Cleanup On Aisle Six project

WOW, HUGE POST!!! Okay, so this is my first foray into the world of Unreal. Some friends and I decided to do a zombie-based level set in a small rural supermarket. The basic premise is the player's character has been surviving a zombie onslaught in a small town. When his supplies ran low, however, he needed to stop by the local grocery store for some rations in the form of canned goods. While checking off the items on his grocery list, a van tore across the parking lot into a tanker truck; which subsequently exploded, cutting off the character's only escape route. I was responsible for most of the level design elements, environmental art, as well as the creation, texturing and assembly of the BSP map within Unreal. We created almost all of the static meshes placed within the level, only borrowing the RealTree and car meshes that shipped with Unreal. Michael Horton created and textured the vast majority of these custom static meshes. Vincent Walker created some of the more involved (and higher poly) meshes, such as the zombie character and the tanker truck. Octavia Jones rigged and animated the zombie character and assisted with particle effects.

My initial quick sketch of the parking lot and exterior of the store ended up being a fairly accurate depiction of the final level...

Originally, the player was going to fight Big Earl, himself, the former proprietor of this fine establishment, in a "boss"-like zombie battle.

However, we eventually decided to have the player battle hordes of redneck zombies, wearing their signature rebel flag "wife beaters" and tight jeans tucked into their cowboy boots. The zombie character was beautifully modelled by Vincent Walker and lovingly animated by Octavia, but, due to time constraints, we were unable to fully import it into the level. Such a shame...

Here's a nice exterior view of the Earl's Grocery Food and Drug Mart...

...and another view from the other side of the parking lot.

Here's a view of the van/tanker truck collision, with nice particle-based fire and smoke effects.

This is the main entrance to the store...

...with the shopping cart return area. Notice the pig logo has a big chunk missing from his body as he gestures toward a floating ham hock above him. I swear, sometimes Michael worries me...

This is a nice view of the dim, atmospheric interior of the store. A light behind the distant pharmacy counter indicates where the player might pick up some additional health.

Here's one of the many trashed aisles in Earl's Grocery (hence the title). Zombies really don't know a thing about picking up after themselves, do they?

This is another view of the small, obsolete registers used in the store. Note: the yellow boxes are "Bushidos" cereal, which is obviously Michael's doing.

The areas that received the least amount of attention were the bathrooms...

...and the loading dock area, which are both rather boring and plain. However, due to time constraints, sacrifices had to be made.

Overall, it was a great learning experience (and a level that has a lot of potential).