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This shot is taken up on the monorail structure, looking back up the road that leads to the beach. Please excuse the models as they are once again just Crysis assets i have manipulated to use as placeholders.
Players will need to exit this enclosed area the same way they did in the original game, but once they are on the other side of the wall, they have a pretty open path to progress through the Jungle Road.
This angle shows the new road heading off up the hill, which is a bit of a short-cut to the town (later on) and is also the rear entrance to the JP3 Embryonic's Administration buildings which are just over the hill. This rear entrance will be closed off, but players will be able to walk down and have a look, or continue walking up the road and look over the entire area, giving them a bit of a heads-up of whats to come, providing they can see anything through the trees that is. A gate will stop players from progressing towards the town, forcing players to head back and follow the path of the monorail.
There will never really be a right and wrong way to go, but players will discover that some paths are more dangerous than others and although they might be able to skip past whole areas and maybe even avoid the dangerous sections, there will be important items that they will miss making progress difficult later on.
As much as it would be nice to let players freely explore the island in any order they like, the reality is that complete freedom is confusing. Despite the open nature of RPG's, you still have a mission objective that guides you and you generally have access to a map and instructions and clues form NPC's. On an island like this where you're alone and have no real map, and no mission objectives or information provided by NPC's, it would just lead to confusion as the player aimlessly wandered around, trying to work they actually had to do. Sure it may provide hours of gameplay, but it would be hours of frustrating laborious gameplay.
The dead leaves in the foreground are a dead banana tree that im using as dead palm leaves. When i have my own dead palm leaf models, ill replace them all with a couple of clicks.
Decals make a difference to the sand, and some new plant species spice things up a little.
In keeping with my gritty image theme, here is a "magazine scan" of an image of the new town layout. Nearly all major structures are there apart from the school, and a few other features such as the basketball court and tennis court, some small houses are actually supposed to be just frames or foundations and the buildings are all obviously temporary.
In the foreground is the water treatment facility. This will have pipes running into it all the way from the Dam. Players wont have immediate access to this building until they have entered the valley that the Dam is in, and then they will be able to get in and open the gates, allowing easy access back to the town.
The layout for the visitors centre compound is now quite similar to the movie and the position of some buildings is how it was planned in Trespasser's design documents. The school is an all new building and will be in the large empty patch of grass to the left. It was mentioned in the design documents and some sound samples relating to Anne wielding sporting equipment against a dinosaur, can be used now.
I am working on importing actual Trespasser assets so i can be sure of my dimensions, but i am pretty confident that it is all okay.
Still a lot of work to do, but its really enjoyable to work on areas like this. It will be so much more enjoyable when i have actual assets to distribute and the player movement code is modified. Then it will really start to feel like a different game!
This shot is taken just over the second wooden fence in the starting beach. In the distance you can see a big blue sign, which will be the "welcome to site B" sign, like what was seen at the base of the monorail structure. Normally the poster on the wall in the site office at the construction area will alert players that they are on Site B, but if they don't go into the office, this sign will tell them.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
This is the stranded truck that was just before the Brachiosaur's in the original game. This truck is obviously just a regular Crysis asset, the actual model will be a UNIMog. You probably wont find a gun like you did in the original, but you will be able to search it for anything useful.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
I think the banana tree's in Crysis are one of the most beautiful plants ever seen in a video game. This is a younger version and doesn't have all the dead leaves and other bits on it. Look at how the light is rendered on those leaves. CryEngine 2 is simply amazing.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
This is where you wake up after your plane crashes into the ocean. There are a lot of elements missing from this scene, such as decals, debris and more plant species. This scene is looking a lot nicer now, ill post a new shot soon.
I did a bit of work on this area this morning, so i decided to remove the last shot and replace it with this one.
No DOF for this one, so you can see how it will look in-game. Lots of detail here now, decals more plants, debris, rocks and little stones that are automatically distributed over sand. These can be picked up and thrown too. The Korean soldier has been placed there for scale.
This area is just off to the right off the start of the jungle road, near where the Stranded truck is and just before the Brachiosaur encounter was in the original game. This area is a nice tropical forest area, but nowhere near as thick and dense as the jungles further in land.
Areas like these will really come to life when there are small birds flying around, insects, animals and of course sound.
I should point out, that the lighting conditions for all of these shots is 12 o-clock mid day. The harshest most bright light there is. I decided to start with that and work my way out to the sunset and sunrise.
This lonely blue barrel has rolled down the hill from the construction site and is half filled with sand. Its the first real encounter you have with civilization after you wake up on the beach.
When you wake on the beach it will actually be in the morning and wont be as bright as this.
I posted a shot of this scene a while back, but that was when it was using a very basic TOD with almost no changes. Here you can see real time reflections on the water, but you might notice the dark lavender colour in the reflections, which i still need to fix. The sky colour and some other settings are the cause, but once that is fixed there's nothing left to do. Except of course morning, night and the in betweens.. ;-)
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
Not a very interesting shot, but it does show all of the monorail supports from the start of the level, all the way to the end. This is how big the original level was in Trespasser, but it didn't have quite the draw distance that this does.
