The beginning

This sketch and blockmesh with blob trees is not really an appealing material for common audience, but I do it for quick plan of the composition and the walkthrough.

Production Process

It begins with the early concept and blocking out. The view intended from the beginning to be look really open yet very linear, you may walk around the designated path but you cannot go beyond it. I am responsible for world building, while Audrey Wong is responsible for most of the details in architectural and village hard surface props.

The type of cliff and landscape I choose is based on the stereotypical Chinese yellow mountain landscape painting. Kind of exaggerated, but hey, it is a fantasy game. (As long as we got the foundation right of course).

While we tried our best to make it look as massive as possible, it’s not as big as you think.

I always make sure, everywhere the player goes, he can find a large open area. The user should feel, as if he is able to go to that far mountain.

It is not really quite a new technique. Back when I was working on Modern Combat 2 for iOS , most of mobile FPS games were set in enclosed area. Same thing is true about Wolfenstein. It is understandable because of limited hardware and manpower.

However our Modern Combat team wanted the game to look less claustrophobic. The most effective method to fight with this is to draw vista background. It doesn’t need to be physically correct or hi-poly , it just needs to be there for the player to see. This background also has a lot of functions and could be used for game design and storytelling.

The list here shows the importance of Vista in games: