City of Steam is a browser-based, free-to play online RPG set in an industrial world poised to rediscover the mythic forces that shaped its history.The nations and people of the World Machine, pushing heroes and villains alike toward a dangerous secret that could change everything.

Post news Report RSS City of Steam Developer Journals - Art 2012 01 19

Keep looking back 2011 and some failure creations.

Posted by on

This week we’re still looking back over 2011 and discussing some of the interesting moments as well as disappointments. Following the slightly pessimistic attitude of last week’s post (Art Dev Journal 2012-01-12) we’d like to bring up an even greater dead-end; one that took up a lot of our time and illustrates some of what happens regularly in development that end-users ultimately never see. This post really covers nearly every department but we made the cool artwork, so we’ll take the credit.

An interesting note that people outside the industry probably don’t quite grasp to its full extent is that development is always dynamic; things are changed and problems occur all the time. This isn’t limited to the coding side or design – this extends to our art department as well. We may even have delivered a perfect representation of a design but perhaps that idea gets thrown away due to changes beyond our control, further market research or any number of other reasons.

Last year, over the course of a month, we created a login screen/character creation screen that depicted the landscape of the city-state of Nexus to feature in the background as players created their characters. It was based off of a beautiful picture Charben created. This was used for months as the character-creator background and some liked it, some hated it but in the end it had to be scrapped.


We still like how it shows off the World Machine’s infinitely tall spire and the definite feel that the city goes on forever. Ah well, I guess we learned something along the way? The character stood upon the gear as different options were chosen in a GUI. We felt it would be nice to show off more of the scene so here’s a quick camera swivel. The feel is wrong as it is removed from the general ideas in the game.

The next idea involved a passport-like system in which the player would be filling in their character’s passport (mentioned in a previous Design Journal if you’re interested). This would help in the storytelling as the player’s character is headed to Ebonwax from “a long way away”, so would need their travel papers to show the city-guards. After some thought this felt a bit too cliché so it was also crumpled up and thrown out.

A quick look at the design that failed:

We needed a better way, a more story-oriented way, of showing off our character selection process. This led to a complete re-design that better brings the first-time player into the game. In this version the player’s camera view will move around a train from cabin to cabin as they approach the city. In each cabin there will be a different race and a class can be picked. This is the newest concept but feasibility is still being looked into by Coding.
Here are a few concepts of what will come but we’ll have to show them off in a few weeks.

As you can well imagine, development is by no means a straight-forward linear process; lots of bumps and detours along the way. We think that players will like this latest iteration but, as we always ask, tell us your thoughts below or on the forums!

This may not even be the final version so check back with us or design as we work everything out.

Head to our Developer Journal Page to look into more.

Post comment Comments
azultain1999
azultain1999

nice artwork

Reply Good karma Bad karma+1 vote
CoS_Ethan Author
CoS_Ethan

Thanks, we know we still have much to improve and we do want to improve as much as we can.

Reply Good karma+1 vote
booman
booman

I love the concept art! Great ambiance and theme. someone has a good "eye" for detail, color and shading

Reply Good karma Bad karma+1 vote
CoS_Ethan Author
CoS_Ethan

Thank you,our artists will be happy to hear that, haha!

Reply Good karma+1 vote
KoleAudioSolutions
KoleAudioSolutions

Nice, I really like the 2nd idea of moving from cabin to cabin as you approach the city.

Reply Good karma Bad karma+1 vote
CoS_Ethan Author
CoS_Ethan

Sweet, more updates will come out after our Chinese Spring Festival Holiday!

Reply Good karma+1 vote
FlyingMonkey59
FlyingMonkey59

This looks fantastic! I'm trying not to totally geek over the arrival of a honest to god, properly done Steampunk mmo. You guys are doing an amazing job!

Reply Good karma Bad karma+1 vote
CoS_Ethan Author
CoS_Ethan

Thank you, hope that you can try it out when the test begins in late February.

Reply Good karma+1 vote
Post a comment

Your comment will be anonymous unless you join the community. Or sign in with your social account: