Environment art production: Thought process and current progress
In games, environments can really set a mood for the story and characters, but they also need to be practical and functional taking into account the vision for the gameplay and the abilities of the dev team. For a large portion of Wobble Warriors’ design and production, there were only two artists on the team. With this limitation in mind, everything in Wobble Warriors was and is being created to be extremely modular and simple by design. At the same time, we still want to effectively convey our combined aesthetics of a medieval dungeon and a child’s imagination.
Functions of environment art in Wobble Warriors
At this point in the development stage, most of the functional side of environment work is done, but the basics of this were important to get right. We started by figuring out what we needed; walls, floors, doors, and hazards to showcase our active ragdoll physics. Everything else is polish, aesthetic, or a method of physical elevation to redirect movement in the space. We also knew that each room would be about the same size, the camera would have a fixed position, and the wonky physics would make it easy for characters to get stuck on odd edges and clutter. This resulted in the minimal construction of three walls, a floor plane, a door, and a series of things to push people around.
As an example, above you can see the wall and floor tile textures created for the rooms. A simpler way to add detail and depth without making anything more time consuming or that sticks out in a way that might mess with our wobbly friends. These textures repeat multiple times over simple plane geometry to create the floors and walls.
Updated assets and current progression
Now that we have two backup artists helping us with some of the asset models for things like environment props and weapons, the game is coming together rather nicely. Many of the models needed for the functionality of rooms are done as well as the more aesthetic props that really fill out the space and make it come to life. We have effects in place that make things glow, such as a hand drawn fire effect put in unity’s particle system, and otherworldly lights inside of lanterns. The current work is more focused on getting everything textured so that it not only exists, but looks like it belongs, and adding items into the scene in engine so that we are able to decorate the rooms. We’re going for an impression that this is a somewhat real space that a child is imagining their toys acting out an epic battle in. Some objects look more tangible, while others have sort of a scribbly texture. Below are some examples of current rooms and environment items in engine. We're continuing to develop the environment. More improvements are soon to come and we're very excited for everyone to see the progress.
- Katie Monte | Lead Environment Artist
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