Working With UDK is Pretty Enjoyable

Pondering awhile about the my entry yesterday made me realize that I have already started to allow this blog to become the one thing I did not want it to; a place where I whine and complain and act all cynical in the most simplistic of manners. I also was starting to share my opinion, which is something that I know the Internet does not care about, and honestly, neither do I.

So at this camp I have been spending the unnecessarily large amount of time given to me to really sit down and polish up the map that I have been building in UDK. Half of that time is spent baking the lighting, which looks amazing. Since the actual design of the map is not really gameplay oriented (I am not too familiar with the intricacies of UT3's design and at this point I could not care less about death match shooters) I have been focusing on what is most important of all, the visuals! And really, UDK allows a designer to go all out. It is ridiculous how many meshes and lights you can layer into each other; it almost feels a little dirty. Here is a screenshot of what I have accomplished so far:

It definitely helps to have great assets. The tree, which operates as the main set piece and landmark of the map, is a wonderful model provided with the development package. A lot of the other models are also really well made and are quite versatile in there applications. Gameplay wise the map is boring and dull. There is going to be a jump spring somewhere in there to spice things up...