St.Kilda Island Walkaround

For a few months now, I've been building an Island walking simulator based off of the St.Kilda archipelago in the Outer Hebrides. Here is the link to my blog with a little background on the project.

I've been using the whole thing as an exercise to teach me how to use Unity as well as Blender, and 3D laser scanning. The ruined "cleats" or houses and the two rock formations found in the game were made by me in plasticine and then laser scanned.

See some screen captures below:





I have two builds available, one using Unity 4 and the other using Unity 5.

Feel free to walk around and leave feedback/ideas.

http://www.palaeopi.org.uk/downloads/stkilda_setup_win32_1.1.exe Unity 4 build (Win 32 bit)

http://www.palaeopi.org.uk/downloads/stkilda_setup_win32_2.0.exe Unity 5 build (Win 32 bit)

My website and Facebook page documents some of the process involved.

Enjoy!

 

Some more screen captures to give you a little more of what to expect. So far I have a mix of modern and ancient architecture. I want the player to have a sense of mystery as they discover things on the map. I am working with a musician to introduce a themed score as the person walks around.


A cleat and the mysterious water tower.


The mysterious hatch near to the water tower, what is beneath?

The farmhouse and the sheep in the orchard. Who lives here? Where are they?

The mistress stone, once used in a highland courting ritual.

The recently used dingy. Is there a larger boat nearby?

The still whole cleat with ancient walled garden. Who is lurking in it's shadows?

Planned additions in the next few weeks:

1. Underwater caustic effects and some underwater objects to find
2. Musical zones
3. Pathways to guide players
4. Some level of interaction/narative
5. More animals, like sea birds
6. A yacht anchored in one of the bays which bobs up and down on the waves

 

Awesome work man! I love it! did you use blender To make the 3d models?

 

Thanks, means a lot. I made the farmhouse using sketchup make. The more organic stone structures I made small plasticine models and laser scanned them, then cleaned up the meshes in Netfabb and painted the textures on using blender. Some of the models like the lighthouse, sheep and tower are either free or cheap prefabs off the asset store.

 

Looks like you're going for a Dear Esther vibe, which comes across. I didn't make it up the hill as the path wasn't immediately obvious, but the really iconic scene for me from St Kilda is this:




I'd try to copy the hard, stony feel of the row of cottages to reflect the conditions. Could be a fun project.

 

Yeah, paths is something I'm in the process of implementing. Thanks for the input. Dear Esther is a huge influence, so that's a huge compliment.

Historic Scotland have laser scanned the entire Island, including the interiors of buildings. I think they might be open to making the data available to game makers. By pure chance I know the team leader and I'm hoping to get access to their data. Part of the reason for this project is to prove to them that I can "handle" the data. So far I have had to make do with what I could get, with 0 funding and access .

As for navigating the terrain, you should be able to jump up any cliff and get to the top if you keep pressing jump (a bit like Morrowind). Unlike Dear Esther, there are no restrictions on where you can go, this was intentional. I want the person to be able to explore every nook and cranny. Part of why I want the ocean to be so realistic, is because I see it as a sheet hiding exciting mysteries from human eyes.

I want to put this scan of an early medieval sculpture I was asked to scan in my last job in the ocean covered in moss.

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I've heard Historic Scotland doing that, always handy to have contacts . Might be a good idea to make the trip up there yourself (assuming you're scotland/uk based)? I find the 'extreme rural' way of life fascinating; harsh environments such as the outer hebrides, even parts of the mainland, have a strange allure. Lots of opportunity for setting the mood.

Laser scanning looks like a very cool idea, keep us updated!

 

I've now implemented underwater caustics and placed a laser scan of a medieval head sculpture in the water.

 

A new 32bit build is available from the following link:

http://www.palaeopi.org.uk/downloads/stkilda_setup_win32_2.0.exe Unity 5 build (Win 32 bit)

Included in this update:

1. Some level of rough paths, indicated by cleared grass, and flattened terrain. To give a sense of routes to points of interest.
2. Bumped terrain textures, including rippled sand in the ocean and on the shore.
3. More sheep dotted around the map.
4. Musical zones; each point of interest should have a collider activating the theme music. You now get to hear the work of my collaborator Thomas Sharpe.

I still have plans to implement the following:

1. A boat in one of the bays bobbing up and down on the waves.
2. More animal diversity. Depending on the 3D models I can find.
3. More of Tom's music.
4. More variety of plant textures.
5. Some kind of interaction with the points of interest.
6. A quiet chapel with stained glass.

Other suggestions are welcome.

 

Work has begun on the chapel...

 

In game. The chapel looks too clean. The edges are too smooth for a weathered brick building. At the moment I do not have easy access to a laser scanner. I have one built, but I have had no time to develop the firmware/software.

I am therefore investigating several options.

1. Photogrammetry to create a 3D model from pictures of a plasticine model.
2. Photogrammetry of some real stone walls in Oxford, then built into a model.
3. Finding a procedural method of generating "convincing" brick walls.

 

I have decided to put the sketchup Chapel model back into the game. The laser scanner I have at work is too low resolution to produce a clean model of my clay chapel.

