We're two devs who made an open world alien galaxy – Here's How

Low-Poly Aesthetic – Modeling all things (aliens, items, plants, ships, animals, visual effects) with a low-poly design helped create a whole swath of meshes we could mix and match when plugged in to procedural generation. The more assets we made, the more “ammunition” we had to combine things and create instances of variety. This was hugely helpful during planet generation. Additionally, because player perspectives are generally “far” from the characters (and objects as well), we could get away with minimizing details on plants, items, animals, ship parts, etc. Sometimes the eye only needs to grasp a key detail or two of an object to understand what it is, and then let imagination fill in the overall experience. Thank you, pixel artists.

Toon-Shading and Color Pallets – We created specific cel-/toon-shaded color pallets for anything we modeled for the game. Our simple colors are based on pastel spectrums, with varying shades of vibrancy. This created consistent variance among specific items (plants, beings, animals, items), but also established thematic looks for the game as a whole. Vivid landscapes and spacescapes feel a little more unified. Here’s a small example of how a very simple flower prefab changes colors across biomes:

Simple Rigging/Animation – Animals and aliens move rather simply, and we once again applied the idea of having a few key details tell the story of movement. For example, sometimes the sway or jerk of an animal’s neck/head is the biggest detail in imagining its size (birds and rodents are jerky, giant animals sway). Most importantly, we rigged creatures to accommodate the top-down view the player will have. We wanted animals to appear smoothest when seen from the sky, which meant animating details that are most prominent from that angle – whipping tails, flailing heads, flopping ears, etc. Admittedly, our animals would look a little wonky in an FPS perspective.

Space businesses – we first created a list of space businesses that we wanted. Because hand-crafting each one was a tedious endeavor, we narrowed the list down to less than 30, with room to add any more if early access communities find them fun. We also created two types of space malls, which allowed us to add a location that held a bevvy of different businesses – a neat little work-around that allowed us to add interactivity without putting more 3D modeling on our plate.

Items – Inevitably, having unique businesses meant filling them with various items that they’d hold. And the items needed to have some sort of purpose, so each specialty item in a business can boost one of six player stats to varying degrees. It would be completely pointless to offer items without any gameplay relevance. 

Mapping – With star systems generated and placed, we filled in “dead space” areas with stations, rewarding riskier routes with fruitful businesses that held important services or items. From a gameplay standpoint, these space stations helped balance the risk and reward trajectories that come with charting your path across a particular stretch of space. If you take a less risky route, there may be a star mall waiting with refuel, repair, and shopping opportunities. If you stick close to solar highways, you may only see fast food stations and space gyms. 

Flair – In addition to space stations, we modeled 7 megalith monuments that float in space (which hold elements of galactic lore). Space is huge and thus visually kind of boring – it’s just a bunch of black with star specs in the distance. But having something large, colorful, and mysterious on the horizon offers interesting views. We also made it so that space is not always black! We threw science out the window to achieve a vibe where space changes color depending on the color of the star in the area. Red stars create a reddish hue, until you fly near a blue star that gently turns space blue – so on and so forth; yellow, orange, pink, and green stars abound. And lastly, we took our spaceship assets and coded them to fly around and visit planets and businesses. This was an element of movement in the stillness of space – a key impression that aliens were going about their lives, just as you are.
 

Threats – Adding elements of danger to space travel gives a jolt to the navigational gameplay. There are the more passive dangers, such as running out of food or fuel, but we wanted to create something more direct. Shrugging off science yet again, we created space weather – more specifically, roving storms you can track on a ship’s navigation software. Without stabilizing ship parts, these storms severely knock you off course and damage ship attachments: engines, space sails, antennas, fuel tanks – including the ship hull itself. We also added “dead zones” in space that hold electrical anomalies that shut down ship communication systems, essentially blinding your navigation across a certain stretch of space. And then, there’s raider zones. These are areas spaces that have been identified by law authorities as having raiders – hostiles that can board your ship, hurt your family, take your loot, and beat up your vessel.