Now that I have a rough idea of a) the engine to use and what features it has and b) how massive of a task it will be to build an open world by myself, I've decided that I need to start with a small area to test things on.
As such my first UE5 project will be a safezone area that includes many of the features needed for building the complete open world:
- landscaping, props
- buildings, with interiors
- a group of ai to make it lively
- player model, movement and interaction
- extensibility
I expect this phase to take at up to three months. It will be very important in this stage to keep looking for documentation, tutorials and assets that will help keep my momentum going.
After a few hours of struggle, I managed to change the landscape of the little safezone and worked on creating the grass look needed for some of the areas.