Building onto Skyrim: Week 1

Most of this past week has been figuring out what I actually want the final product of this level to be: defining rooms, figuring out what is excess and what isn't, learning of the Creation Engine's referential grid system, ect. I've been trying to document my learning and work in a more real time environment by streaming on Twitch 3 times a week (twitch.tv/driadon) in hopes that both I can help dedicate my time, as well as possibly get real time feedback. (in the future, when I actually have viewers)

Since feedback has indeed been scarce in my case, I sort of did it the other way around: I dove into some of Skyrim's dungeons, specifically Bleak Falls Barrow and just looked for a good 2-3 hours. Looking for aspects such as when a light would guide the player, how combat encounters were framed, when loot was given and why, how environmental storytelling is done throughout the whole of the environment - which I took some umbrage with how it is done in this case, how some tiles were hidden, (or not in some cases) there's just a lot at play. Now I took that and applied that to my own creation while keeping in mind that Bleak Falls Barrow is supposed to act as an introduction to the game's dungeon delving as a whole. It's big compared to most areas, it touches all elements of what makes the games' elements what they are. And with that, I was able to scale the whole of everything, really thinking about each area and what I'm doing to get the project to be exactly that. It helped immensely.

Progress has been tangible within screenshots below. I now have a solid idea of what I want to see in the final product, and I've learned a thing or two about the tools at my disposal. I'm hoping my next update of this will be it complete!