Have you ever wondered what goes into making a tight space for knights to fight in? We thought we’d give you a run down so you can see how a level goes from an idea to a burning forge ready for combat.
Concepts and blockouts
The process of making a KITS level starts with concept art and a level design. The Blacksmith is a 5x6 play space surrounded by some half height objects, full height walls, and two knock out tiles. The distinction between object heights is important as it determines whether characters can jump or shoot over them during play. The initial art concept, made by Omercan Cirit, was designed to be useful for multiple layouts, with objects that could be moved around like tables and anvils, and with focal points like the forge and bellows.
After being given the initial design the level is blocked out with aspects from the concept art used to fill the required tile layout. This process can take a little while in order to get things right - technical requirements take priority, for instance making sure the dimensions of objects are correct, and taking into account how the UI and character height affect the amount of space the level can take up on the screen. After that we consider how the room functions, the composition, the view for each level rotation etc… Where possible, environments are given at least one exciting focal point that elevates it above simply being a basic room. You can see how the smaller simple forge in the original design was expended and given more prominence and detail.
Once the initial blockout has been finalised, further details are added. While this happens, the lighting of the scene is also being iterated on to establish a focal point and mood. After the modelling is done everything gets unwrapped for texturing and lightmaps, and then it’s time to work on the materials.
Hatching and lighting
The shader that’s used for most level assets displays hatching based on the orientation of an object’s UVs. Early on in the project we took inspiration from the work of Bernie Wrightson and Gabriel Rodríguez, who use linework and cross hatching to describe the form of objects. Hatching generally runs parallel to the longest edge on an object providing readability. In earlier versions of the levels, cross hatching was also used but tended to become muddy with the other details on top of it. Below you can see how the hatching gets applied to the fly press in the blacksmith.
This idea was used for tileables as well. For instance this brick tileable has hatching that changes orientation along with the bevels of the brick. This helps to distinguish each brick and to break up what would otherwise be uniform hatching. The shader is built in such a way that hatching is revealed and its thickness altered depending on the amount of light hitting a surface. Lighter sections in the middle of the bricks on the hatching map won’t come out grey in game, they will still be solid black, but require more light to hit them to be seen at all. This helps to give the impression of ambient occlusion and form.
Here’s a demonstration of some adjustments that can be made with the hatching shader. It takes the baked lighting data of a scene and applies the hatching relative to the amount of light that area receives. The edges of the hatching lines in the texture are blurred slightly so they can become thicker/thinner depending on the lighting and shader settings. This video only shows one type of hatching, but it can be replaced with other types such as the brick tileable above which goes with its own albedo and normal map.
Both the scene lighting and the hatching/material settings are an iterative process. For the lighting we try to keep the focal points of light warm, and the shadows cool to have contrast. It’s then usually a case of switching back and forth between working on the lighting, hatching and prop textures until things feel like they’re coming together.
Forge lighting
One thing that was important to capture in this level was how intense the fire was in the original concept. The play spaces should also ideally feel exciting and dangerous, so lots of fire helps with that. The alpha channel from the coal texture is used to control where the flicker effect and light intensity is applied. You can see where this is happening on the green sections below in the ash and coal pieces.
Final touches
Once everything starts coming together visually, we set up the colliders, knock out zone indicators, and real time shadows for the characters before doing a final higher res bake on the lighting. After that it’s handed back over to design so it can be set up to work in game, and then finally the room is ready for the battles that will take place inside its walls.
