Greetings,
My name is Samuel ‘Samuel2213’ Bryan. My role on the Phantom Fury team is 3D Lead and overall 3D Generalist.
I handle environment art, scripting, lighting, characters, props and a bit of level design, which is about as ‘Generalist’ as you can get. I’ve worked on a number of projects: primarily ULTRAKILL, Graven, and Wrath. I’ve also worked in all kinds of various art styles, usually in AA, indie and mod projects, but Phantom Fury is by far the project I’m currently the most deeply involved in.
Phantom Fury is a project that everyone on the team is extremely passionate about, and not only on the raw gameplay front. Having a fun shooter is incredibly important, but you can not underestimate the importance of providing the player plenty to do and look at outside of combat.
In this regard, all the various teams within the project work closely together to focus on immersing the player in the game world through as many avenues as possible, including interactivity and visuals.
Rose Tinted Glasses
The visual design of Phantom Fury is not to be period-accurate, but rather what people remember old games looking like. The ‘Rose Tinted Glasses’ effect, if you will.
With this in mind, we try to stick to period accurate models and textures, but while taking advantage of more advanced modern lighting and shader to push the environment's visuals further than what was possible back in that era.
A vast majority of our characters, weapons and prop/environment assets are built using a modern PBR workflow, baked then crunched down using an excellent filter ‘Pixel8r’ created by Victoria Holland, along with additional custom-made smart materials to recreate the hand-painted shading look of some of our more painterly artists, unifying the style between the various artists and workflows.
An example of one of character assets, created with a PBR workflow then baked down to a diffuse.
Ooo What Does This Button Do?
From the very start of production, interactivity has been one of our strongest pillars.
Everyone on the team adores the interactivity found in older games. Sin, Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior, even Half-Life in places had so much to fiddle and interact with in the world. Every little interaction made it feel less like you were running through a predetermined film set, and more like you were running through an actual living breathing world.
With this in mind, we place a heavy emphasis on developing as many interactive or dynamic objects as possible. If there’s something you think you can interact with, more than likely, you can. It can be something as simple as a usable Tap or a Vending Machine, up to something as complex as a Fish Tank, Boiling Chemicals or a fully functional Arcade Machine. Every little bit counts to add immersion and fun to the player experience.
These interactables aren’t used just for gimmicks. With many breakables and interactables, we try to integrate it within the combat and gameplay loop itself. From providing additional pickups, to giving them an edge in certain battles, or just being fun, there’s a mountain of things to interact and play with!
With actual development of the interactives, we keep a very open development cycle. The beauty of working with a smaller team and studio is everyone has a voice. Everyone can pitch ideas and suggestions and generally brainstorm and try different things to see what works! Internally we regularly brainstorm and experiment with various ideas that we feel would be cool or fun to build and interact with.
The World
Phantom Fury has an extremely varied world. Throughout the campaign, Shelly explores a large variety of unique areas and locations, with almost every level providing its own unique twist on gameplay loop, atmosphere and visuals.
We want each level to feel memorable, To be its own unique, fresh experience.
As many of us originally came from modding and fan game backgrounds, along with being a small international team, we adopted a very iterative approach to our level design and detailing.
Each level starts with a few large passes to get about 90% of the way to completion, then it constantly receives regular sweeping passes for lighting, set dressing, and level geometry. You name it, levels get repeated passes on it.
This isn’t only done for visuals, but also scripting refinements, balance and other aspects as the game further develops. Not only does this keep development loose, but it also allows the whole game to develop at an even pace so the quality is as unified as possible through every level and gives the team plenty of breathing room to experiment, as there’s always new challenges to overcome, something new to learn, or something fun to implement.
This combined with regular live work sessions and a very open communication policy allows us to provide live feedback to each other on the fly, regardless of timezone and constantly adapt every level to new features as they are developed.
No level is ever truly done, it can always be further refined as long as time allows.
Levels themselves are built using a hybrid workflow based on the requirements of the level. Certain large levels such as Chicago are built using a modern modular workflow for asset turnaround with a decent level of fidelity, while more enclosed levels such as the various underground labs and bunkers are built either in JACK or Trenchbroom for that authentic retro brushwork feeling akin to the workflow adopted in Graven. Some levels even use a combination of the two. Many of the outdoor environments usually have the large structures built in Trenchbroom as individual maps, then imported and placed in the environment as a unique piece.
An example of one of the Trenchbroom levels
Epilogue
In the end, the entire game has been a monumental endeavour by an incredibly dedicated team. The wonderful community support and feedback has really helped us push the game to increasing heights, and we are all excited to finally release it into your hands.
Sam