SHRINKING A METROPOLIS
Hello and welcome to the 5th Dev Blog of Phantom Fury!
My name is Jacob Østergaard and I’m a Senior Level Designer at Slipgate Ironworks in Aalborg, Denmark.
Today we will focus on the creation of our hero level Chicago, which we have set ablaze!
Chicago on fire.
While we will go over select elements of the level in this dev blog, we won’t be revealing it all as we would like to save some for later and for you all to experience yourselves.
We wanted it to retain certain hallmarks of the real Chicago city while also being heavily modified to fit our visual style and flow.
Said hallmarks would be elements like:
- The Chicago River and the many bridges
- The Navy Pier
- The Marina City towers
- Iconic parts of Wacker Drive
- And other recognizable buildings from Chicago
Downtown Chicago.
But, like mentioned before, we wouldn’t want to make a copy of those hallmarks but rather imitate their look and feel with a Phantom Fury spin on them.
The Navy Pier.
The difficult part of this task was that Chicago is absolutely massive. And while a lot of the hallmarks we picked out are close together in real-life, we would have to cut away parts in-between and compress the overall location tremendously to avoid overly long travel times between sections. We would therefore create a trimmed, compressed and stylized imitation of Chicago to fit our needs.
Chicago Theater
In addition to the hallmarks we decided to also include a park area and a large city mall with tons of interactive elements and a full arcade!
Looking through the images in this blogpost (and when you get to play through this level), we hope you can recognize certain parts of the real Chicago.
CHICAGO ON FIRE
Hello there!
My name is Willem Verheughe, and I am a 3D Artist at Mantis Games who has had the great opportunity and pleasure to work on Phantom Fury. My tasks vary from environment art, lighting, props, and a small bit of scripting. Now I’m here to tell you a bit about the destruction of Chicago.
Chicago will be one of our most important levels where we will throw everything that we have at Shelly.
It was very important for us that this is not only experienced through combat, but also through sounds, atmosphere and through the visuals of the city. Our focus was to make this level feel dynamic, and to add an extra layer of immersion
Chicago on fire.
To achieve this, we had various departments of the team adding their element to bring the city to life, or in better words, to set it on fire. During the action, we made sure there are plenty of environmental events that keep you on your toes, from bomb runs that put the battlefield on fire to collapsing buildings… But you can also admire these efforts when you are taking a moment away from the action and take it all in.
Chicago on fire.
The smoke-filled skyline of Chicago, The echoes of the chaos, the screams, and the gun shots from the center of the battlefield, the flaming debris floating through the war torn city and so on… All these elements combined are put in place by the team to make sure you get the best experience.
As with everything, it is very important that we balance this to not overstimulate the player, and therefore the pacing of the action is an essential part to the flow of the level.
CONDUCTING THE ACTION
Going through the design of a level the size of Chicago we decided to create a tension graph in our pre-production phase of the level to help visualize where and when to turn up the heat of the action and when to have downtime between combat and give the player time to compose themselves and take in the sights. (Note: Some of this is too hot for the public right now and has been redacted... you'll have to pick up the game to see what we're hiding)
While high tension combat is important in a game like Phantom Fury, quiet moments are also just as important to put the high tension moments into contrast.
Chicago Park.
We internally also refer to this map as one of our “hero maps”.
What we mean by that is that it is built and paced like an action movie.
There are memorable setpieces, boss fights, intense combat as well as hero moments like rescuing civilians and defending key points in the city from extreme GDF attacks. But also moments of exploration with ample time for the player to do what they want before the upcoming fights.
While we also showed off extremely short clips of Chicago in the Phantom Fury reveal trailer, it has since gotten a heavy visual overhaul in terms of style and color palette.
FACELIFT CYBERPUNK-STYLE
Alright, so, we have Chicago, our landmarks, and we have set them on fire, but it was missing something. It was time to add another layer of visuals to make this level even more memorable.
At first, our concept of Chicago was very much focused on the destruction of Chicago, but it was missing character, so we reworked our concept to make this level stand out more. To do this, we added a sci-fi/cyberpunk style, much like the style you see in Ion fury. Before the overhaul the streets were being lit up mainly by streetlights and the buildings were quite empty, now the city is lit up by holograms, massive billboards and neon lighting which fill the city with color and life.
Back Alley.
Like mentioned before by Samuel in Dev Blog #3 Chicago has been built using a modern modular workflow. This has also allowed us to easily swap around our custom-made assets, adjust the buildings to our needs and give our level the facelift it needed.
Downtown Chicago.
And that is it! The rest is for you to explore. We can’t wait for all of you to experience the amazing work that has been put into this Game. Chicago is waiting to be saved by you.
Jacob and Willem