Inspiration
The project was inspired by a desire to showcase 3D visuals paired with an interest for photorealistic visuals of historic or bygone eras of the world. The team consisted entirely of artists, and though functionally competent (code, etc) the primary focus was to showcase some ambitious and competent art, particularly 3D, for our brief's creators, Dovetail Games.
What it does
The project is a simplistic "tech demo" style environmental showcase of a fictional railway yard somewhere in the Southeast, at two distinct time periods. The periods shown are the 1960s give or take, and the 2000s give or take, showcasing some near-future liveries for the Southeastern train stock. The idea is to show that even under very limited time, this brand of photorealistic visuals even at their most basic can be a very engaging and unique way to experience something, even just the evolution of a railway yard.
How we built it
The original soundtrack was composed by kyle Joyce utilising Bandlab, while the assets were 3D modelled entirely in Blender, and textured in Substance painter. Every asset seen in the game aside from the ground cobblestone texturing is original, made from-scratch for the project, the same is true for 3D models. The game was put together and exported as an Unreal Engine 5.6 video game, with basic functionality to control the weather and "progress" through the two levels and the menu.
Challenges we ran into
As is to be expected, the single most defining problem was time management and by association the scope. Several other eras such as the world's first railway were planned to emphasise the idea of visualising history, but it quickly became apparent we did not have the time for the original scope, and tactical reorganisation was needed to recover and get a final project to published in time that reflected our goals well enough.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The game succeeded, we believe, in it's core idea! Even with it's relatively basic fidelity the team believes it has managed to immerse the player in it's brief and small world, and certainly acted as an opportunity for the team to show off their skills to important eyes. The team hopes the project will be received by Dovetail with a similar understanding of what the aim was, and considers the idea of historical or otherwise visualisations of using 3D art.
What we learned
The scope management part of the project was a massively valuable lesson on how even the most efficient scopes, which can seem like much too basic an idea for a whole 24 hours, can suddenly creep up and surprise you. It was also an invaluable opportunity to error correct, rethink the way we were doing things and come up with a compromise that prioritises effectively delivering on our goal successfully while not running out of time.
What's next for The Great British Rail Experience
Should the need arise, the team already has a bunch of ideas to expand on the GBRE, from previous and further eras in history to just incremental improvements on the art assets. The 24-hour demo is truly scratching the surface of the idea!
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