As the year is almost upon its end we believe it is the best moment to metaphorically visit the past and think back about the progress we've made up until this point.
One of the most interesting things about the game design is the existance of concept arts - the main topic of the current dev-log.
Creating concept arts is a very delicate and crucial process. It is the moment where development team cooperates with artists and generate ideas - sometimes a whole lot of them - all for the sake of finding that one (or few of them, depending on the project) that would work in the best way with the rest of the project. What you might not quite know is that at this stage there are many ideas that sometimes get cut from the game and you can never quite witness them in the form they were initially created. Concept arts evolve and elevate the whole team to higher levels of understanding of what the project will be about.
It's not simply about creating a picture and saying "yes, that's it, good job". You often start small, humbly only to work out the final vision between involved people. After all many people have to agree sometimes even on a singular piece of art. Sometimes the vision of the artist can get shot down by the technical difficulties or lack of historical accuracy. And sometimes being historically accurate tends to make the things worse. That's why at first you start with a simpler concept, as you can see on the right in the picture above and then you finally turn it into something you can see on the left.
From left: "Base model" / "Protection against radiation" / "Higher reach" / "Better ergonomy" / "Easier to catch"
Sometimes even if you have a concept art ready and approved - ready for 3D graphics to model the in-game object with it in mind - you will still want to introduce some changes or improve it in some way. Sometimes you simply want to explore the idea a bit further becasue you believe there might be something more to the concept than just the initial thought. This way many people come across great inventions or even better ideas. Becasue if we have one grapple tool, like the one shown above, why not create many different versions of it? Even if you will not use all the ideas that does not mean that that time was wasted. Ideas have this little fantastic tendency to be quite flexible and if not now - perhaps they will be used in a different project or in a slightly different way.
That's all for the technical side of this devlog however we have one more very important thing to address.
In the name of the whole CLS Team we would like to wish you all great and wonderful Christmas. We hope that you will spent them with your families, around the Christmas table and near the fantastically prepared Christmas tree. At the same time we would like to remember all of those who will not be able to join us at that time - our thoughts and prayers stay with them.
Thank you for supporting us and see you in the next devlog!
Kind regards,
Chernobyl Liquidators Simulator Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1113010/Chernobyl_Liquidators_Simulator/