Good eve’, creatures of the night and mortals alike! I’m Elle, 2D Artist at Triumph Studios. Previous dev diaries have already shown what’s in-game and how it works; tonight I will pull back the curtains and give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we got there.
Our Elder Vampire Rulers
Each ruler type we have designed so far has had a unique design process, and vampires, being a well-known fantasy creature, presented their own distinct challenges. Unlike our series-original Wizard Kings and Eldritch Sovereigns, lots of people have opinions about which vampires are the ‘right’ ones, and expectations about what ours should look like.
Early concept exploration therefore needed to cover a wide variety of fantasies, so we could narrow down what felt right for AOW4.
Instead of defining our vampire guidelines from the start, exploring freely lets us take note of only the design details that jump out at us.
For example, after the concepts above, we noted how that rose theme in the last concept could combine with the thorns and chains in the earlier ones. This concept then took those aspects even further:
These notes hit all the right spots for us, and you’ll see a lot of what this final concept presents in the final in-game-visuals. From noticing what we love and what works well together, we create huge boards combining concepts, photo references, and notes to determine which options we want to make and their priority.
Among the frilly dresses, corsets, high collars, and rose-thorn chains on this board, we also wanted a full armor option. I’ll use this armor set to explain in more detail how the full process for a customization set may look.
Initial 2D and 3D concepts for the armor set explored armor textures and shape language, from ribbed to spiked. These touched on interesting themes, but felt too human and missed that unique AOW4 Elder Vampire identity we were creating.
We did another take, now much more focused on their bat heritage and pushing silhouette further so they’d be recognizable even at a distance:
The red glass idea merged well with this expansion's new magic material, Blood Glass. Please play pretend with us and accept that this Blood Glass is shatterproof as opposed to its real-world counterpart. We loved how this concept hit on all of the core aesthetics, so took this into 3D. There we refined further through collaboration with our 2D and 3D departments, adding rose illustrations to the Blood Glass in the breastplate and shield.
Pureblood vs Hybrid
Elder Vampires come in two bloodlines: Pureblood and Hybrid. Mechanically identical, visually and thematically distinct.
Pureblood Vampires look like the vampires we know and love. They range from beautiful to beastly, but all with bat-flavored features. Inspired by the saying “blind as a bat”, they also offer the possibility for two differing eye colors.
Vampires, however, are not known to be picky with their prey. Thus, they quickly started turning anyone and everyone they came across; resulting in Hybrid Vampires. These mutts can be any form, because why would a rat not be able to be a vampire?
The Vampire Castle
We felt vampires worked best as a ruler type as opposed to a culture, but that came with the drawback of your vampire leading a very normal-looking city. We had a great desire to rule over a vampire castle, and we knew that you—the players—did too. So we give you the best of both worlds by replacing the Wizard’s Tower with a unique vampire version: The Vampire Castle.
This castle is built using the vampire equivalent of wizard’s castle upgrades, where each upgrade is visualized with its own building. This way, you can create a castle that completely overshadows the culture city, feeding on it like an unwanted parasitic intruder.
And more vampire quirks
The vampires obviously also come with cool new ability animations, movement visuals, poses, … here is a small snippet of all of that, the rest of which I’ll let you discover yourself!
Their Vampire World
Sunless Lands
Bas previously covered the mechanics of Sunless Lands, the new terrain type. So let’s skip the talking and show you some of the behind-the-scenes goodies! We start with simple sketches as a proof of concept—these are quick, dirty, messy—but allow the team to see if the idea works visually.
Seeing this concept work in practice, and having everyone agree “yes, this is cool”, gives us the confidence to proceed with making all the individual assets. Some of these assets require further concept exploration such as the trees:
Many are also made directly from the minds of our 3D artists, based on the initial proof of concept sketch. Like the delicious Tactical Combat (TC) ground texture:
All pulled together in the end with FX such as bats and gravity-defying blood trails (a team favorite):
Structures
The terrain was also important because many structures in this expansion were going to call the Sunless Lands home. Their designs needed to heavily imply their connection to the terrain.
