There are times when you just have to put your nose to the grindstone. I worked hard on Saba Island only to realize that this is a work of fiction, and to bring something from reality into fiction takes more effort than the reverse. I’m pushing hard trying to recreate Saba Island, when creating an island out of my imagination is easier, more rewarding.
So I created Van de Meer island, and have already gone through the process of altering things in the storytelling. But while on the laborious journey of changing out print and voice substitution from Saba to Van de Meer, I also had the work of creating the island in World Creator, which began a long and arduous learning effort just to crate the island. From there I had to port the island over to Unreal engine, and then give it a landscape.
I present to you Van de Meer Island
This photo is from the landing pad. A troop truck awaits the arrival of a dropship. In the back ground the main road can be seen stretching off into the distance between the trees at the feet of the mountain range. The road cuts through the mountain pass between the mountains in the center of the island. So far I’m dealing with problems, but I’ve also been solving them one at a laborious time. Let’s take a trip on the road.
Here, on the road, in the foreground, is one of my major problems all of a sudden. Because of the undulation of the beach dunes the road disappears under the sand in sections. This has been a bit of a headache, because upon doing a test of the road it laid down perfectly, But doing a re-do of the road these issues suddenly arose. I have yet to solve this one.
Moving closer to the sparse jungle we have the airstrip hangar, which have drones inside being worked on. Also a few watch towers and one of two radar dishes. You can also see in the background where the road falls under a rise in the sand, thus vanishing from sight. The air traffic control is on the right, just out of frame, a modest Quonset filled with electronic equipment and a watch tower.
Now we have the sparse jungle which I’m building up from the road outwards, meaning that the jungle is thicker, not by much, the closer you are to the road at present. You see the Procedural landscaping of the island, a program within Unreal Engine that automatically lays trees of any type all over the island. For some reason it didn’t work for me. It was planting trees in places I didn’t want, some up in the air on top of other trees. So I elected to plant all of the thousands of trees by hand. I do about twenty a day so as time goes on this jungle will become thicker and thicker.
The road takes us directly to the mountain pass. As you can see, the road has disappeared under the rocks and sand, which is annoying. The pass leads to the central base on the island.
Here, the mountain pass opens up between the two center islands and in the background can be seen the mountains at the northern end of the island and the beginning of the barrier wall for the base.
The beginning of the barrier wall of the base stretches out to the right of the road, which is barely visible just on the left. There is an enormous amount that needs to be done. A little bit a day I think will bring the entire job to a close. But I have to admit, the more complex I make the level with hundreds of components, the more fragile everything seems to become. Work on this thing in the right corner, the things in the left corner goes to hell.
But I’m going to keep working and keep bettering what it is that I am doing to make this island so realistic that the player is carried away. It takes a wide spectrum of work, almost overwhelming…but a little bit every day and it will get done.