There are only a few trees at the moment, because this is how i start placing vegetation. I start with the biggest trees, based on the location of the largest trees in the original Trespasser level, then i place smaller trees and then additional large trees if needed. The monorail path will be quite sparse, with lots of tree stumps left over from when the path was cleared. There will be some small regrowth along the path, with the jungle on either side being quite thick in some sections, particularly over the other side of the map, where the entrance to the Compound will be.
Not all the monorail supports will be in the final map, some of them will be fallen over, others not built yet and some of them damaged. They're just here to lay down the initial path. The spacing is also quite messy as it was done by eye and not very accurate.
You can just see the small wooden construction shack on the left, of the shot. The terrain here was modified and cleaned up, giving the monorail supports their own path, with the road a bit to the right. The roads in the original Trespasser levels are quite often over very steep and unrealistic terrain or they will have a big rock in the middle of them. Why this was done i don't know, I can only assume it was rushed editing towards the end of the games development by some of the remaining devs who were a bit less artistic.
In the bottom right corner is a Hummer type of vehicle, which should give you a clue to the scale here.
Again, all structures are temporary, and will be replaced with actual project assets at a later date. Some textures here are a bit strange because its just a low res surface generation. High res looks much better, but i only do it now and then due to the time it takes.
I've posted this shot again, as its using the updated TOD and i thought it would make a good comparison shot with the old one. The changes are not immediately obvious, but they make a huge difference when your looking around and see it in motion.
These buildings were made using standard Crysis assets, pieced together to create a basic placeholder structure.
The front of the shiny metal case. The plastic cover goes over this, so you see the "Crysis" logo on top of the guy.
The white ute and the Colt 45 were added using photoshop, to try and visualize Trespasser a bit better. The building on the hill in the distance is Hammond's House. He has a nice view of the town from up there.
This was a test for a night scene in the town. Light beams were placed under the street lights and fog used to create some mood.
Here's how the waterfall is looking. Added some more particles to the base for more impact and also some larger ripples that fill the whole pool at the base.
More vegetation around the entire area and also a rainbow added to the mist.
In the bottom left you can just see a splash from the cascades that flow down into the valley.
Due to limitations of the River tool, i have used multiple waterfall objects to create a cascading creek that flows down into a little rock pool, then onto the stream that continues for the rest of the valley. I might create a custom object later on in development that replaces this whole section, as im not 100% happy with it.
The rainbow created by the waterfall can be seen in the bottom right.
In Trespasser this area was a kind of "shooting tutorial", with several guns placed out on some wooden boxes. Players could practice picking them up and aiming at the objects set up on the concrete walls.
A new addition to this area is the white building to the right. This will be the construction site office, and will be heavily overgrown with vegetation. Players will discover a poster on the wall inside the office that is for the InGen Resort, and will reveal that this island is in fact Site B.
There will be another fence with a locked gate just on the other side of the office, this will be the first puzzle for players to solve. Either smash the padlock, find keys, or build something to climb over the wall.
Just past this wall will be the large sign players seen in Trespasser, but this time it will be a "Welcome To Site B" type of thing for the island's guests.
From here the vegetation gets more dense and starts to look more like a jungle. Lots of ferns, logs, and a thick canopy overhead.
I decided to do a little more work on the dam and add some guard rails and a couple of sets of stairs. There will need to be at least three more sets of stairs to finish it, but its all just temporary stuff made from Crysis assets.
I haven't added any trees to this part of the island yet, i'm going to save that till im actually up to this area. Placing vegetation is something i spend a bit of time doing, taking into consideration the available light, terrain shape and altitude and also how far inland it is.
I'm planning to add a building to the top right hand side of the dam wall, on the water side. This building will be very old and i will base my designs on Buntzen Lake Power Station, which was built around 1903.
There will also be an Outlet Tower at the rear of the dam, which will be accessible via a catwalk over the water and also a tunnel that runs under the water. I also planning to add a large outlet pipe that will flow into a river that flows down to the start of the valley. This is just there for detail and will most likely be non functional. You should be able to climb into this pipe, you might find something in there.
The design of the actual dam model, will have an overflow cut out in the top right corner, with a catwalk over it. Hopefully i can make it so that the overflow section has actual flowing water over the cut-out, that feeds into the catchment at the base.
On the left hand side of the wall, a large concrete pipe will exit near the base, and travel all the way to the town, where it will meet up with the water treatment facility.
The building at the base of the dam, will most likely contain a puzzle that allows players to open a secret area, giving access to Harold Greenwood's body and probably some good loot.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.
Here is a reference shot for the shooting range in Trespasser. Click between this and the previous image for a comparison.
What do you think?
Trespasser Rocks! Check out all that vegetation!
This was from 1998, 9 years before Crysis!
It kind of makes my version look bare doesn't it? I have not finished my scene yet so it will be a lot more populated soon.
I'm not into over saturating my levels with excess vegetation though. I'm more interested in precise and realistic placement along with subtle and controlled texturing to create a more realistic look.
Heightmap imported into CE2, surface texture generated, fog density increased in time of day, time set to 6:20am. Some further "photographic" adjustments were made in Lightroom to make it a bit prettier.
Photograph from India Game Developer Summit 2010 (Lite Ed.) held in Bangalore, India, 27 February 2010, produced by Saltmarch Media. Photograph ©Copyright Saltmarch Media. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution and linkback to this page on Saltmarch's Flickr photostream. All other rights reserved.