Environment: Balancing Aesthetics with Functionality

Hi I’m Ryan, a 3D environment artist working on Super Nova Stadium. Building an arena set in an alien solarpunk world for a competitive and strategic shooter has provided the challenge of balancing visual design that affords game mechanics with flexible modularity for level design (and re-design) in response to playtests.

“Walls”, is a word I think I’ve heard far too much over the past several months, but in a game where the player must bounce photon projectiles off these walls at strategic angles, they have their own starring role.

In-game look at the walls in the semester one SGX build.

First, from a gameplay perspective a variety of wall shapes and sizes provides players with more options to strategically ricochet projectiles;

In-engine look at all the wall shapes together.

Since these walls are meant to bounce beams of light it is important that the materiality of the surfaces reflects this (no pun-intended). Framing them with metallic trim and emissive lines helps the player identify separate planes to ricochet off of while providing an additional sci-fi element. As the walls rise and fall, I constructed a base for them to slide down into.

Wall textures as seen in Substance Painter.

Gif of walls lowering into their bases.

Gameplay assets like walls are important in Super Nova Stadium but other set dressing is also needed to emphasize this solarpunk world. A palm tree jerry-rigged with solar panels reinforces the balance of technology and nature preservation, as does a flower shaped stadium made out of renewable materials. I’m also trying to incorporate solarpunk and stadium architecture. For example, ushering the player through a compressed space before entering the massive stadium and seeing several massive flower-petal-like ceiling panels open up revealing the skyline creates a grandiose experience. Developing the environmental aesthetic bolsters this gameplay scenario by grounding it in a world that makes sense.

Palm tree jerry-rigged with solar panels. Render on left. In-game with final effects on right.

Concept art of the flower shaped stadium.

Stadium Whitebox Video

Video of the player entering the stadium (whitebox visual development version).

Keeping a cohesive theme reinforcing the photon blasting aliens is guiding each of the artists. This is especially apparent with Tommy’s amazing blaster designs which you can read more about in the previous blog post!