I Made My Childhood Neighbourhood into a Game in Unreal Engine 4 (Showcase) - Video at the end

My grandparents' house is where I spent many years during childhood and it is the most memorable places for the whole family. Unfortunately, we were just tenants and eventually the owners moved back and completely undid all the things that made it special. Today it looks nothing like what it used to be, so many years ago, I decided to rebuild it and essentially archive it digitally so we could "revisit" in the digital world.

The process began some 10 years ago but technology and general life didn't allow it. So about 2 years ago I, with the help of some family (many unknowingly), gathered all the resources required. Around a year and a half later I had finally completed it.

Beyond a couple of small free 3D assets (which I still had to modify and prepare for my purposes) and the trees/vegetation (mostly from Megascans), everything else was built and textured from scratch by myself. The game has fully dynamic lighting with nothing baked.

I wanted to compose music as well, however, time constraints meant I chose from media I had experienced that resonated with the project. Thus, music was picked from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (composed by Jeremy Soule), from Naruto and Boruto anime series and the track that plays in the village in the game Darkstone. So of course, these belong to their respective owners. The tracks were chosen as many of them were first heard in this very house and the tracks capture the feel of the place and time.

The game was first built in Unreal Engine 4.24 or .25 and eventually was last compiled and packaged using 4.27.2.

I do plan on moving to Unreal Engine 5 once it's fully out. I have already played around with Lumen in UE 5 EA 2 and it looks incredibly realistic due to the indirect GI, but unfortunately UE 5 EA 2 lacks many rendering features related to grass and subsurface scattering, so I never pursued that path more (4.27 forked off that release chain anyway making the rest of the progress incompatible). Plus, the early access UE 5 Lumen was very taxing even on a 3080, getting some 20-30 FPS.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and feel free to ask any questions in the comment section!