks at the base of the pillar.

Damage details caused by combat magic in the body of the pillar.

Damage caused by the swing of a magical sword that apparently missed its target.

I also added tertiary details in the form of a weak noise to give the stone more structure.

The low-poly model with its wireframe in Blender. The top is a separate mesh object.

The damaged parts in the low-poly model.

Wireframe of the low-poly damage at the base of the pillar.

A texture variation of the pillar that wasn't used in the final game with some ivy, rendered in the Unreal Engine.

The texture variation with ivy from a different angle.

Before (left) and after (right) of the pillar with an adjusted color tone to match the rest of the environment.

First block-out of a level. I used compansion cubes as obstacles, later replaced by the pillars, since I already had the asset from a previous project.

Blockout in the top-down perspective of the game. A green color was used to mark the start tile and red for the end tile. Also, I quickly sculpted an ugly placeholder for the player character, back then wizard with a hat.

First draft of the stone material for the walls and floor.

Next I created a mood concept by adding some lighting.

I added the high-poly models of the pillars to see how they looked in the level. Before that I already tested the size using the low-poly model.

I refined the stone material so it "rocks" more, haha. 😉

Tried a different color palette with the lighting to make the space look more mysterious.

The ivy pillar in-game which didn't make it since it didn't fit the location.

The crystals finally got their model and material. Also: Teleport tiles! The effect is still WIP at this point.

The player character model and end tile were also coming along nicely.

The retopologized model of the corner walls were added, still lacking their material though.

The finished material for the corner walls with a first round at the pillar workaround to hide the ugly seams.

Matching the color of the pillars to the wall so they won't stand out that much.

Next came a base lighting pass. So far the lighting looked to artifical.

Finished working on the lighting and did a first prodction quality lighing bake. This improved the lighting slightly but still noticably.

A first draft of the final level. Later on more details were added.

The first iteration of the UI. Got told there's too many colors by the designer in our team. #programmerart 👀💦

Reduced eye cancer by using less colors.

First iteration of the button graphic, going for a glossy look.

Wait, the crystals in-game aren't rounded at all. Maybe we could pick up the crystal look in the UI. 🤔

First iteration of the in-game HUD, going for something rather simple to not distract from the game.

Second iteration, trying to make it look more polished.

Attributions

My Work

In this project I was the main programmer, a level designer, an environment artist, a lighting artist and the UI designer. My work comprises of:

implementation of the complete game in Blueprints
implementation of the game settings in C++
design and implementation of the UI and in-game HUD utilizing UMG (with the sole exception of the dialogue UI, which was done by Daniel Friedenberger)
design, modeling and texturing of environmental assets, consisting of
- the walls surrounding the level
- the stone tiles
- the trap door tile to end the level, including the animation
- the default and lighted pillars
- all of the easter egg assets
lighting all levels, using a mixture of dynamic and static lighting
creation of the in-game cinematics using Sequencer
video editing of the trailer

The Team

I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all people who contributed to this project.

Special Thanks

My special thanks goes to Hansheinz Müller Philipps Sohn for providing the server infrastructure and to Jan Ripper for providing the concept of level 9.