The Legend´s End - Recreating the first Level news

Very much happend in the last days. One of the most important things is that I decided on a deadline for a demo of The Legend´s End. I plan to finish the first level, fully playable, by March 19. Maybe you are interested why I come up with a deadline so suddenly? This has a simple reason. My friends and me want to submit the demo to the Intel Demo Contest, which deadline is the 19th March. This is also the reason why we abandoned the prototype and are now completely recreating the game. We hope that we can keep quality up in that short time.

And don´t forget to follow me on Twitter @MikoPiotr

Day 86:
At the beginning I had a few problems because I wanted to directly use the model of the mountain in the UDK. Many bugs and errors later I thrown the idea away and used the file as a sketch for modeling it with the Landscape Mode of the UDK. This was the best decision I made. The mountain looked much more organic now, there were no texture bugs and the landscape exactly like the vision in my head. Also there is an big FPS plus! This was done within less than one hour.

Day 87:
After all the model looked pretty good. Now I had to work on the materials. I found very good textures and made a shiny material setup in the UDK.

Day 88:
Right now it was important to create cillfs and rocks. This time I want to look more on the optimization. So the rocks are just low poly models with 300-500 polys. Because I had no more time this day I just used a rock texture of the UDK.

Day 89:
Not much to say this day. To make sure that my vision was well produced I scaled the landscape along the Z-axis to ensure that all the cliffs and so on match my vision.

Day 90:
Today I concentrated more on the style of my mountain. I found a perfect texture which fits my vision in an excelent way. The texture is more dark than the other one. Also I included more and more rocks (some of them were created by my friends). I think that the style will look better to you as well.

Day 91:
Today I modeled a tree.

Day 92:
This day was a fantastic and productive day. This is one reason why prototyping is a great way to improve workflow. Assets and other data are in the most cases already in place when you need them. So now it was no problem for me to create the arena, place my tree around it, add the magic sword. Finally a few elements were from the UDK but all of them will be replaced. After all I found a few good rock textures and applied them to my stones. Finally I got an very atmospheric plus. By creating a simple smoke particle effect and scaling him I got an very fantastic looking wind effect.

Day 93:
Thanks to my prototype I had more great assets in place. First I added a more detailed version of the arena to the level and then I recreated the skyarena. It is flying now more high than in the prototype. Also for now I just used UDK materials for it. Finally I add the enemy. Yes, the boss of the level: Frintuhor. The boss is a transformation of the sword: a giant energy orb. With a special material setup he gains also a fantastic look. As you may notice I also changed it´s size. In the last version many didn´t thought of him to be really an enemy. So now I hope you now that he is not your friend!

Day 94:
This day I finished the first cutscene of the game. It´s the appearing of Frintuhor. When you touch the sword it transforms within an epic cutscene into Frintuhor. I already have made a video of it which you should look at here:

Sorry for the bad resolution and the not final lightning. But we are in a house relocation so it wasn´t possible for me to rebuild until now. This is also one of our enemies on the path of reaching the Contest. But we know that we can make it with your help.

So please spread the word and wish us Luck!