Week 1:

Back in Unreal Engine! I’ve been primarily using Unity for the past several years that it’s taken me some time to refamiliarize myself with Unreal.  The last time I used this platform was in RLab’s Intro to Virtual Production class with Todd Bryant. And… I think it’s good to be familiar with both Unity and Unreal. Once I get past the clumsiness of an unfamiliar interface, I can actually be excited about World Building and exploring all the nuances of the endeavor.

Elinor Fuchs excerpts from ‘Some Questions to Ask a Play’, the space, the time, the climate, the mood, the sounds, the inhabitants and the mythology brought me back to Ahmed Ansari’s the Fundamentals of Game Design class last summer.  A class… I wish I had taken in a regular semester instead of a 6 week crash course because there was so much too learn.

In creating this environment, I wanted to in some way connect it to my first portal world I created in the RLab class. I’ve always been fascinated in the possibility of multiverses, like the ones you would experience in ‘Sliders’ , ‘Star Gate’, ‘The Gunslinger’ and the like. Then again… there was Riven. Something about the silence and isolation of that world was magic.

Now. pertaining to this particular island world…

This is a destination. People come here for one purpose only, to discover the anwers to their indeterminable questions. It is a place of solitude. It is a portal to places of self-discovery. It is a private and secret world that reveals itself upon insight.

Time here stands still, but there are minute changes for the observant to witness. And as each traveler opens themselves up to receive these signals or offerings, they reach ever closer to find the path to the answer for their query.