Pixels and Other Planets
I've always been interested in how an environment makes a person feel, so video games have become a natural interest. I remember the first time I noticed that a video game could make me feel safe or scared depending on the environment it created. Half Life for instance gave you a great sense of the shift between hiding, running, fighting, and exploring. It used subtle shaping Safe places were safely enclosed, with solid materials of wood and rock and sometimes a gentle fire in the middle to give the place a warm glow. A door at the end was
your agreement to continue the adventure at your own peril. The dangerous places were often cold and barren. Rocks and trees drew close with dangerous angles and your escape often involved squeezing into tight spaces or dashing across large, open plazas. I noticed lively, bustling areas like resistance camps made me feel secure and happy.The game made me care about protecting these camps by offering them up as a better alternative to the woods and mines I had been chased through before.
My involvement came from my friend's interest in computer science and games. As he learnt coding and computer architecture, he decided to make his final submission a small video game, and asked me to help with the visuals. It was to be a small game so we agreed on a pixel-art level of detail. I began working on elements for the game we talked about. The mechanics were jumping and walking. Dying sent you back to the beginning of the screen.
When laying out a game, organization is hugely important. Everything takes time to make and if it
doesn't have a purpose the time is wasted. We ended up with a simple system. My friend would design the code and the level creation and I would match the layout with visuals. We made a system of putting numbers into a notepad in a matrix (0=empty, 1=solid, 2=spikes, 3=enemy one, etc.) and then I would take that info and use my pre-made parts to put the level together. We were able to put in a background, midground, foreground creating some depth.
Crash Site (Beginning)
Cave Entrance
Unique Screen
End Screen
Map Layout
We called this game: Wayfarer. The jumping was a little quick, the enemies were a little too simple, and it could be completed in less than a minute, but it worked. It had its own distinctive feel and simple pallet. Blue stood for the regular stone, Green for enemies. Red for environmental features: some dangerous, some not. The one thing I felt was most pleasing was walking through a patch of mushrooms with some in the foreground and some in the background. The game would suddenly have depth. This taught me a lot of lessons about what simple ideas could bring to games.
Round 2
Next, my friend wanted to make a new game with more elements. Instead of only dodging enemies and spikes, the setting would be a barren planet where you needed to stay alive long enough (collecting water and energy) to find your objective. This was a similar idea as Wayfarer and used the same character, so we did a reboot of Wayfarer.
Since my friend was digging into the mechanics, I decided to try to create the images for the game in a 3D environment, taking pictures downward to create maps for our top-down game.
This game used a simple box-map to identify what each box was going to be. I used these tiles to lay out the 3D barriers. For this game we were going to keep the blue rock (and structures carved out of it) and the red vegetation. The landscape would also be sprinkled with the ruins of your ship. A small 1x1 device would provide you with resources as you search the map.
Early Version: Top View
Later Version: Side View
I focused on the rock and ground first. The grass was a combination of two simple plants sprinkled across the floor at random angles and sizes with a particle system. For the rock, I needed to place it precisely where the map showed rock. I made a mesh grid, put the block map behind it and manually deleted all the faces where the rock wouldn't be. Then I extruded the rock upwards, smoothed it slightly, and sculpted it to be more like a formation. A small displacement gave it a rocky feel. Other small elements were sprinkled around to make the map more interesting.
Transition Area: Top View
Starting Area
Junkyard
Ancient Ruins
The Bridge
The Cove
Full Map
In this map we prided ourselves in our variation between tiles. Different formations, rubble, ruins, and even a cave kept the landscape changing.
This was the victory image. After finding the canisters, a ship finds you and rescues you.
And here is the losing screen. Earth's hope is shattered on the ground.
Oh and here's my first walk cycle for rendering our spaceman. Enjoy
Both games had eerie, echoing music playing over them. The extreme and vibrant colors with little-to-no mixing went past being playful into an uneasy territory (and set the landscape apart from other games) There is color, but no warmth. We wanted the player to feel painfully alone in an empty, completely unfamiliar environment. Combining this with artifacts and ruins that suggest a previous occupancy and a warning that says "you are not alone" gave a contradictory feeling that was no comfort to the player. I'm not going to pretend that players were touched by some philosophy in such a small game, but I think people got a taste of these feelings as they passed through the world.
