flexiblemedia

Setting up rooms

Added 2020-09-28 03:22:15 +0000 UTC

We got a question about how rooms are constructet; back in the beginning of the project (so long ago that it was called Lust in Paradise, not Paradise Lust), I did a little video of the first room in the game, the Cove.

We like building quickly, and using quick photobashing to get the world set up. The first time a room goes into the game, it usually looks something like this:

Basically a quick couple of stock photos, and big grey boxes saying where interactive objects will go. They're put into PSD files, so when we replace the PSD, all the layers automatically update. You can script the entire game like this, so the designer doesn't need to wait for art to be ready.

If it's an organic room, that goes straight to the sketch stage; here's how the Lagoon looked like at the draft stage:

If it's a man-made room, it usually gets a very quick 3D version built first. Here's the control room, for example. Doing it like that helps ensure that perspectives work properly, and actually makes life easier in the long run.

Once that's done, it's time for color / paint over. We're going for a comic book look, so we want things to feel hand-painted.

The last step is to animate the environment. Having little things like the palms gently swaying in the breeze, the fans animating, waves and clouds moving helps breathe life into the scene.