Hi everyone, and welcome to another Dandelion Void devlog. This is part one of a two-part post. Today we're showcasing the different categories of environments that can be found in Dandelion Void, along with some new items. Next time we will be showcasing some new environmental areas within these categories!
As a quick housekeeping note, we’d like to thank everyone for your patience with the irregular devlog schedule last month; we have been all-hands-on-deck on (yet another) exciting announcement that we aren't able to talk about quite just yet. Watch this space!
How to Paint a Spaceship
There's a lot going on in our game’s setting; the Pergola is a retrofuturistic generation ship that launched in the 1970’s. It is now derelict, overgrown with plants, and inhabited by survivors living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Our three "environmental palettes" from left to right: original generation ship decor, the encroaching jungle, and improvised survivor furniture!
These different components of our setting each have their own visual identity, and depending on where you are in the ship you might experience them in different proportions. I like to think about each category as an "environmental palette," each of which that can be combined in different ways to create unique environments. Let's go over each one in a little more detail!
Environmental Palette 1: Original Generation Ship Decor
The Pergola wasn't always an overgrown derelict, and part of our task as worldbuilders is to define how the ship looked before everything went South. Original generation ship decor can be split into two broad sub-categories:
Sub-palette: Domestic and Civilian Environments
The feature that distinguishes generation ships from other sci-fi vessels is that they are built to fulfill every need of the crew for their entire lifetimes, including housing, childcare, workplaces, meals, storage, resource distribution, socializing, recreation, etc. Designing a generation ship is as much about civic planning as it is engineering!
Don't let the futuristic sliding door fool you: people lived, worked, and played on this ship!
Many sci-fi horror franchises showcase cold, industrial spaceship interiors. By contrast, the Pergola was cozy and beautiful in its heyday. We represent this with warm color palettes, midcentury modern furniture aesthetics, and heavy uses of materials like fabric and wood.
This tweet comes up in our art planning meetings on a weekly basis
As we’ll discuss in our next post, domestic and civilian environments are a big focus for our art team right now!
Sub-palette: Mechanical and Industrial Environments:
Despite its creature comforts, the Pergola is still a high-tech spaceship! In addition to areas directly related to its function as a spacefaring vessel – engine reactors, airlocks, EVA ports, etc. – the Pergola also needs utility areas that you would find in any modern city, like factories and sewage centers. These areas create darker, colder spaces to make the human-centric ones feel all the more cozy.
A player characters stands at the edge of a reactor cooling pool, next to crates of spent fuel rods
Environmental Palette 2: Encroaching Jungle
In the time since the Pergola went derelict, a hostile jungle has taken over. Plants, algae, and other overgrowth are how we establish the age of the environment!
Our plants are procedurally placed using a noise algorithm, so you might find them growing in different places on different playthroughs. With this said, we also have some manual control over what gets to grow where (and modders will too!)
Sub-palette: Default Ponic Forest
The ponic grasses are a cosmopolitan species, meaning they can be found in almost any environment that can support them. These hardy, fast going plants descend from hydroponic grasses that were once used for air filtration. They now cover much of the Pergola and serve as the perfect camouflage for uproots.
Sub-palette: Regionally Distributed Plant Species
Other plant species are endemic only to a small region of the ship, like these grain plants which emit a toxic pollen. Having plant species that are restricted to particular areas adds both visual and gameplay variety as you explore!
Environmental Palette 3: Survivor Improvisations
“Survivor improvisations” are environmental elements built by the hunter-gatherer descendants of the Pergola's original crew, including you the player! By using both human-made and plant-based resources, this third environmental palette ties the first two together.
Sub-palette: Player-crafted Objects
The people who built the Pergola had access to deep resources and mass production manufacturing. By contrast, their descendants have to make do with what’s on hand, and they have to make everything by hand.
One of the ways we achieve a “hunter-gatherer” look for player-crafted furniture is to make sure that the ingredient resources are visible in the finished product. For instance, this storage basket is clearly made of the stems and leaves of ponic grass:
Left: concept art for a woven ponic-leaf bin, created by collaging reference images in Photoshop. Note that the blurring and distortion come from this compositing process -- no AI here, or anywhere else in the project!
Right: final 3D art for the woven ponic bin
As another example, this improvised "spit roast" is built from a number of junk items that can be found elsewhere in the map
Left: the mop, wire spool, bucket, and metal shelf can each be found as independent objects
Right: together, they can be combined into a crude campfire spit!
Sub-palette: Survivor Rooms
Most humans avoid setting foot in the Virgo module at all costs, but every now and then you’ll find evidence of another poor soul who tried to scratch out a life here. Our current build has what we call “survivor rooms,” tiny hovels where a long-dead survivor set up a small base.
Survivor rooms will be mostly made of items that you can craft yourself, but they may also have unique antiques and keepsakes from their original owners. As with any abandoned environment, survivor rooms present a great storytelling opportunity!
Construction Ahead
I hope you enjoyed this review of the different visual elements of Dandelion Void! Next time we'll use this lens of environmental palettes to show off some new environment art, with a particular focus on new domestic and civilian environments.
Until then, take care and please have a great week!
- Robin and the Manzanita Interactive team