“Games today are large and complex.” It seems that we could start every one of our Dev Blogs with this opening and still not make a dent in the challenges faced in making a “Next Gen MMO” – but maybe we can scratch the surface and show how we’ve adapted and evolved our development processes.
In this blog we’ll focus on the specific role that a world artist plays in developing new gameplay types for our MMO. Here at Spacetime, world artists are the third point (vertex) in the triangle of content development, executing on ideas set forth by the designers, supplemented with work done by the concept team. It’s definitely a push-pull environment, requiring constant communication from each discipline to be effective.
Our process begins with an iconic gameplay requirement flowchart provided by design. This particular layout is for a Capture The Flag Player vs Player game type that takes place within the “Forbidden Core” area. Its layout is generalized and will be further refined during the grayworld iterative playtesting.
The most important aspect of the “iterative” playtesting process is to recognize what problems need to be solved and in what order. Unless you can enumerate the variables of the problem at hand and lock them down one by one, you’ll find yourself in a vicious cycle of making levels bigger, versus slowing down the player. You use the playtests to spot issues, then alter things to see if there’s an improvement. The key is to iterate and playtest while only adjusting one knob at a time – settling on player speed first tends to be the quickest way to a solution.
For us, building a game that included a mix of both space flight and ground combat forced us to deal with scale and speed issues first and foremost. Combat distance generally defines what is fun. Can you see the player you’re trying to kill? Are the closing speeds so fast that you feel like you’re playing a sim? Fortunately, here at Spacetime, we have people who have worked on Wing Commander, the Jane’s combat series, Star Wars Galaxies and Freelancer, so there’s plenty of combat experience.
After locking down the essentials of player metrics and object scale, the next step in our process was to hand over screenshots of the playtested zone to the concept artists. They would paint right over them, to create pieces detailing mood, texture and lighting information for the art production team. Having predetermined relationships of scale and distances ensured that any concept art would now fit within the gameplay requirements, reducing the risk of costly revisions later in the pipeline.
Throughout the prototype development process it became apparent how important it was to have artists sketching out various aspects of the game, allowing Design and Concept to push the boundaries. Being able to execute on “what ifs” on a daily basis can boost the team’s morale and inspire contribution to new gameplay possibilities.
[...] The production art team then creates a “greyworld.” These are extremely low resolution versions of the assets, usually using a “scale” texture or a completely grey texture. The greyworld tries to be 100% gameplay functional. So if it’s a greyworld character, we put it on a basic rig and give it a basic skeleton & animation set. If it’s a greyworld environment, designers build up any triggers needed for gameplay functionality. [...]