#Game Environment Design

[nicholasandriani]

Mastering Isometric & Isomorphic Game Design: A Quickstart Guide to Unlocking 3D Potential in 2D Worlds

We say that: “oh I love that Baldur Gate, let’s crack out an isometric.” Or, “oh, digging this Final Fantasy Tactics stuff, let’s do that sideways angle thing.” But what does that mean? Let’s break it down mathematical. T:(X,∥⋅∥X)→(Y,∥⋅∥Y) is a isometric isomorphism if it is a linear isomorphism, and it is an isometry, that is ∥T(x)∥Y=∥x∥X∀x∈X; T:(X,∥⋅∥X)→(Y,∥⋅∥Y) is a topological…

[magesinstituteofexcellence]

Overcoming Game Environment Design Challenges

This blog addresses key challenges in game environment design, including performance optimization, maintaining style consistency, and ensuring interactivity. It provides actionable solutions such as playtesting, style guides, and dynamic features to overcome these obstacles, ultimately helping designers create visually appealing, functional, and immersive game environments that enhance the gaming experience.

Click Here to Read More

[teamfortressblr]

Team Fortress 2's concept art featured in The Art of Videogames (2007)

A transcription of the paragraphs shown can be found below.

Inspiration

"To both complement Team Fortress 2's exaggerated gameplay and differentiate ourselves from the modern photorealistic look of most other multiplayer action games, we chose to employ an art style inspired by early- to mid-20th-century commercial illustration alongside 1960s industrial design elements. Specifically, we drew inspirartion from the styles of commercial illustrators such as JC Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell. These artists were known for illustrating characters using strong, distinctive silhouettes with emphasis on clothing folds, and they tended to use shading techniques which accentuated the internal shape of objects and characters while emphasising silhouettes with rim highlights rather than dark outlines. The nine character classes of Team Fortress 2 were designed to be visually distinct from one another. Even when viewed only in silhouette with no internal shading at all, the characters needed to be readily indeitifiable to players. For elements of the world associated with each of the two teams, blue and red, we defined specific contrasting properties to set them apart. While the red team's base tends to use warm colours, wooden materials and angular geometry, the blue team's base is composed of cool colours, industrial materials and orthogonal forms. We also deliberately avoided modelling the world in an overly complex or geometrically off-kilter manner, as this would add an unnecessary level of visual noise — not to mention memory-hungry vertices — to the scene. We found that keeping repetitive structures such as the bridge trusses, telephone poles or railroad ties to a minimum is preferable for our style, as conveying the impression of repetition in the space is more important than representing every detail explicitly. In general, the texture maps used on the 3D world are impressionistic, meaning that they are painterly and maintain a minimum level of visual noise. This is consistent with the style of painting used on background plates in many animated films, particularly those of Hayao Miyazaki, in whic broad brush strokes appear in perspective as if present in the 3D world rather than on the 2D image plane. Miyazaki also influenced the game's world and character colour palette." — Charlie Brown, project lead

Art and technology

"Valve is a goal-driven technology company, and game and visual design goals drove Team Fortress 2's technology requirements. Its unique look relies on artistic decisions made before the technology was implemented. For instance, a phong/rim-lighting shader was created specifically to help the characters 'pop' out of the environments. It removes detail in colour and then adds detail back in as highlights, giving the characters a stylised look that's simple yet sophisticated." — Charlie Brown

Bold outlines

"The specific characteristics we needed were mostly dictated by Team Fortress 2's gameplay. Foremost, we wanted players to be able to intuit each character's unique gameplay features at a glance. The Heavy Weapons character, for example, had to quickly convey strength, sturdiness, slowness, and the ability to pack a real wallop. To further aid in quick readability, each character class requires a bold, distinct silhouette shape." — Charlie Brown

[larunart]

Finished this video game concept a few months ago to apply to Uni, using one of my already existing stories.

I really do hope I get to work on this further in the future, even if “just” in comic form. The content is close to my heart and relates to my own experience with depression, suicide and psychosis / the schizophrenia spectrum. Maybe it could help others find more empathy within themselves for their younger past selves.

I actually got the very first spark for this story back in… 2017? 2018? It’s insane how much has changed, it really does feel like it gained a mind of its own. Jane was originally the protagonist with a whole lot more curses involved. For a hot second it was even set in a magical boarding school! Imagine that!

Game in general is inspired by Silent Hill 2, The Cat Lady and What Remains of Edith Finch. If I gave this another try I’d definitely include more fake screenshots.

Some slides (3) are missing - you can view them on my ArtStation profile :-)

[puba24]

The concepts I did a few years ago for indie co-op adventure game of Funbrew Games

[mintjeru]

when spring comes

🖤 turning fanweek 🖤

day 6 slice of life | hades and persephone | time loop

[gebo4482]

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 by Nicholas Maxson-Francombe #7

[mostrovskaa]

Some more art from my bachelor's degree final art project - Urnfield. Here are a few sketches of individual levels and some visual dev ilustrations of them :-)

[animatedjen]

Exploring Jedha | Jedi Survivor

[eatthesunshootthemoon]

Prop art for Project Fish. Some things you'd typically see at a Li-Luan port.

These props are inspired by things you'd normally see at urban areas within south-asian communities.

I dug deep into what’s been inspiring me to create art for Ormauk recently, and a lot of it has been my relationship with nature as an adult, but especially more so when I was a kid. I grew up a short walk away from the beach. The town that I lived in was outside of the city, but you couldn’t really classify it as suburbia. There were empty plots of land filled with guinea grass growing taller than us kids. Unfinished foundations of houses that sat undisturbed for most of my life; overgrown and abandoned. There was a small pasture for cows behind my house where frogs croaked their hymns when rain fell and created ponds. Overhead cables and graffitied electrical transformers had a specific vibe that I just don't see where I live now.

I wanted to show my version of solarpunk, and it finally clicked with me how I can achieve this; by mixing those snapshots of my childhood with thematically designed technology that fit that south-asian culture I’m trying to emulate. A bit of what exists now and what could exist.

[pocketseizure]

Hyrule Castle Sealing Grounds concept art

[phenikas]

Some fun stuff found in game files of Tales from the Borderlands that I haven't seen shared around . There's a lot, so I'll try my best to divide them into separate posts within Tumblr's limits.

Environment Part 2 │ Character Concept Art │ Game Renders │ Storyboard Part 1 │ Storyboard Part 2 │ Miscellaneous

[samuraiunicorn]

The Broadcast Bazaar is a black market hidden amongst an old studio and the surrounding industrial sector. It won't be explorable for quite a while, but it will feature prominently in the opening cutscene of the public demo. There still a lot of details and NPCs that we need to add into the space, but things have been coming along quite smoothly this month, so I wanted to end the year on a bit of walk through.

More info to come in 2024.

[leidensygdom]

me: maybe i'm over it. maybe i can like, design a monster without my brain going to the absolute banging final fantasy x monster designs

the banging final fantasy x monster designs, tho:

(also i didnt want to clutter the post but there's a lot of rambling in the tags)

[lollipopmixclo9]

For my delulu, I like to imagine Harumasa reenacted a similar scenario from one of Lighter's trust event as an apology for Seth running around the square

This twt account isnt mine but it's the scene I was referring to!

[stuck-in-gambit-send-help]

I've got a few more screenshots!

You know what that means!

mmmh look at them colours – bungie is so good at setting the scene and turning the whole game into literal art 🥹

PS: If you wanna support my virtual photography account I'd be so happy! It's @/wayfarer_guardian_vp on Instagram!