For example: the Thorn Heart Landmark. By the time we were doing concepts for this, the Sunless Lands terrain was already (mostly) done. The concept below was done directly on top of a screenshot of the world map:
This landmark evolved throughout production, most noticeably with the center ‘heart’ turning into a literal heart.
Out of all the landmarks we’ve done so far, this is my personal favorite. Just look how epic it is in motion! Make sure to zoom in on it yourself too, it has some epic heart beating sound effects that GIFs don’t allow me to include.
Another one of my favorites is the Rose Choked Castle, our new Gold Ancient Wonder.
We have rarely shown TC map creation in the past, and I feel this structure has a particularly cool map to highlight. We had a pretty clear vision of what we needed the map to be, letting us start with photo references rather than concept art. From reference we derive a list of obstacles and props we need, helping us create a rough blockout:
Blockouts allow us to test gameplay early so we don’t commit time to making assets that don’t serve the actual gameplay. TC maps need to work mechanically first, and visually second (rare artist confession). Once we get the green light for gameplay, it’s up to us to bring it home. Polish is done to materials, models, lighting, and FX.
All of this polish combined, we finally get what you—the player—will see in-game:
Tomes and What’s In ‘Em
Thrones of Blood introduces three new tomes, jam-packed with all of the emo themes of your dreams (at the very least, of my own).
Tome of the Blood Rite
This shadow + chaos tome empowers the cultists among you through blood and sacrifice. I had recently rewatched the Da Vinci Code films, so conceptually there was definitely some inspiration from Silas, the bloodthirsty monk.
The themes of this tome converge in the Blood Cultist unit:
If you want to be equally fashionably scarred, you can take the Flesh Carved Runes minor transformation from the same tome:
The Blood Cultist also comes with the new Dagger of the Rite ability, sacrificing their own health for increased damage.
In-game, with all that fancy FX:
And if you’re still craving more sacrifice, the tome comes with the Special Province Improvement (SPI) Blood Altar, to remind your enemies you’re all too happy having them over for “dinner”.
Tome of Torment
This shadow tome is for those who want to master pain and use it to their advantage; for those of you with cold hearts and an affinity for the sharp and stabby. Just like the previous tome, the themes all come together in a single unit. For the Tome of Torment, that is the Pain Bringer:
As mentioned in the previous dev diary, the Pain Bringer unit from this tome is a revamped Death Bringer from AOW3. We wanted to stay true to her original design while updating her to feel at home in this tome. The Pain Bringer can get racial transformations, so if you have the Eldritch Realms expansion you can also give her some perfectly thematic umbral touches!
If this tome’s pain themes overwhelm you, pay a visit to the Basilica of Lamentation SPI to lament about those woes.
Tome of the Crimson Reign
This high tier shadow + chaos tome secures your ultimate rule over blood and the units that thrive off it. The standout unit of this tome, but perhaps also of the entire expansion, is the Blood Exarch.
Who of course has some epic abilities and FX:
The stragglers
Now I have definitely rambled enough, so here are some final quick-fire content highlights for your enjoyment!
A perfectly spooky & gothic UI Skin:
The icons that seem to just never end:
Also, free content! A full Hunter customization set for the Pantheon (in three parts - hat, cape, and outfit), as well as three item forge visuals to provide everything you need to hunt down those pesky creatures:
And lastly, also very much free-to-use, a variety of wallpapers attached to this dev diary!
Download the wallpapers here!
A big thanks for hanging out with me! As always, there is way too much I couldn’t include, but don’t fret: just like for Archon Prophecy, the art team will be compiling their favorite works of the expansion into an ArtStation art blast when ‘Thrones of Blood’ releases on November 11th.
Look out for more information on that, and tune in again next week for the final dev diary on the Dark Culture Update!
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