Hey everyone,
For our third instalment of The Pulse Monthly, we’re taking a behind-the-scenes look at developing the world of Scorn. We’ll be walking through an interview with one of our environment artists and wrapping up with an update on where we’re at in the development cycle.
Fleshing Out The Details
Level design has been an exciting challenge. The world itself feels like its own character within the game. A bulk of the story-telling comes from the environment and how the player chooses to interact with it. Creating compelling and immersive environments requires a delicate balance between guiding the player through the levels, telling a story, and invoking uneasy feelings that hang around like the thick stench of decay.
It’s no easy task to create something that seems strangely familiar but similarly disturbing. These elements play an essential role in building feelings of dread and terror as you progress through the labyrinth.
Spill Your Guts
To get you all the juicy details, we spoke with one of our Environment Artists, Lazar Stojanović, about the process of breathing life into the world of Scorn. Lazar’s role focuses on designing and coordinating efforts to create challenging and interesting spaces.
Can you tell us a little about the process for designing the levels?
Since level design and layout are so critical to the game's overall experience, it all starts with our game director, Ljubomir Peklar, who drives the general concepts for Scorn. Our game designers and art coordinators help shape the mechanics within the game, and our environment team strives to support those mechanics.
To start, we focus on taking the vision for the game and laying it out in a simplified way. This process, known as “Grayboxing”, mainly involves arranging simple shapes within Unreal Engine and allows us to focus on adjusting flow and scale before investing time in the finer details. Early on, the process is very much back-and-forth, so we do a lot of iterations.
Concept art makes the overall production of 3D models much more streamlined. After establishing the layout and pacing for the level, the concept artists start refining shapes to give them their organic feel. We then build out 3D models in Unreal Engine using primitives, custom assembly tools and our existing palette of assets. Our environment team also consolidates the architecture and frames important areas using composition, guiding lines, and lighting.
Once we’ve thoroughly tested gameplay, we begin creating sets, custom pieces, and hero assets in Maya (our 3D modelling software) that the modelling department uses as a starting point for more detailed production using ZBrush.
After modelling and texturing everything, they replace the blocks with fully completed assets and ensure everything fits correctly. As the examples show, the level is dressed and lit to finalise the image. This final step takes a lot of time and effort, but the results speak for themselves.
Why did you decide to create the levels in chronological order initially?
The decision was initially born out of necessity. The team was much smaller originally, so we simply didn't have enough people to create things in parallel. Starting from the beginning and building chronologically also gave us a lot of liberty to experiment with different concepts and techniques as the game grew and changed. It's as if the game itself became a living entity.
During earlier iterations, we established an “architectural language of Scorn” that helps us to tell more complex things in the later stages of the game. After the team grew, this language also enabled us to scale the production and do several levels simultaneously.
What’s an essential element to consider when building out the world?
The knowledge of architectural concepts and symbolism is so crucial for developing environments within a game like Scorn. Genuinely understanding the language of created spaces is key to communicating a feeling through someone’s surroundings. Ultimately, the final test of an area is how it makes you feel.
People instinctively respond to and understand specific shapes, primarily based on our culturological backgrounds, without even needing to think about it. You don't need to be an expert to realise that sacral architecture has a specific shape language very different from that of industrial.
Let’s use two different areas within Scorn as an example. This first image has more vertical guiding lines and triangular shapes, inspired by gothic architecture, and gives the space a more sacred feel.
On the other hand, the room below has a more dark and moody asymmetric composition, compressing the space in which the player walks by an overarching crooked ceiling. The area shows that everything is built around the large machines, giving it a more industrial and utilitarian feel.
Was there any aspect of level design that was particularly challenging to create in Scorn? How did you overcome this?
The most challenging part was ensuring the levels were maze-like and not an actual confusing maze. To solve this, we try to simplify as much as possible. It took several iterations on each level to create an experience that aligned well with the central theme while still revealing information necessary to progress in a well-paced manner. We try to tell the story of what that place was and what happened using visual cues.
What is the main thing you want players to feel when they play Scorn?
The main goal is to make the player feel uneasy, but not just because they have seen some gore. We want to invoke the sensation while they stand in a room, listening to the sounds and looking at all those beautifully weird shapes that may feel vaguely familiar but look like nothing they have seen before.
Development Update
To keep you all up to date on where we’re at in the development process, here’s the latest info from game director and Ebb Software’s CEO, Ljubomir Peklar:
“All teams across Ebb are working at full force. We are currently focusing on environment, iteration, balancing, testing and audio design. The largest workload is currently on the 3D environment design team as they are finalising everything for our next major milestone in June. We have concluded all game and level design planning, so our animation and programming teams are working diligently to implement everything and will continue to tweak and optimise the game until the very end.”
That’s all for our February update. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. We still have lots more to share with you all, so stay tuned for our next edition of The Pulse Monthly!
