Minimal xmas progress

As you'd expect, Christmas didn't bring much time for FMP planning, but I did some stuff here and there. The main thing I found that was easy to do here and there, was read the Vertex magazines.
   In the first magazine, one of the articles titled "The Glue" Level pipeline in a nutshell. It talked about the sections of building a level. Block out, Game play elements, level population, visual effects, optimisation etc. Another useful section it talked about was the limitations of the 360 and PS3. They had a hardware limit of 256mb per level section. playable level sections were not allowed to exceed this, including the operating system, game code, geometry, UI,sound effects, voice, music, pathing information, shaders, lighting, animation data, physics, particals and fragmentation. I should also look into the tool "sentinel" which tracks performance, and aim for a benchmark of 30fps.
Content organisation is important when working in engine. Content should be stored in packages. "Package organization has big implications, especially in terms of size and dependency" "Try to stick to 30-100mb per package" Obviously im not going to g through everything that ive read within the vertex magazines, but thats just a snippet. I also read the ones titled "environment modeling pipeline", "World art building pipeline" "Texture planning" and "Texturing tips for production" all written by the developer Naughty Dog.
   As I knew lighting will be a big part of my scene, I checked out what the unreal website had to offer on the matter. Nothing really worth writing on here, but I do need to think about how the shadows will be laid out on the floor, what areas are going to be needed to be lit along side the skylight and how adding alot of lights will effect performance.
   I didnt want my side of the wall to be too crowded and have no open areas so thought about some sort of courtyard. Maybe even a large town square that span's across both sides of the wall, one that is split by the large wall.

An idea for a central open location.

   Not all of my Christmas was spent reading articles and level planning. I did have a bit of fun on a few games. But admittedly it was work related. When I was thinking about how to contain the level and make it seem natural next to the wall, I thought about Assassins Creed and how they did it, unfortunately my memory of Assassins creed 1 and 2 was a little hazy. Not having the games to hand anymore, I had to resort to Black flag, which didn't provide me with much closure, purely because the city's are all open now. It might be worth finding out my 360 copies of 1 and 2 but then again It might not bring anything to the table after all. I will say this though, Black flag has some nice foliage.
   The destiny concept art we are using for a colour pallet example brought to our attention the logo. Not all towns/settlements need or have logos, but we thought it might be a nice addition to show another level of separation between the two sides. When it comes to a logo you cant just come up wiht one out of nowhere, well you could, but were on an art course and a bit of concepting goes a long way. So I set to work looking at existing in game faction logos, family crests, military ranks and medals.

Logo mood board.

I want the logos to be displayed in multiple ways, vertical and horizontal banners, small tapestries maybe, posters spray paint etc. This side of the wall, although pretty poor and set behind the times a bit are proud of their heritage and situation.
   Finally along with playing a bit of assassins creed, I took a trip down memory lane and went back to Sanctuary (Borderlands 2 home hub). Also for research purposes. I figured with it being a small section of a town, they must also hold some info and worthwhile knowledge of how to make a small area appear larger. From the short amount of time I was there, I know it 'll be worth revisiting, but for now I don't have the time to sit around playing games. So it might have to wait a few more days.