[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44682613/94ceaae9d6d679e8c6ee5448cb8c131976f70549.jpg[/img] [h2]Hello Miners, [/h2] [i]Here’s another peek behind the scenes. Please keep in mind that everything below is a [u]work in progress[/u]. We can’t promise that all (or any) of this will make it into the game as it’s described here. This is just to give an idea of what we’re working on, and where things might be headed. Enjoy![/i] [h3]“It can be disgusting”[/h3] It’s a rainy Tuesday in February, and Casper’s creating the Crawler. Casper Olsen is a 2D + 3D Artist, and a new hire here at Ghost Ship Games. One of his very first assignments is to draft up a prototype creature for Rogue Core. This prototype might not make it into the final game, but it’s a first stab to set the direction for the new game’s enemies. For now, it’s called the Crawler. Casper’s job starts with a project brief from the game design team, who lay out a general vision for what sort of a creature they’d like, and how it might behave. The brief, true to its name, is only 11 short bullet points. One bullet point near the bottom reads: [i]“It can be disgusting.”[/i] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44682613/3982ee606a2791c825085ede5498d67b34ac7768.png[/img][i]Original project brief for the Crawler.[/i] The Rogue Core team recently got together to watch the 2005 horror film The Descent. The movie’s claustrophobic atmosphere and cave-dwelling ghouls set the mood for this project. “I guess this is something like a goblin, or at least more classic descriptions of goblins. Like a wet cave goblin,” Casper says. The goal here isn’t to make some demonic hellspawn, nor some suffering, deformed creature. The Crawler may look disgusting, but it’s perfectly formed for its habitat. It’s well-adapted to the dark, and perfectly comfortable in the hopeless depths of Hoxxes’ core. Down here, it’s the Reclaimers who are the trespassers. [h3]The nature of the beast [/h3] During initial conversations about Rogue Core’s enemy design, the phrase “body horror” gets thrown around a lot. “Jacek [Art Director at GSG] is emphasizing a sort of an ‘uncanny valley’ feeling for some of the enemies in Rogue Core,” Casper says. “We want things to seem near-human, but not familiar. Right now at least, we’re not looking at going so alien and bug-like as we did in Deep Rock Galactic." While the Crawler may be humanoid, different drafts of the creature borrow traits and behaviors from across the animal kingdom. Casper’s experimenting with the idea of the Crawler being able to hang from the ceiling in a dormant state, to be awakened by the headlamp of a careless Reclaimer. Another proposal makes the Crawler more of a perching watcher, peering from the shadows as it monitors a threat. The inspiration here comes from prairie dogs, and the way an alarmed pack responds to nearby predators. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44682613/cdc577b6a41134501d0b69fbcdbe9ff39152d6ab.png[/img][i]Initial concept sketches of the Crawler.[/i] Like we explored when [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2605790/view/6563491834170706504]sketching firearm concepts[/url], form must speak to function. This creature’s physique needs to make sense for its behavior. But also, from a game design perspective, it should give you an idea of how it might move around, attack, or where its weak point is. Recognizing these design cues comes, at least in part, from points of reference from other games. But it also draws from your brain’s instinctual ability to recognize threats, as you compare this unfamiliar beast to more familiar predators from the animal kingdom. “This is a lurking, creeping, stalking enemy,” Casper says. ”It definitely shouldn’t have humanoid intelligence, but it’s got more than the simple hivemind of the Glyphids. It’s something cunning and instinctual, maybe at the level of a coyote.” [h3]Three steps to a prototype[/h3] The Crawler takes shape in three phases. 2D sketches come first. Casper does these digitally, using a tablet and Photoshop. This initial phase is about throwing designs at the wall and seeing what sticks. Anything’s on the table, so Casper’s got to come up with lots of different options for the game designers and animators. He needs to give them different ‘tools’ to play with, in terms of how body parts and features might turn into weak spots, attack patterns, or specific movements. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44682613/2bdfd2eca7b7954ded9ffabbf58da6aa1ed86702.jpg[/img][i]A collage of potential Crawler variants.[/i] Next up is making a detailed, lifelike 3D sculpture. This is critical to express the highest level of detail, so artists and animators can capture the right ‘feel’ of the creature. It’s hard to design the right sound, movement and models without a sharp idea of how this creature would look in real life. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44682613/24ac964c770bf2822407d0192f052581b9478952.jpg[/img][i]Casper uses Blender and Zbrush for the detailed, photorealistic 3D renders.[/i] The final stage is rendering the creature in the limited-polygon art style from Deep Rock Galactic. This process involves dialing down the details a little bit, so Casper’s challenge here is to decide what features are most evocative, and how to express that in Rogue Core’s art style. “When we’re working with this style, it’s about focusing on big gestures and recognizable features,” he says. “But a big part is also ‘budgeting’ our polygons – we’ve got to think about which areas are most important to a creature’s identity or design, so we can focus our details and shape count there. A lot of time, we focus that detail around the face and hands.” [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44682613/fef263e883821e4f8d9ce3ad9feaf4640eb6a1a9.png[/img][i]The prototype rendered in Deep Rock Galactic's signature low-poly art style.[/i] [h3]The taxonomy of Rogue Core[/h3] As one of the first prototype enemies for Rogue Core, the Crawler’s design helps set the tone for the rest of the creatures that come after it. Viewed as a whole, the Rogue Core’s enemies need to make sense together. Expressed visually, they should have some shared traits, or perhaps reflect similar adaptations to their subterranean habitat. This isn’t to say that every creature will look similar. But in biological terms, they should come from the same taxonomic kingdom. "Think of a human and a blue whale,” Casper says. “These animals don't look alike, but when you start to explore their skeletal structure or their organs and how they function, you can see how they're at least related, from the same planet. We'd like to do something similar here." The Crawler is still far from finished – and even then, it’s still only a prototype. As the design takes shape, it’ll also need to work within the constraints of the game engine. This might limit how it can move and interact with terrain, the attack patterns it might have, or how it cooperates with others. Casper’s 3D render is the first 'armature' to be imported into the game engine, and used as a working model. As the animators and game designers explore how the creature works (or doesn’t work), its appearance and role may transform in response. "We definitely throw the ball back and forth between departments a lot, and it's still not set in stone at this point,” Casper says. “We know we want this somewhat-humanoid creature that creeps around, sort of a stalks-in-the-shadows type, but beyond that it's all still flexible." [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44682613/4a585676e0741776cade0722b1776820e974c36e.png[/img] [i]Do you have a suggestion for what you’d like to read about in the next Below Decks? Pop it in a comment below. Thanks for reading. :) [/i]