Rise of Heroes: a process of creating the in-game cities.

Hi everybody!

I will start from a distance and repeat a little bit. At this point in our company is developing two projects: Sci-Fi MMO Metal War Online, and browser-based strategy in the setting of the Eastern steam-punk - Rise of Heroes.

In the process of writing diaries for different resources, we have come to a conclusion that it is more interesting and appropriate to cover not the entire development process in these materials but talk about some of its aspects. Thus we obtain a sufficiently compact, lightweight and, hopefully, more informative materials. Sitting in a diary for Rise of Heroes, we have taken for granted as described above, and decided not to create on level ground, but continue subjects like "casual notes on the art style history". One of the most popular questions is 'Why did you choose Oriental Steampunk? How does it look like? And how do you achieve it’s ideal implementation?"

Well, let's try to answer these and other questions ...

How It All Began

Towards the end of 2011 we weighed the pros and cons and decided to start another internal development. Development of Metal War Online has already been approved and we could only offer the right strategic decision. It was, in our humble opinion, the development of browser-based game. There were many reasons, one of which was do not put all your eggs in one basket. Also it is important that we had positive experience in the field of browser-based games.

No sooner said than done. At first the work went to the concepts, ideas and discussions. As a result of different brainstorms we chose the strategy as a genre of the project. There is subjective element in our choice - the majority of the panelists are deeply in love with such notable projects as Evony, Lord of Ultima, etc. And as you know, it’s better producing that you really love and understand.

Fixing a few points, we started to collect the team to work out the details in already expanded team.

Debate on Setting

Frankly speaking, the title of this section is rather deceptive. To be honest - there was almost no debate. There were supporters of pure hardcore steampunk  in the emerging team with the love to London, gloom, steam engines. There were also fans of more sophisticated setting, a la the oriental like in the Princes of Persia, etc. Oddly enough, both of those settings on the selected platform is not very jaded, and each party so enthusiastically described their vision of the future project that we have compromised and combined the two directions.

After some treatments, we obtained the following theses:

It should be noted that the second paragraph is rather complicated, but at the time of acceptance we had the appropriate game-design preconditions for its implementation. The fact that in Rise Of Heroes, in the manner known to all project Civilization, there is research and development of the state, expanding its holdings, etc. Since diving into the world of ROH player sees his buildings take on a more sophisticated look, as there are new characters with rifles, pistols, monocles, and other colorful attributes.

Pic. 1. Stable offers access to equestrian units, and its impact on improving the speed and the parameters of recruiting fighters. As you can see, each accompanied by a significant improvement of visual transformations. All the buildings in the Rise of Heroes arranged in such a way as to show the gradual development of the state from the classical to the beginnings of oriental culture steampunk. It’s best seen from the last level of stables, where small stall turned into a large building with an automated feed supply, a mechanical ventilation system and a spacious shelter for Marwari (military horse breed).

Pic. 2. The hero is assassin girl. Never underestimate her. Along battle is not for her, but she has the endurance and patience. She and her team out of nowhere appear as shadows at the most opportune moment to strike the only and compelling blow.

First Samples and Some Words About Art Directing

It’s not enough to get an idea of ​​submitting setting. You should also properly handle it. The first problem in this way – is the choice of a good art director. There are a lot of conventional wisdom about what kind of art director should be. What is his personal contribution to the project and what is his production efficiency. Sometimes, there were non-standard opinions that art director - is an administrator who does not have to be able to draw. But let's not focus on this kind of perversions.

In our humble opinion, art director - is the man who in response to, and ideally coordinated with the decision on the choice of art, breaks off his vest, shuts up disgruntled employees, makes 100,500 sketches, and provides 600 references. Moreover he should explain without any difficulties to any opponent why Eastern steam punk is "here's how I drew it and not otherwise." And we absolutely refuse to completely understand the situations in which art director for a long time, tedious, and almost with outsource sketches of other artists is trying to explain how the setting of the project looks like. If he himself does not (and will not appear for a long time) this representation, then how he will give it to his subordinates, and even more so to some outsourcers? It's true - no way! The entire team of artists will draw only those things which could draw their Lead.

Above we identified common problem, which does not help to pass campaign setting and excellent image to the artists. As a consequence - the art slides in the template, distressed managers tell how cool they all of this imagined, and how bad it is implemented and so on. In fact, the problems may be only two - either due to bad explanation of manager, or poorly perceived by art director. You’d better choose such manager and art director who as long as there is no are able to find harmony and understanding in words at least.

Glorios Bogdad

Earlier stage took us a very long time. As a result, we found the perfect team with understanding and loving our future project. After that we started the actual painting. We decided to start with the most time-consuming - the cities.

