Final Poster

We are proud to show the finalized poster for Shove Aside! Underneath, you can see the overall process of the poster.

Color Comps

The next task for the poster is color comps.  We wanted to make sure that the color palette we chose conveyed the right atmosphere, so these were the choices we were deciding from.

In the end, we decided on the purple sky to give a sense of mystery.

State of the Environment 6

Here is a quick update of the art and how it's coming along. My life has been unwrapping as of late, here are our unwrapped modular assets, and some interior objects for each puzzle area.

Let's Build an Environment: Modular Assets

Hello again,

Today I'll be talking about taking the messy geometry I first made to layout the level, and refining that into something much more efficient and reminiscent of an old forgotten World War 2 gun battery. My goal main goal now, is to take this level and turn it into separate pieces so the level can be modular.

I first go over the level I have now, and I eliminate some unnecessary rooms and hallways. While I'm doing this, I'm also identifying what each room is used for, and what the story might be behind it as I go. I'm trying to find a good point in between practicality and the organic feeling you get from the original layout.

Rough parsed level layout with room identifications.

Once the excessive bits have been parsed down, I start to break down the area into smaller bits. I want to be as conservative as I can be in this step, but not break from my parsed down layout. I decide on a grid scale for the simpler assets to abide by first, in this case a 1x1 square on my grid would be 4x4 meters, and all hallways height's would be 3 meters. I then made the simple hallway objects from scratch, having them match the dimensions of the layout as closely as I could. From there I took each of the unique pieces and adjusted them so they could connect with the modular hallways.

First pass modular geometry.

As soon as the layout was complete I exported each object and created the bunker layout in Unity. For there I did a camera pass, which made the level navigate able by the player. With the level laid out I could now go in and model out the geometry of each piece without having to layout the level any further. Below are pictures of the final modeled pieces and the final level layout.

Second pass modular geometry.

Level layout with modular geometry.

Let's Build an Environment: Layout

Hey all,

I wanted to do do a series of blog posts focusing on the construction of the interior of our level and my process in creating it. Since I work as Designer/Environment Artists I'll be focusing on both, but this first post will be design heavy, and the rest will probably be much more art heavy. That out of the way, let's dive in.

Here are the things I know when I start designing this level: This level will act as the demo for our game, it will be based on gun battery Mishler, located at Fort Steven's State Park in Oregon, and the player's goal is to open a set of blast doors on the ceiling to reveal the weakness of the monster they'll be fighting later in the game. Because it's our demo, I want to make sure that we showcase all of our mechanics, with an emphasis on co-operation. With that in mind I start by creating two puzzle rooms that require both of our characters to work together.

Original Puzzle rooms

Now I have two areas (made up of a couple of rooms), that I need to link together with the rest of the battery. I move into 3D since that's where I'm most comfortable and quick. Here I can go crazy, slowly discovering what the space will be as I go. I know I want a main hub, which will double as the location the player's reveal the monster's weakness, so I create that first. When creating the hallways I know I want the area to feel a bit like a labyrinth, with a lot of strange turns and corners, to make the player feel even lost when spooky things happen. I also make sure that I have multiple elevations and a dug out cave for flavor.

First pass battery interior geometry.

I'm now left with a big messy piece of geometry that I need to turn into a old gun battery.

Multiplayer!

Branden got it set up so that we could walk around the level with multiple people! So we did the only logical thing: run around the level taking pictures of the two protagonists with a third hiding creepily in the background. 

Dani and Gabe with Dani lurking in the background, shot 1

   

Dani and Gabe with Dani lurking in the background, shot 2

Dani and Gabe with Dani lurking in the background, shot 3

Value Thumbs

Line work on the poster is done! The next step is defining the values before the coloring phase.