Elements of game design: Part 4

Oh boy, last in the series so it’s the hardest to write… procrastination in the form of my sister showing me MS Paint drawings and coffee runs can only happen for so long so let’s to this…

Environment designs in games are hugely important, with so much going into it in order for it to create a realistic, lore-friendly, and immersive feeling for the player. The correct colours, theme application and referenced material in order to make a place seem realistic, and if not based on the real world, logical. Generally done by a team of designers, ideas are thought up by each individual, announced, and pros and cons are picked of the idea. This solves issues with ideas, and generates a team-fuelled single mega idea with aspects of all solutions. Team work is awesome.

From here, a flow diagram is depicted of a level plan, and then the juicy parts can begin. The narrative can be applied to a level, with the lore/backstory of a level being able to be told in multiple ways. That’s what makes a game level and environment a success really – the ability to merge and provide story and context-relevant gameplay.
Research is super important for environments, whether the game’s genre is realism focused, or whether an art style is stylised. If an environment is more believable and more logical, then a player is more likely to be immersed and connect with aspects surrounding the environment and the story. I can only imagine stylisation can make the production of such an environment that little bit more difficult, due to everyone’s individual construction on what the world is like – their schemata (thank you a-level psychology. You were good for something in the end). The immersion relies on the environment fitting multiple peoples’ schemata, which may vary dependant on what country someone is from – so huge amounts of research and judgement would generally have to be made in order to create an awesome environment design. No pressure, right?

An environment that I truly fell in love with is that of Fallout 3. The vast wasteland, desolate but full of hidden treasures with a minimalistic colour scheme but yet it works so well, and really sets the theme of a post-apocalyptic wasteland well. The destruction to the buildings from neglect and raiders, I feel so immersed in it it’s brilliant.
The designer for it, if I’m not mistaken is Rashad Redic – whose responsibilities focus around architecture, props and other various physical structures of the world alongside non-character animations, lighting, landscaping and where art is concerned the level layout. The research gone into the environments to represent a pretty convincing layout of a destroyed America where it counts is fantastic, with such a huge focus on the lighting and colour overlays to allow the environment to reflect the theme superbly.

“I love gathering reference, it's kind of like having a blank slate, and as you see all these cool and interesting things, a plan starts to come together. I don't think I have any one place I'd consider a favourite for references or texture sources, I've been building a database of refs, textures and inspirations going back to college, now numbering about 350,000 images.”

The main inspiration in his work are his co-workers, looking at the AAA titles from other publishers and picking apart how they do stuff and visiting the website CGSociety.org sites and ConceptArt.org and a handful of art blogs. The way I worded that, it’s like a dating ad..

(Information gathered from here)
But seriously.. just look at how beautiful the environments are.