[h1]Greetings pilots![/h1] Welcome to our second dev diary. Today we’ll show you our process for improving the game zones. First, a disclaimer: the zones that you’ve seen in the demo were built in a specific way to achieve high performance on lower spec machines. For PCs we can improve lots of things without a significant performance loss. [h1]The Lilla station[/h1] Lilla is a very well connected border world’s station. What makes it special is that it acts as a transit hub between mid-security trade lanes, core systems and one of the insurgent main bases: Zerand. When playing the demo, this is where you jump to end the final mission after you get chased by hostiles. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38613331/c591eca7e6d2bdbccc3c34c4389dc012337181f7.jpg[/img] [h1]Improving Lilla[/h1] The first thing we do to every system is to establish a “personality”, something that makes it distinct from all others. This achieves the following: [list] [*] We give you, the player, [b]something easy to recognize[/b] and help you with orientation in the world. You should know, for example, without pulling up the map, in which system you are. [*] It [b]encourages exploration[/b] of the game world [*] It allows us to [b]tell a better story[/b] through art and environment [/list] The main way to transmit this is through the skybox and environmental art. A very distinct high resolution sky, was created to replace the old nebula, as you can see in the images below. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38613331/5bc786787f0359a8dc7b6f7374b9f5780cb38f65.jpg[/img] The second thing was, of course, adjusting the lighting to fit with the new sky. This means light coloring, reflections, back-light, everything. Then we went on to improve the landmarks, [b]without breaking the missions[/b]. This means creating and adding environmental art (meteorites, debris or installations) in a way it doesn’t intersect all the possible ship traffic. A few visual cues are added to signal the trade lanes and the way to the gates. Now you can get your bearings much easier, even without the help of the HUD. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38613331/3018f40da9b95d8b000a8767f60a75de43d48c73.jpg[/img] We then added atmospheric effects such as clouds and fog to add an extra touch of depth. This way, the system not only does not feel empty, but wherever you travel you can feel the real speed of the spaceship as you fight, or zoom around the landmarks. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38613331/7967b4804e7c847c43bf07958c0b696d99430feb.jpg[/img] Finally, we had to take care of the station’s hangar, where you’ll spend a lot of time. We have increased the texture resolution, adjusted the lighting, tuned atmospheric effects for a much better experience. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38613331/98fba878945d4ddf13dec3bb03aadc517ca6626e.jpg[/img] We hope you’ve enjoyed this developer diary. Make sure to follow us here to see more updates as well as on social media: Twitter: [url=https://twitter.com/StellarWanderer]twitter.com/StellarWanderer[/url] Instagram: [url=https://www.instagram.com/stellarwanderergame]instagram.com/StellarWandererGame[/url] Facebook: [url=https://www.facebook.com/StellarWanderer]facebook.com/StellarWanderer[/url] Discord: [url=https://discord.com/invite/6ZDYhu2]discord.com/invite/6ZDYhu2[/url] Thank you!