Rough Sea Games

Designing an appealing and huge game world from scratch will take even really fast designers a looooong time: valuable time that can be spent in better ways. This is where generated content comes in handy. With the push of a button a designer can create a whole world (oceans, land, forests, deserts, mountains, cities, … ) in an instant. So this is what we decided to do for our game … and here is how we got to the finish line:

On the bumpy road to an actual working map generator we decided to split all map generation tasks into small modules: heightmap generator, water generator, forest generator, desert generator, and so on. In the map-generator GUI the designer can put these modules into a task list and define the order in which they are executed. Each module also has parameters that affect the characteristics of the generated map. Even though it is supposed to be a random map generator it is especially important to have deterministic behavior. Consequently, each module that actually generates content has at least a “seed” parameter for the random number generator. With the same seed the generator will create the same results every time. Changing the seeds will create a different map.

In the little animation above you can see the output of some of the modules.

Heightmap Generator
At first we create a heightmap. We use Perlin noise since it is built into the AS3 BitmapData class and it is amazingly fast. In the beginning we experimented with our own implementation of the diamond-square algorithm, but it was way too slow.

Water Fill
In the next step we apply water to the world. We simply declare everything below a certain height level as being under water.

Mountains
By looking for local peaks we detect mountains and flag the areas accordingly.

Humidity Map
By defining a water contingent that grows over water and decreases over land we can flag dry and wet zones on the continents. To make things easier we define our whole world as a west-wind zone. The centers of most bigger continents will be dry (yellow), coast regions will be mostly humid (green) and continental areas lying east of a big stretch of water will be very humid (dark green).

Climate Zones
Next we define climate zones in the world: tropical areas, temperate zones and polar regions. With this information we can easily place polar caps in the world.

Forest Generator
Using the information from the climate zones and the humidity map makes it possible to place different types of forests into the world. Jungle (purple) will be found in the hot and wet regions around the equator, while coniferous forests will be found close to the polar caps.

Desert Generator
The desert generator also uses the information from the humidity map to detect dry regions and place desert areas into them.

Well, now you had a look at some of the modules in our map generator. They are not only capable of creating earth-like maps (like the small sample map above) but also completely different maps by changing the parameters: a lake landscape, a waste land, a desert or whatever our games may need. With this we are able to quickly create new game content of any size for the players to explore.

Cheers,
Manuel

Popularity: 100% [?]

Last time I told you I already know what I will draw next for my new blog series Famous Movie Monsters. And here you can see one of my personal favorite movie monsters…By clicking on the image you can see a bigger version with a short MakingOf.
I already got some feedback and ideas for the next images in the series but if you still have a favorite you want to see write a comment to this post, name your movie monster and I will see what I can do…

Chris

Popularity: 45% [?]

Today’s blog post is a little bit off topic.
It is game related but not directly connected to anything we are developing here at Rough Sea Games.
I just finished writing an art workshop for the German Game Developer magazine Making Games. You should know that I write these workshops in my spare time, and they are a good opportunity to keep my hand in for styles of game-related art I don’t currently do on a daily basis. This workshop starts a new art ‘Making Of’ series in the magazine, which will show how to create low-poly 3D game characters. In Part One you will see the making of the 2D character design which a later 3D model will be based on.
By clicking the image to the right you can see a bigger version.

Chris

Popularity: 39% [?]

Inspired by our company mantra ‘Rock The Boat‘, I will show you a video series about some of my art techniques. I am using these techniques to create most parts of the art for our game. In part 1 of the series, I will show you the making of a sketch which, in 90% of all art created, is the first step to the finished artwork. This sketch is made in Corel Painter with an Wacom Intuos3 DinA5 wide art tablet. I am using the Wacom tablet for all art this days… even for creating sketches. Corel Painter allows you to build your own brushes and with some customization you can make perfect digital pencils for creating sketches.
By clicking the small image to the left you can see the final sketch. Please note: the sketch content has not much to do with our game! To get more inside info on the game you have to read our blog regularly… so don’t forget to use the RSS-Feed to the right! Below you can see the video of how the sketch was done:

Rough Sea Games – Rocks The Boat – sketch video 01 from Chris Noeth on Vimeo.

You also can watch this video or download it in it’s original HD size at http://vimeo.com/2173212
See you soon in the second part about COLORS…
Chris

Popularity: 27% [?]

Finally it’s time to show some of our game’s art. We will begin with a ‘Making Of’ that covers the steps in the creation of an environment artwork.

In the ‘Making Of’ image you can see the creation process, which I will explain below. First some general info on how most of the artwork is done and which tools are used to create the art:

95% of the artwork is created digitally. Only 5% is done with traditional tools, such as a pencil for creating sketches. The digital art and paintings are done with a Wacom Intuos3 DinA5 wide tablet and Adobe’s Photoshop software.

So let’s take a look at the first image in the ‘Making Of’ overview:

1. Compared to the later versions you can see this image shows a smaller area. I started the first layout like this and later widened the view to show a temple to the right and a waterfall at the bottom. In this first step I’m blocking in the main areas of the image while trying to catch the ‘mood’ with the colors.

2. This version adds additional space and more texture, which was painted in with a textured brush. I have also added more saturated colors and changed the contrast of some areas.

3. Note the new details. Also, you can now see the position of the light source, which was planned from the beginning for the upper left area.

4. In this step I added some atmospheric perspective to get the illusion of depth. You also can see still more details.

5. Beside yet more details, I added more yellow to the color scheme. That makes it look more interesting and the new ‘mood’ fits our game. (You will understand when you see what our game is about! )

6. This image contains more lights on the bridge and plants and changes a few details.

The thumbnail image to the right shows the final image with more added details, for example the birds in the background.

I hope you liked the first ’sneak peak’ of the art.

Best,

Chris

Popularity: 52% [?]