“Grim Garrison” | Fortnite POI
UEFN Fortnite POI
Project Overview
Project Goal
“Grim Garrison” is a custom Fortnite POI created entirely within Unreal Editor for Fortnite. It is inspired by POI’s like The Citadel, Underworld, and Haunted Hills. It is a large castle bastion with a small surrounding village and a dark secret hidden beneath the structure
The goal of this project was to create a large gameplay space within Fortnite under a specific time constraint. This was in order to practice my planning skills and ability to execute on those decisions in an effective time frame
Level Playthrough
Level Gallery
The PRocess
For this project, I limited the scope to a single week. As a result of this, I had to be quite methodical with my time.
Day 1-2: Planning & Reference
The first thing I did when undertaking this project was to…play the game! It’s extremely important to understand the fundamentals of the game you’re designing for. I, myself, am a Fortnite fan but decided to hop into a game of BR and actually study how some of these POI’s are made. After this, I spent some time looking at previous Island maps and gathering reference
Day 2-3: Rough Block-OUt
I knew the rough shape of what I wanted to make, and as I familiarized myself more with UEFN’s more Fortnite-specific content options, I decided to start blocking out large portions of what i wanted for the playable space. I also started to carve into the landscape and place some large rocks roughly in the style I wanted to get a more accurate starting point
Day 4-6: Construction
As I worked on this project for the bulk of its creation, I spent my time familiarizing myself with the UEFN-specific toolset and assets I had not been used to beforehand. This period of time was riddled with constant playtesting as i jumped between the live-editor and creative mode in order to make sure everything was always to scale, and generally felt good to play through.
Day 6-7: Refinement
Finishing up this level, I felt quite confident in my design decisions, and I felt that for the time limit allotted, I scoped it out quite well! I went and polished some areas and added more functionality by adding enemy bots near important vantage points as well. The rest of the refinement was adjusting spawn locations for loot, filling out combat spaces more, and finally adding foliage to the surrounding area.
Locations
Central Courtyard
The Side villages contain some small houses adorned with market stalls. The loot pool within this area is not low, though significantly less so than that of the castle interior
The castle has a central courtyard where most pathways converge. From here, players can access the armory, 2nd-floor dining rooms, storage room, scullery, and upper courtyard. This area is highly defendable if enemies are already positioned, forcing newer strategies or approaches for approaching players
Upper Courtyard
If players take a lower path from the bridge, they will enter the garrison’s dungeon and altar room, where a sinister group has been working together to resurrect Kevin the Cube.
Dungeon & Altar Room
The upper courtyard provides 3 tiers of elevation with the main ground, upper platform, and surrounding towers. From here players can either ascend higher, go down to the armory via stairs on either side, or go even deeper down for a sinister surprise.