Week 3: Furthering Environment Designs

The environments of the game were altered slightly, in both scope and overall lore and presentation.

The scope of the CSA will be scaled back so that design focus can be put on the Walled City. Though we still developed the overall look of the interior, its inclusion in the game will be either linked to an intro sequence or a very small slice of the area.

Also, Kowloon was renamed to the Walled City, so that it can be a more multicultural area than strictly of Asian aesthetic influence. Though the design of the area will be based on real-world Kowloon, lore-wise in the game it will be seen as a sort of Hong Kong of the spirit world. It's a place where tons of spirits—many of which did not go through the proper channels at the CSA—take up residence in the world.

This week the entire team worked towards matching a a single style. This was done in both the shape language, color use, and the overall ambiance of the art.

Modular designs were also worked on to give us ideas on how to implement these ideas into the game environment. Because the Walled City in particular will be extremely crowded, it will be extremely important to be industrious with our modularity so we can save time in crafting the game environment.

Technical Concerns: The major technical concerns for environment in particular are making sure that the particle systems used in the game (smoke, fire, sparks, etc.) match the overall art style.

Because of the sculpted style we are going for, the default effects in UE4 will not be adequate. We will look into making our own particle systems that generate the look that we are going for.