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BRAWL 2 [Environment] The Jungle, sketchem

sketchem
interpolator
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sketchem interpolator


I would like to make something like that for 1990s Los Angeles. 

My pitch is an open-world, third person, action game / simulation set in megacity LA. 

There are many great films set in LA that serve inspiration for this project. Since the start date, I have been  watching some old favorites and picking out frames for compositions, lighting, and details of the city. Example: Menace II Society which has a great sense of lighting and composition. 

Other movies I am taking inspiration from: Training Day, Thief, True Romance, Boyz in the Hood, Friday, To Live and Die in LA, The Fast and the Furious, Falling Down, Under the Silver Lake, The Neon Demon, End of Watch, Collateral, and Heat. 

I began mapping out filming locations for movies so I can take real life buildings, textures, and other details. I use Google Earth (Web) and Google Maps. Google Earth Web has historic satellite imagery so I can see the locations that don't exist anymore. Google Maps has historic street-view imagery so I can also see older facades at locations. 


Google Earth also has measuring so I can get a basis for real world scale and then exaggerate. 

This is a rough draft of a map I created. I compressed the space so everything is physically closer together. This way I ease the workload on myself. This map will be a lot smaller than GTA San Andreas and V. 


I already iterated this map a few times, I am still refining it to be as compact as possible but also representative of the setting. 

Technical goals: 
  • 256px/m texture density
  • PS2 era per-object low poly but virtually unlimited object instances
  • Leverage PCG to help generate buildings, roadways, landscape features, and foliage.
  • Exteriors only! No interiors due to time. 
I created a couple of texture samples (asphalt and concrete for roads) to get an idea of how 256x256 would look with procedural texturing. I definitely want to avoid having to hand-paint textures as much as I can. The trick was to exaggerate the size of some smaller details of the surface so they wouldn't get washed away from the resolution.



I will continue refining my map and then move into a block-out of paths for player movement



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Replies

  • Fabi_G
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    Fabi_G veteran polycounter
    Woah, that's some ambitious scope :lol: 
    Certainly an exciting stage when two mega huge mutants or robots start to brawl.
    Good luck :+1:
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  • iam717
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    iam717 polycounter
    Welcome.
    Wow, very cool take on references (movies and use-age of G.E.) and you seem to have a great plan for the project. 
    (video, guy really likes his, s's)
    Pretty hectic in the 90's, from what i remember, agree with fab, pretty exciting to see where this ends up.
    (names amazing how it ended up being that with some word play, sketchem.)
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  • sketchem
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    sketchem interpolator
    Good morning folks. A little update: 

    I am still working on the map. I'm spending a lot of time on it in the hopes it will speed things up later. 

    I began by outlining all the neighborhoods, then I consolidated them based on similarity from a quick view (sorry for the hasty generalization, I'm sure your neighborhood is very unique). Then I marked the roads and highways I wanted to include. Right now I'm making a list of landmark buildings to include. Having an idea of which landmarks I want lets me know about how big each area should be. Then I can scale everything around making downtown appear bigger. 

    I want to include some earthquake fault zones where the landscape has large fissures. I am also going to play up LA's history with oil and include many active wells across the landscape. Tank farms and refineries will also be helpful. These are things I can add, that use a lot of repeating parts and they eat up space. 

    I have areas prioritized so I can reduce scope quickly and still have something that makes sense as a finished product for the deadline. 

    Other than that I was looking down Hollywood Blvd and found a neat little row of shops. I thought it would make a good example to work on the technical goals and style. 





    So to update my technical goals:

    - 128px/m instead of 256px/m. This is closer in line with the average PS2 game. 
    - No texture filtering so everything is crispy - PS2 had bilinear filtering. 
    - No AA (used FXAA for the above screenshot to save your eyes)  - Some games had software AA, PS2 had no hardware AA. 
    - 8-bit color depth. For now I'm using quantize color in Designer to squash some color. I need to find a better solution for this. 

    I have been trying to find a solution to two problems. 1) PS2 used Gouraud shading. 2) PS2 used vertex lighting. These are about 80-90% of the PS2 look. Right now I'm using PBR and static lighting in Unreal. No ray-tracing or lumen or anything. I did see some nice things in the unreal marketplace so I might nave to buy something. 

    Anyways, I have a better of idea of what I need to do so I will keep doing it!
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  • sketchem
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    sketchem interpolator
    Small update


    I created a material function that uses the SkyAtmosphereLightDirection instead of an arbitrary 3vector. It generates something I can lerp between light and dark using the level DirectionalSun component.


    I throw that into a MasterMaterial for the entire thing. I multiply light and dark over a texture for the base color, then feed that into emissive of material set to unlit. This breaks PBR (i'm okay with that, it's even better actually). Anything in my level that glows like light fixtures will go directly into emissive without receiving the fake lighting. I'll make a second MM for light emitting objects. They'll have to be on their own texture sets. 

    I bought Pixel8r to help better reduce the palettes on my textures. It has more options and gives a little better results than Designer's Quantize Color Nodes. 

    I tweaked my textures and took a short video of the pizza place under the new lighting


    And with that, I feel better about this and will start on the main level. 
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  • Zein
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    Zein polygon
    looks really cool <3 
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  • iam717
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    iam717 polycounter
    when i was doing the wrong thing and eating wrong, i always thought hamburger was a sandwich ?  is it not?  otherwise this is looking neatly put together such a blueprint layout, impressive to me, the fake lighting is a neat touch.
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  • kanga
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    kanga hero character
    Strategy looks great. Cant wait to see it develop!
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