This our second “Space Log”, one of our channels in communicating to the Void Crew community.
We want to both share what we are doing, challenges we experience and what we are working on.
...a part of this is also giving more in-depths look into our different roles in the team.
In this spacelog it is our talented Artist Kristoffer sharing his perspectives in working on the Solar Systems of Void Crew.
So, we hope you enjoy it, our second Space Log:
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I'm Kristoffer, Senior 3D Artist working on Void Crew. I have been a part of Hutlihut Games for about two years. When I joined, there was quite a lot established - like the Frigate and the Destroyer, Characters, but also a rough version of the first Solar Systems we encounter: Temperance.
In this Spacelog, I will share my perspectives on how this was expanded, and some of the different (visual) elements of Void Crew came to be, starting this: The Making of Temperance.
A part of our vision was to have up to 4 different Solar Systems (biomes), but due to time limitations for Early Access launch, we ended up focusing our energy into 3 Solar Systems:
- Temperance,
- Vigilance
- and Bravery.
Each sector should have its own clear identity, both in its space elements (asteroids, suns, planets, vfx and so on) but also in its color scheme.
Everything starts with an idea, which is put into text in design documents. From thereon, we start with references and mood boards.
My task was to give the Solar Systems a clearer identity, clearer color scheme and come up with unique space objects for each Solar System.
What is a mood board? It's a visual representation of pictures and references from existing pictures. This can be real pictures from the world around us, cities, nature, oceans, weather etc. But it can also be from other games, movies and TV-series, comics, art or whatever conveys the visual imprint you are trying to achieve.
"Blocky Ice" Mood BoardWe started with an asset bundle of somewhat generic asteroids to begin with. But...this made our first 2 Solar Systems a bit samey, and not stand sufficiently enough out against one another.
...to take steps towards addressing this, we started with mood boards and ideas to look at together (our creative director Daniel, game designer Laurids and other artist Anders).
Some of the mood boards we used for inspiration
"Frozen in Ice" Mood Board
"Ice and Snow" Mood Board
"Ice Asteroid Fields" Mood BoardAnd some shading, materials and color palettes
Even though we had a lot of things we really wanted put in there (...like creatures frozen in gigantic ice blocks etc. etc.), we also had to approach it from a production point of view.
Meaning... we had to put all those ideas and dicide what could be done, within our time scope.
And, in addition to consider performance, to avoid doing things that were too performance costly.
...plus make sure things that were doable in regards to collision work and the like.
We ended up choosing what we called "Iceblock Asteroids".
First step
In Blender, I started by modeling some of these Iceblock asteroids.
Once established, I could use that work to create even more iceblock asteroids by combining, twisting, turning, scaling and merging together.
This to create more shape variations and different sizes.
Here are some screenshots from blender:
Second step
Next thing is to give the assets some textures, representing our icy theme for Temperance.
...this is also why I posted an image of grey shaded asteroids (because up untill that point, this was basically what I was looking at).
So into Substance Painter they went (one of our texture creation softwares we use at Hutlihut Games).
Stuff like BG planets and ice stalagmites was also created for making a more varied palette of level design.
Third step
Once we created all the elements/assets we wanted into Temperance, we could go into Unity and start creating the different sectors themselves. In close alignment with our game designer Laurids, we co-created these levels/sectors, that you as Void Crew players get to experience.
A lot of trial and error goes into this: setting up a sector, each with as much of its own identity as possible with the assets at hand, with all the gameplay logic that goes in and the missions for the different sectors in mind.
Testing ingame -> adjusting -> testing ingame -> adjusting etc!
Things like the spacey background consists of different layers of 3D geometry planes with nebula & space clouds, fog and other space-like elements applied as textures.
On top of all that, we have different effects:
- non static icy clouds,
- space derbris clusters,
- small space particles,
- and so forth.
And of course, each sector has its own source of light:
- a sun, with its own identity and other planets around it. This to give greater impression of being in a specific Solar System.
Making a first encounter environment in a game is not without its own set of challenges.
Temperance sets the tone of the other biomes you unlock, as you as player progress through the game.
Working in huge sizes, large distances, etc
We have to fake the feeling of being in space. Everything is in relation to a human sized character, but we cannot have real space travel distances, real size relations to planets, asteroids, suns and all the gigantic things in space.
...so instead, everything we build have to be battle tested, to give the illusion of space objects being gigantic compared to the pov of the player and the player ship. Meaning, you have to be able to travel from one end of the map to the other, without spending days in travel time,
(...well after all, light travel speed is a whole other element in the game compared to pace of missions).
Large scale assets require high resolution to be believable. So, standing next to a mountain sized asteroid can’t be with a pixelated surface. The flipside of many large resolution textures are performance cost. To address this, we have different layers of details and maps (to prevent the immersive breaking experience). Noooot something we could nail on the first try ;-)
Make different biomes stand out from each other
Even though we had an array of different ice type assets to build from, one can quickly start to repeat the patterns of level building.
So we have worked on how to find ways of making each sector have it’s own feel and identity (even though there is of course still, a red lining between them and repetitiveness in the reuse of assets).
Making/building points of interest
A huge iceblock asteroid in center of the sector surrounded by smaller asteroids could be one solution. A top and a bottom layer of asteroids combined with icy stalagmites, encapsulating the players in the middle could be another.
Randomness
Coming up with systems and tools to put in randomness of enemies and players spawning points, wreck spawning and so forth, without spawning dead in the middle of a huge asteroid was also something we had a bit back and forth in doing.
Sense of direction
We also ended up putting in color gradients in background of our Solar Systems, because we often ended up losing our sense of direction when the background felt the same turning 360 degrees around one self ingame. So having some sort of background indication of what is front and back, north and south or something similar added a clearer overview of where we came from and where we were going.
Generally speaking, our main challenge was finding and setting the tone of a space and sci fi co-op journey. We knew we had to make ONE Solar System work first, before working on more Solar Systems.
Making them feel alive with VFX and particles, putting foreground, middleground and background elements in, in the right order to give the feeling of vastness. Temperance was the Solar System to pave the way for the others that came after, and for the ones we want to create in the future.
Thanks for reading my thoughts and experiences, ectypes. If you want to know more, we often share small art sneak peeks on our Discord server!
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Please continue to provide us with your feedback, it is an important part of us keep improving Void Crew.
Wish you all lots of aaalways be scooping co-op fun,
// Kristoffer (Senior 3D Artist) and Hutlihut Games Crew
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