The dolomite mine is nestled on the slope of the Coyote Mountains, just outside of Occotilo, CA. The mine itself fell into disrepair in the 1930s, but the concrete and stone ruins still stand, jagged rebar showing signs of wooden additions that rotted away nearly a century ago. It's one of the first stops if you're coming into the Anza Borrego Desert State Park from the salton basin along the southern side.
I'm going with "What the Rain Left Us" as my final name, unless something comes up that prevents me from using it! I think it's appropriate as a game that's supposed to take place in the anza borrego desert state park after a rainstorm flooded the roads out and closed the park off to normal traffic. The state lets the player in as they're on a botany trip to document rare plants blooming in the area and do important research ecology work, and has a vehicle that lets them traverse the rough terrain.
Never take a vehicle off-road in the real desert though! It's a protected habitat and home to many important and endangered plants and animals, as well as being a hotbed of unique vertebrate fossils due to the way it developed over the last few million years after river silt captured a huge portion of the ocean. The area slowly developed from a coastal biome to a freshwater lake, to marshy land, and eventually to the dry desert we see today.
You can fine pre-historic walruses and a variety of other fossils around these mountains. The Fish Creek Wash in particular is often described as "having more fossils than substrate" in places! Also fun fact: it's legal to take invertibrate fossils out of the park, so it's a great place to look for fossilized ferns or trilobites.
Made a lot of progress on the camping system this week, learned a lot about how unreal handles its event triggers and passing events from object to object. Set up some button keybind recognition and onscreen prompts too! Hopefully I'll have a rough draft of all the camping mechanics set up by the end of the holiday weekend
Had my first electro session today (it went super-well! The person doing it is really nice and incredibly skilled. She got a huge area done and it barely even hurt. I could not be happier and I can't wait for my next session with her next week.). It was draining, so I spent the day learning the niagra particle system, and setting up lighting for the campfire. It was very relaxing and chill.
I'll have some shots of the mine ruins to share hopefully after this weekend too!