I have also added a pause menu when "Escape" is pressed which gives the option to reset or exit the game.

The new build is available in the usual place.

 

Planned features for future possible implementation.

• Map with POIs that is toggle-able with the 'm' key.
• Flashlight that is toggle-able.
• Ship Wreck.
• Save/Load game.
• Furnishings for buildings.

 

Tonight I figured out how to display a map of the Island when the user presses "m". However, I need to figure out how to find the player position in the terrain and then draw that to the map.

 

I managed to figure the rest out. There is now a map with a point which updates position as the player moves.



Code as follows:-

Code (csharp):

1. bool map = false;
2. float player_position_x;
3. float player_position_z;
4. GameObject player1;
5. public Texture texture_image;
6. public Texture point_image;
7.  
8. bool toggleMap()
9.     {
10.         if (map == false)
11.         {
12.             return(true);
13.         } else
14.         {
15.             return(false);  
16.         }
17.  
18.     }
19.  
20. void Update ()
21. {
22. player1 = GameObject.Find ("Main Camera");
23. player_position_x = player1.transform.position.x;
24. player_position_z = player1.transform.position.z;
25.  
26. if (Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.M))
27.         {
28.             map = toggleMap();
29.         }
30.  
31. }
32. void onGUI()
33. {
34. if (map == true)
35.         {
36.             GUI.BeginGroup (new Rect (10, 10, 2000, 2000));
37.             GUI.DrawTexture(new Rect (10, 10, 513,513),texture_image);
38.             GUI.DrawTexture(new Rect ((player_position_x/4)+10, (player_position_z/4), 10,10),point_image);
39.             GUI.EndGroup ();
40.         }
41. else
42. {
43.  
44. }
45. }

 

Update available at http://www.palaeopi.org.uk/downloads/stkilda_setup_win32_2.2.exe

New features:

• Furniture in the buildings.
• Map with "you are here" indicator (press m to toggle)
• A flashlight (press t to toggle)
• Save/Load game state (remembers where you were on the map and which direction you were facing)

 

Working on implementing next:

• Ship wreck model (in progress)

• Learning how to use the "standard" shader instead of the legacy bumped diffuse (means some re-skinning in blender).
• POIs update on map on entry into the music zones.
• Those additional animals I promised.
• The bobbing boat in the bay (think I've figured out how to model this behaviour).
• A farmhouse doorway transition and door opening/closing sound.

 

Update available at http://www.palaeopi.org.uk/downloads/stkilda_setup_win32_2.4.exe

New features:

• Ship wreck
• Standard shaders demoed by the chapel inside and out
• POIs update on map on entry into the music zones
• The bobbing boat in the bay
• A farmhouse doorway transition and door opening/closing sound and a fire in the hearth.

Some shots:



It seems I need to implement some kind of RAM usage reduction by splitting of the terrain. Any pointers on this would be appreciated. Currently in order for the game not to crash you require a half decent graphics card and more than 3G of RAM installed.

Cheers!

​

​

 

Planned features for the next release:

• More music
• Selected poetry and prose which activates for each landmark
• Transition on the hatch! (what will be underneath the Island?)

Again if anyone has ideas on how to carve up the terrain/scene into smaller parts to make it less resource intensive let me know.

 

This is very impressive for a first try! Very impressive period, actually [] Would be great if you could add puzzle-like game play, that would go perfectly with the setting []

Not sure how to split the terrain without losing what you've done so far, but if you have script intensive objects around the scene you could probably disable them when they're too far from the player to increase performance [] []

 

Thanks for the complements. Also, that's a really good idea RE: performance! Puzzles eh? Like Myst, that's an interesting idea.

 

It's been a while since I posted about my game development. So here's an update. I decided about a month ago to scrap the previous iteration of the Island and start again literally from the ground up.

Using GAIA (a birthday present) I redid the terrain model, re-textured it and seeded the Island with sheep, rocks and grass details. I also used Meshlab, Netfabb, and Blender in order to remesh and re-texture all my models.

You can see the results below. The player starts in 'Village Bay' and is free to roam around ~4km of Island.

The controls are pretty standard FPS controls plus 'shift' (turbo) for those who want run across the terrain instead of walk. Pressing 'm' will reveal a map with a way point marker to indicate where you are.

You may explore underwater as long as you want, unless you swim out of bounds, in which case the player will 'drown' and respawn on the beach.

There are currently a number of mysterious rock formations and sculptures for you to find as well as rough music zones for ambience.

Now that I can model using Blender, I will no longer be using Sketchup to make assets. It's just too messy. So stay tuned for some structures and some interior environments including the mysterious lighthouse and hatch from the original as well as the 'wise woman's cave'.

Current demo builds are available here https://goo.gl/p3FqvG

Please let me know your feedback and if you have any cool ideas!

 

I have a blog set up to cover development of this: https://anodetohiort.wordpress.com/

You can also follow progress on Twitter: https://twitter.com/anodetohiort and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/odetohiort/



The basic layout of the game is in place, i'm working with some collaborators to get the story and music nailed and also introducing some interactive elements.