Medieval Harbor Village - UE4

This was an idea I had for a coastal Medieval village which would be part of a open world game, such as the Witcher 3 or Skyrim. My main focus was on building a interesting layout and then trying to polish it as much as I could. I started this project a while ago but never fully completed it, hoping to somepoint return to this and finish it. With the release of Unreal Engine 4.26 water system and volumetric clouds, I thought it was the perfect time to go back to not only explore and learn the new features that unreal has to offer but to finish this project. Below there are images/videos of this project as well as some documentation on how it developed.

When I came back to this design, I liked some of the key ideas that I had put in place originally of which I wanted to keep in, but I felt that some aspects could be improved. Some of the problems with the original design I noticed when reviewing my old design were:

1. The design was very linear, although I liked the verticality of the original plans and it was easy to see the different focal points; there was often only one path to take to get to places. When I looked at games such as Witcher 3 or Skyrim, they often had a lot of branching paths in villages with multiple ways of getting around, making it a lot more interesting and natural. I think a reason for my original design failing was because I didn’t plan enough and should have looked at more references.

2. I thought it made sense to have the lighthouse far away from the village and high up, so ships could see this coming in and the player would be able to see this focal point from any position in the village. However there was only one way to the lighthouse and I felt it needed to be more easily accessed which I thought it would be less frustrating for the player (especially for instance they fall down the cliff)

3. Only one entrance into the village - doesn’t really feel like this village is part of a larger open world which is what my original intention was.

4. There wasn’t much thought put into the houses of the village as shown by my original design. I didn’t give the houses a lot of room, often just clumped together - they didn’t really have any room for personality or distinguishable features that the player could easily identify. This could be important if the player ever has to revisit one of the houses for a mission/merchant etc.

5. There were a few empty paths surrounding the dock which didn’t really seem to serve any purpose.

With all that mind, you can see below a top down view of how I changed the layout.

What changed

1) The biggest change was the expansion of the village and the removal of the large mountain (as seen by the area with the red outline in the original map design). Although this meant a bit more work, it allowed me to add another entrance into the village and a few more areas of interest. I also added fields which are currently just full of wheat - but would have intended to have different produce that the villagers are farming within these fields. I thought this would make the village more part of a open world, especially with multiple entrances giving off the idea that the paths potentially lead to other places in the world.

2) Another change I made was I moved the positions of some houses as well as culling some, making room so that each house could have a small piece of land. I felt this gave each house more personality and were more distinguishable for the player.

3) Another change I made was making the layout less linear, as well as removing some paths that had no purpose. Every path now serves a purpose, either taking you to a house or beauty spot etc. There are multiple ways of getting around the village and also crossing the river, as highlighted by the dotted lines on the map layout. I did this as I felt it would make it more interesting for the player to navigate - however I understand that at the same time it might make it slightly more confusing. I hoped to alleviate this by the placement of the various focal points such as the Windmill, Lighthouse and various towers places within the village which you can see almost from any location.

4) I lowered the mountain height where the lighthouse was placed, allowing the player to reach it via the harbour which wasn’t possible before. My only concern now is that it is still quite out of the way of the village. With this change in placement of the lighthouse, it allowed me to expand the river and moved the waterfall slightly, as well as adding in a wooden dam below the bridge where the river starts to narrow.

Below are more images/short videos of this project.

This project also gave me an excuse to briefly look at volumetric clouds - something that I hope to look at more and improve on in future projects.