Environmental Concepts

By Eric Spray: June 11, 2010

Developing the world of Katorga 12 required an extensive amount of deliberation with story and design. As key locations and level specifications developed, the challenge became to plot their locations according to game progression. As the story changed, the shape and size of the island changed as well. Many topographical lay-of-the-land and player POV concepts were created to help illustrate to the design and art teams how the island could look with all key levels accurately placed on the map.

The island itself was heavily influenced by the look and design of Giants Causeway in Ireland, an island that is unique for its oddly geometric rock formations called basalt columns. However, as development progressed we decided that these formations were too unusual for the area. We did stick with the ocean-side cliffs that circle the circumference of the island. We also plotted a large mountain range across a large portion of the island to create more vertical scale to Katorga 12.

A critical point we were concerned with was making sure that the player has general landmarks to use for navigation; as a way for the player to track their own progression. The solution we came up with was to make the shape of the island in the form of a crescent shape so that important landmarks and locations can be seen closer then if they were placed on a linear path. The Concept below was the design chosen for these very reasons. Design and Art decided on using a storm as the central landmark of the island, and it was critical for us to make it visible from every location in the game.

Early in production a very clear visual aesthetic was formulated for the look of the game. Certain designs, palettes, and looks became very specific to the world of Singularity, such as concentric circles and sci-fi design of the 1950’s. For the look of Russia in the 1950’s to the current time, these motifs were to be carried across both eras. The current era being an abandoned wasteland of what used to be a flourishing community 50 years prior, the challenge became to illustrate this lost industrial community.

e-99_proxy_conduits

The 2D artists and Environment artists worked together to establish the looks of both eras. From the initial concept stage we illustrated Katorga 12 with visuals such as heavy overgrowth, general rust and ware, and building distress. We wanted to convey that the island has seen far too many winters. We were also heavily reliant on research of Russian architecture of the era and communist block design for regional accuracy. To allude to the sinister past of the island we illustrated a world that rarely sees the light of day, which is bleak and sucked of color saturation, as well as high contrast lighting situations.

The concepts below were chosen for establishing the mood, atmosphere, and design of the look of the Village in 2010 and the Freighter.

For the design of our sci-fi look, we pulled our influences heavily from comics and science fiction novels from the 1950’s. Rather than a direction that assumes the technology of today, we were challenged with defining an alternate reality employing a new technology reliant on the element E99. Iron pipes, siphoning systems, nixie tubes, and electrified pylons were some of the scientific instruments that we chose to focus our designs after. Ultimately, we successfully grounded a very retro look into modern day reality.

Eric Spray
Artist
Raven Software