Big Game Project: Week Three

For the third week of production my work has been on mainly assisting the art department with constructing the environment of our first map to go along with the level for GGC. It was decided that a 3D Skybox would be most suitable to provide an optimised visualization for the world surrounding the course.

Inspiration was mostly taken from its name – Spectre – along with mood board artwork to get a broad sense of what tone and feel the map should adopt. I felt that a cold frozen waste would be fitting as it would go well together with the game’s intended colour scheme with emphasis on cold colours. It would also likely give good contrast to the player-controlled vehicles as well with their superheated engines burning through the air.

When players play a racing game, it is usually critical for them to gain a sense of speed. But in order for that to be experienced the mind needs points of reference. What this means is that there needs to be eye-catching, non-repetitive scenery so that the player achieves a sense of his position in relation to the world around him beyond the confines of the race track itself. It could be as simple as having distant objects in the background only present with their silhouette or it could be more up close for more grander and awe-inspiring scenery just to help with immersion and make the players interested in its presentation.

With the artwork above as reference, I started simple. Great snow-covered highlands and great technological spires in the far background to provide the simplest means of perspective.

This fulfils the bare bones objective; however there are many ways you can add to the map’s aesthetic appeal. In accordance with the game’s grim science fiction setting I began constructing simple shapes in order to get a sense of the overall appearance of the structures I intend to implement. Bygone remnants of great monuments of architecture built to achieve some grand purpose in the past. Their worn and eroded character will be further reflected by textures.

Refinement is always possible, with perhaps a more inconsistent topography to the landscape. Though it ultimately comes down to how much time I can spend on it. For now this serves as the foundation for the map. Next step is building the actual skybox.

Until next time!

Björn Erik Berndtsson. Graphics and Game Design.