Chasing Stars Online: Building a World From Scratch
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All aircraft pilots, the command center in touch. Our communications satellite crashed in the crater of Hellas, and while our specialists are collecting its remains. Important development news comes out only on Fridays, because only a spare repeater remains in the ranks. We hope for our specialists, and let's get started!
What do you think it takes to fly with pleasure in Chasing Stars Online? That's right, you need planes, well-honed mechanics, comfortable controls, and, of course, interesting game locations. But how do we approach creating a gaming environment? Let's take a look at an example of creating a new location together. To do this, I turned to our Game Designer and Level Designer. With the question "How and where does it all start?"
Let's start in order, although I think you can't wait to see where you and I will fly, and what wonderful views we will enjoy.A new location starts with planning, here we are on a creative quest. It is necessary to decide on the future concept: where the location will be, how the gameplay will be built on it, and how we want it to be. To do this, we are looking for references, we are inspired by places and objects from real life. Later, artists would use them to create the first concept art to reflect the future look and feel of the play area. Since we want the location to tell a story, through storytelling through the environment. All these actions can be called the first stage of planning, which are described and drawn schematically in the design document.
The second step in creating our new location is a blockout or layout - this means building a playable prototype. Surely you have seen in various videos how developers run around schematic locations painted in gray? It looks different for us, but the essence and goals remain unchanged. All this is necessary for us in order to understand whether the gameplay that the game designer conceived at the basic level works. This stage is extremely important, since the location of objects and gameplay restrictions will depend on the test results. For example, natural shelters, mountains, craters, or structures are examples that reveal the very same level design. After all, it is our gameplay with you that directly depends on the location of objects, their shapes, limited or open view. Therefore, now you can observe various buildings, and the grids that will be natural barriers. And since flights and battles in Chasing Stars Online involve playing at low altitudes, each building, art object, or, for example, a high hill is not only a visual decoration, but also an important tool in creating gameplay. All these objects serve to divide the location into conditional areas of interest.
At the end of the second stage, we freeze everything that is. The logical question is why and why? First of all, we need this so that at the third stage, when adding different geometry to a new location, not to break or spoil the game mechanics already working on it.
After that, the environment artists will join the work. Their activities may resemble landscape design, but their tasks are much deeper and more important. They will begin to create that very mood and atmosphere of the location, embodying a unique appearance. In addition, the artist should not only decorate the area, but also use artistic tools in order to improve the visual navigation of the level. Or, with the help of color coding, build a consistent study of the area, for the best immersion of the gamer in the world of the game.Most importantly, when creating and designing environments, don't break the core gameplay. Surely many of you can remember the moments when, with the help of some art objects or trees, you can climb into obviously forbidden territories, or even beyond the game world) This should be avoided. However, after the artist's work, the level designer will once again double-check all the basic mechanics of the location, whether the environment works for the gameplay and its unique features.
The last stage in the development of a future location it’s assembly into the final version, where it will be debugged and polished. The final touches will be made by the artists - they will adjust the lighting and colors based on the passed tests. In addition, old temporary assets that were simple primitives will be removed. Programmers will adjust the drawing distance, display of shadows and special effects. In general, they will do everything to make the game just “fly” on our computers. 🙂The development of the location at this stage will end with the correction of the last found errors. Then it will be “frozen” so that no one else can make edits and break the gameplay.
Stay tuned for updates and one day we will show you the final version of the location in the screenshots.
Summing up, we can say with confidence that the creation of a location is an extremely important process, behind which is the work of numerous developers, so that you will always be pleased to be in our locations in Chasing Stars Online. Until next time, friends!