DevBlog Abridged #2 - Locations and World Building
Architecture & Set Design
By creating a teaser as the first major step in the project, we were tasked early on with the need for a diverse range of locations that hinted at the scope of Sydney3 and the world in which the series would take place.
The future of 20XX is one dominated by pollution and sprawling cityscapes, a decision that bleeds through every facet of the location design. Even with the neon and splashes of colour, we made sure that every location had a certain level of grime and haziness to reflect the state of the world.
The architecture followed a brutalist base with hacked-together corrugated awnings and piping. Drawing inspiration from Ghost in the Shell (1995)âand, by extension, modern-day Hong Kongâwe aimed for a densely-packed, functional labyrinth of residential and commercial dwellings all rolled into one.
PlayStation games of the mid-to-late 90s utilised low draw distance coupled with dense render fog, but we needed to have extensive, expansive sets for the camera to shoot in. In addition, the angles were oftentimes low, showing much more of the ceilings and skies than would otherwise be necessary in a PS1 game.
Textures and Lighting
Although the original PlayStation only allowed up to 256² pixels for texture maps, our building faces were much more complex than cubic, flat walls. With diagonals, protrusions and chamfered geometry, we needed the flexibility of higher numbers without modernising the look.
We had no real upper limit on texture size, so a series of grey checkered images were created with varying sizes (32², 48², 64², 96², 128², etc.) up to 1024² to determine the scale needed for a particular building or design element. Once a textureâs pixel size looked good in-universe, the other texturesâ sizes would be based on that to maintain consistency.
Some environmentsâmainly those with windows or glossy surfacesâcalled for more advanced texturing including reflections and luminance. For the most part, textures were colour/diffuse/albedo channels only, with lights in close proximity to simulate global illumination or light sources. However, reflections added a lot of depth to an otherwise confined space, allowing more room for the eye to explore.
Extreme reflections were also sometimes used for simple set extension, but it was never noticeable unless you were looking for it.
The Next Step
What do you think of these older Dev Blogs being posted here, do you want to see more? If there's interest we'd love to keep doing more of them, but don't forget these are just abridged versions of our blogs which can be found on Patreon.