Developer journal #01 news

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In my case, i mainly researched pictures of the buildings in Prypiat and its famous pool.

There are a few details missing in our mod version ; the facade is not high / large enough and there's a plinth missing.

The goal here wasn’t to copy/paste the barn, but to inspire us for the little details of our work, like the beams, or the walls.

It would have been impossible to make a map in Pripyat without redoing its pool...

While the image received favourable reviews at the time, its style did not work with what we pictured the zone should look like. Too much cliffs, a stream ridiculously thin, needless to say, it didn’t work out. Add also the fact that even the images themselves did not give the ambient light needed for the level. For cases like this, it's faster to just redo the work in its entirety then to try and correct it.Because of this, i redeveloped this part of the campaign in order to have a wider rendering that would be less closed and more foggy. For this occasion, i created a skybox via Terragen 2. (the one used in the first screen was simply a custom skybox i found on the net). After that, we decided to sacrifice extra time in the development schedule for elaborating different skyboxes for each chapter in a bid to obtain the general atmosphere we were looking for and not retain the potential of the final product.

The graffiti are an integral part of the identity of Pripyat. They are,after all, the traces of the first human presence the city had after the Tchernobyl accident.
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On the other side,Bendix8 has searched photos of different malls for the first chapter. Meanwhile, the second chapter needed clear references of building either in construction or renovation.

This reference shot is interesting in several levels. First of all, the relatively simple architecture of the different elements composing the scene (celling, shopwindow) allow the implementation of a long coherent hall that ask less resources of a computer. This in turn, leave me with the opportunity to give life to the hall with all the construction and renovation tools present in the shot .The second really interesting part of the picture is the fact that, even if the quality of the photograph is not all that great,the lighting,coupled with its calorimetry, bring a really interesting base to the shot. In fact, even the tiniest changes in the lighting can bring a dark and somber atmosphere, be it in a picture or in our mod.

The cables and connectors falling out of the ceiling clog the view of the player and also intensify the oppressing aspect of the chapter ambiance. As you can see, the stages of construction illustrated in the images are chock-full of really interesting details.

The layout of a shopping centre, even more so than other types of building, is made to be particularly adapted for public circulation. But, i wanted my mall to adopt a design more “old and heavy” than the one we see these days. A kind of shopping mall that has its shops grafted onto its heart as the years went by. This type of building gives the impression of a bad kind of architecture that's not always following the basics,forcing the owners to correct the errors made at one point. The barriers under the escalators are a really good example of this.

Concerning the realism, i tried to reproduce real existing facades, leaving me then with the task of damaging and chafing them to better their integration into our mall .

In this section of the mall, the ceiling is of capital importance. the composition of the room along with its disposition attracted irremediably the player eyes to its top. By doing this, i also wanted to exploit the natural outdoor light even more to polish my scene .

Architectural elements such as those found in these pictures,even those incredibly simple, can still be remarkably effective.
Once the base is solid and coherent, the only thing left to add are details; to add the particularities of the game we are mapping for. In this case, it's things such as signs, indications to find the safe house etc... Traces that speak to the player of an unspoken journey that other people faced before he arrived while keeping things logical.