You know how the saying goes: Recycle, Reuse, Optimize the environment pipeline. Wait, what? You heard right. Let’s talk environment. This has been overdue for way too long.
Songs of Silence is more than your average 4x strategy game (which is by the way the perfect game to play in one evening with your friends).
Songs of Silence is also a beautiful and aesthetically pleasing game. You probably already noticed our art nouveau style illustrations, and last time we covered some VFX by our Technical Artists. But what about literally everything else you see on the map?
Have you ever taken a moment to appreciate the beautiful environment where you let your armies march all over? These lush forests, spiky mountains and calming atmosphere? (Unless you’re running into a battle, of course.)
You might think: “Why are we talking about this? The Game designers tell the environment team what they want, the team creates the maps, and that’s it.”
| Hearthlands Biome | Meadow Biome |
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| Wilderness Biome | Snowfields Biome |
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Ah, we wish it was this easy. But no worries. We made it this easy. Kinda. You see, our Game Design team wants full control over the design, but having to add changes each time Game Design tested a map and realized they did want to change it, was just too much overhead. Our Lead Environment artist is also working on battlegrounds, biomes, colors, assets… he kinda does everything. And he came up with an amazing idea:
Optimize and automize the process for Game Design to create maps by simply using a 2D image that looks like the one on the left:
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Some of the hardcore Songs of Silence fans might even recognize it. This is our Campaign Map 1, where Lorelai meets Hauser and searches for a new home. Can you see the similarities?
You might ask: “How does that 2D image turn out to become this pretty 3D map?”
Good question! Let’s dive deeper into what our Lead Environment Artist has set up. Here’s a breakdown for the pipeline:
And from the moment Game Design paints their maps, up until bringing everything together, everything is automized. Crazy, right? Let’s dive into each step one by one so you can see what happens behind the scenes:
1. Photoshop
Our Game Designers work in a specific Photoshop file, where each layer is assigned a different color. They paint a Gameplay map, which you can see above, and a biome map.
Each color has a different meaning:
- Red: Mountain region (Gameplay element)
- Blue: Water and rivers (Gameplay element)
- Green: Forests & trees (Gameplay element)
- Purple: Locations (Gameplay element)
- White: Roads (Decoration element)
2. Houdini
No, not the magician. The program. We have a Houdini server that utilizes .bat files to generate the maps, once it has the layers in the correct place in the Unity folder. Game Design executes the .bat file, and in 10-15 minutes the adapted terrain is available in unity.
And this is what’s happening in the background:
The first thing that happens in Houdini is the creation of the mountain. Its erosion, height, noise and terrace are calculated with highly complex and fast mathematical operations that could not be executed by a single person (It probably could, but it would take forever). These calculations define the shape of the mountains based on our parameters, to give it the Songs of Silence Art Nouveau look.
The biggest challenge here was to make sure the mountains are exactly in the space Game Design painted them in: only in the red area of the 2D texture. Otherwise, our units can’t pass.
The next task is calculation the water bodies and the terrain underneath, considering coasts, beaches and smoothened erosion.
Once we got the mountains and the waterbodies, they’re put into a block in Houdini, which then gives us the needed masks for Unity as an output. These are:
- Heightmap
- Flowmap
- Detailed map
- Texture masks
- Normal maps
3. Substance Designer
These masks are then imported into Substance to visualize the texturing. Here, through complex nodes being put together (really, ask our Environment Artist for details, this looks like magic) and using only the output from Houdini, we create new textures to be used and imported in Unity.
Here we put in Biome color, street textures, Lightveins for the Darkside, Snow and more!
Fun fact: Did you know: Lightvein positions are random - but also not? They depend on the mountain’s erosion and are placed randomly in a place that makes sense. Those are crazy details to consider!
4. Unity
Once we have all the textures and maps we need, we import them into Unity.
Finally, we have something visible. A displacement map is generated by the heightmaps. The normal maps and textures give it the final polish to become a beautiful terrain. So, what else is left? You’re right! Assets!
Unity is where the population pass happens. Based on a Generation Script written by our developers, our Environment Artist can set up a Config file, where – taking the map design by our Game Designers into consideration – parameters like amount, radius and weight are defined.
In short: This script spawns the assigned asset (e.g tree) based on the magical numbers our Environment Artist determines is best for each biome.
5. & 6. Substance & Unity
After finishing the terrain and being happy with it, our Environment Artist can go in and do another pass to create the decoration textures and import them into Unity. This “decoration pass” is a procedurally generated VFX layer based on the decoration texture. This way we can define where random props are placed, where beaches are or, where fishes spawn in the ocean, or where gusts of wind are allowed.
Thanks to our Config files, these assets (fishes, leaves in the wind, stones & rocks, etc.) can all be Biome specific. Makes sense, right?
Take your time to have a closer look at our strategy map and its environment. You will always find details. Promise!
That’s a huge pipeline. A lot of time and effort has been poured into making this a reality, to give our Game Designers something easy to work with.
Our Lead Environment Artist has been working on this since the first prototype of Songs of Silence, and we could not be prouder of this accomplishment. It allows us to work independently while keeping the visual style and artistic vision set by our creative and art director.
Songs of Silence is truly a project of passion and immensely skilled individuals, which made this huge project a reality. A big thank you to the team!
Let us know which other details you can find on the map in your playthrough! And as always, stay tuned for the next news!
Cheers!
The Chimera Team