Chapter 3. Designing Your Playground

While we have a player made with a character controller, it is time to build what should look like a level, where we can spawn our character and start running around.

Building a level should sound like a fun task, but in fact it isn't. It is more of an artistic task, where you have to imagine, create, and build a level from nothing. You will be constructing your worlds, maps, and levels. Unreal tools make it easy, but still you need what should be called an artistic vision to build great worlds.

By the end of this chapter, you'll learn about the following topics:

• The requirements of the level and the aspects of level designing that we care about in this game
• How to place assets into the map
• How to use different brush types to place different type of assets
• How to add lights and baking lightmaps of the level
• How to create water surfaces to make the level more visually appealing
• How to set a player start point
• How to add and display the navigation mesh for the level to make it ready for the AI

With our targets defined, go ahead and spend some time thinking about the map you want to create, how you want it to look, and how long you want the player to spend while playing it. Once you finish this little brain-storming session with yourself, come back to this page again!