Grrr!

As the level is getting bigger and bigger my computer and/or the graphics engine cant hack it, it is getting really slow making it almost impossible to work with. The best course of action I can think of is to divide the city into different levels, this will take some more time as I will have to split apart some of what I have already made however the end result should be that the levels will run more smoothly.

The City Governor's House.

Here is a screenshot of the interior of the Governor's house. (Still under construction.)

The basement of the house. The basement is where the storage for the house will be, so there will be wine racks, barrels, sacks of grain etc. There will also be a secret passage that will lead to the underground temple and to the church.

The Church

Here are some screen shots of the church which is practically finished.

Level Design in Unreal

I started making my level in the Unreal graphics engine. After making the walls and towers I started building them into the outer walls of the city and gatehouses.
However once I had built the walls and started creating the main buildings inside the walls like the church I found that I had got the scale completely wrong, which was very frustrating! So I saved the wall and tower separately and exported them so they could be brought back into the map at a later date and had to start again. This time I have decided to build the city's buildings first and then construct the walls and battlements around them.

Research Trip

Over the Christmas holidays I went to a Crusader era city in the south of France called Carcassone. It was brilliantly preserved and people still live within the city walls. Walking around a real city in from that period was great to give me an idea of space and small architectural details that you wouldn't notice from looking at photographs.

City in Sketchup

I have finished the city in sketchup. Sketchup is great for getting down ideas down fairly easily and enables you to see them in 3D. The hardest thing I found in Sketchup was creating curved shapes like the domes that are on some of the houses and windows but once you have created one you can easily copy and paste to quickly populate the environment with parts you need. I also did this once I made one building to quickly fill the city. In my unreal map all the buildings wont be the same and I also want to add some extra buildings like a market and a blacksmiths.