Let's leave that part of the work, where we choose the construction methods and the corresponding basic understanding of the city (if interested, we’ll write game designer diary, in which we tell about it). Just let's say - the city in the Rise of Heroes somewhat reminiscent of the classic "Heroes" with the placeholders, intended for building a certain type of buildings. The player also could improve buildings and observe their visual changes.

First, we have compiled a list of buildings that wanted to see in the city and outlined the overall vision for the artist. Objective: to make a rough draft of the city with the understandable perspective, composition, proportions of objects, etc.:

Pic. 3. Players’ City 6 months ago with levels of the buildings

Purple and orange colors denote levels of elevation of the building on order to easily roughly evaluate the relative height and size when design is made.

 The next stage – specification of some sort:

Pic. 4. Players’ City 5.5 months ago

Around the onset of this sketch, we realized that art is beginning to shy away from our plan. First, the object is designated as the Academy. The building looks more like fantasy than the Eastern, and tie it to the steampunk elements at certain levels of upgrades seemed as an impossible task. Secondly, the overall composition, even with the early stages, is too layering, and this looks like it’s not alive.

Before making adjustments to the design of the buildings, we have decided to focus on the most common style of composition and picture. Updating production resources and holding it at the other end, we will soon have this picture:

Pic. 5. Players’ City 4 months ago

 What made us to believe in it? We immediately see that the artist has in mind the final image, he understands everything that we expect from him. He realizes what he wants to see himself as a result, and also understands how to divide the scene, where to place each kind of building, etc. Surely, this understanding does not come immediately, but it is important that the layout plays a role of not just a collection of buildings, but rather a full-fledged prototype of the city. The general idea of building is visible here, the natural separation of the levels and plans could be seen. The focus was shifted closer to the center, where was a symbol of power and wealth of the player - the Citadel.

Without thinking twice, we stopped at this sketch and tried to delve into the buildings themselves. Take, for example, the Academy. In the first iteration it looked like white mage  tower, or something else, which was a sharp discord with the setting. In the new version, we immediately asked subjects domes, spiral staircases and so on in the style of "Eastern observatory":

 
Pic. 6. New Academy

In the process of creating each object first we draw the version of the maximum upgrade, with necessary work on a few more options for downgrade. Perhaps, without further explanation, it is clear as a crystal that it's more convenient to form the overall picture.

Gradually changes were made almost in all city buildings. The city was constantly growing, taking on new forms and committed to our previously hidden ideal representation. And it looked good enough.

Apart ready buildings on the layout and implemented the minimum adjustment (offset, the choice of heights, easy draw area), we get something like the following picture:

Pic. 7. Players’ City 2.5 months ago

As you could see, some buildings were even further recycled. As, for example, was facilitated by the construction of the Citadel. The massive front blocks were removed while front side was left, a la the Tower of Babel. Other objects, displayed in Picture 7, is almost unchanged.

Overall Manufacturing Process

Naturally, all the time while there were making of the sketchers, incidentally was created the process of delivery of the final content to the game. This is the easiest way to describe the sequence of actions (no claim to technical accuracy, but rather on the organization):

Pic. 8. Sketches of the inn upgrade. Since the process was made on the downgrade basis of high level object, then you see sketches from the 6th to the 1st level

Pic. 9. Model which drawn from sketches are added to Picture 6

Sketched objects are set and adjusted (also by manual processing) obtained under the framework of the city;

After finishing full cycle for each building and implementing a final reduction, we obtained the coveted result that satisfied everyone in the team (or almost all, because today it is almost 15 + full-time employees and a lot of outsource employees):

Pic.10. Players’ City 1 month ago

It should again be noted that many of the processes are carried out in parallel, otherwise the development would have dragged on for years, and the level of art could be out of date. Sometimes the 3D modeler has to save you time and begin work on a less detailed sketches. Sometimes sketcher artists have the opposite - to spend much more time to draw "something special, something very beautiful and eastern." All these costs a workflow, but when the result is that very picture that everybody imagined in the early development, you understand that time is well spent.

Instead of Results

In this dev diary we have described only a small portion of the work. Much effort was initiated to elaborate interfaces, the style of the characters. Separate aspect is a global map, and process of preparation of entourage objects, constructors, mountains, forests, etc. We deliberately did not crumple all these aspects in one material, as  a result it could be  overloaded. As mentioned in the introduction we have tried to describe only the general premises and as compact as possible to formulate the process as an example of one block of tasks. We hope this material will seem to be useful to readers, or at least informative. Thank you!