Hey folks!
Robert here, the Art Director and Lead Artist on Deep Rock Galactic - some of you may know me as Bluntie on our Discord server.
Among the many, many, many things we are currently working on, one of the big ones is a major overhaul of the way we generate our caves. I've been caught up in producing marketing material for GDC and PAX for a while now, and have had to settle for stealing envious glances over the shoulders of our programmers while they develop lovely new tools for my fellow artists and I. But now, marketing material behind me (for the moment), I finally get to dig in (sorry).
Those already in the closed alpha will no doubt have noticed that our current caves tend to look a little samey, but that is all about to change with the first iteration of the - fanfare - Biome System.
Long story short, it's a new and muchly improved way to make the caves differ from each other and to show off the many and varied zones we have planned for the planet that the game takes place on and in. Basically, it allows us artists to put together a set of rules, assets, and materials to apply to any given cave, meaning that applying different biomes to the same cave can result in some spectacularly different experiences. I can with relative ease put together anything from smooth sandstone caves with very little to obstruct the players, to absolute hellscapes of black craggy rock and volcanic activity, to terrifying ash-lands covered in deadly, radioactive fog, pierced by teeth-like stalagtites threatening to puncture your suit or worse.
Pair all this with our game designers putting together new caves specifically for these biomes, and we have a fast and easily expandable method of getting a much more immersive and diverse exploration experience into your hands. To begin with, our goal is to produce three complete biomes full of all new assets - enough to show a wide breadth of content for the first pass, while still allowing us to quickly iterate on the systems and introduce new features into the tools and biomes themselves.
https://youtu.be/56dCue6SNPA
I could ramble on about this at length, so let us know if you'd be interested in more detailed explanations of how our systems work. Till then, I'll let the visuals speak for themselves - I've put together a short video that showcases what I'm talking about. Be aware that it is VERY early footage and that the caves shown aren't in any way done, but it should still give you an impression of things to come. It's three little clips of a short trip inside the EXACT same cave, except with three different Biomes applied to it. With any luck, you'll get as excited about the prospects as I am. And just wait - this is gonna get amazing. :D
Dig deep!