Under The Hood — Volume 2

13 min read15 hours ago

Work In Progress

Week 5— Infrastructures: Concept to 3D

The construction of the Moon infrastructures was an exciting and extensive process. These structures are central to the game, and we anticipate players will jump, climb, and explore every corner of the moon, including scaling the massive towers and structures. Internally, we refer to these infrastructures as “infras.” The initial prototypes were quickly modeled to establish correct scale and proportions, but they lacked the detailed work, such as UV mapping and texture painting.

Finalizing the high-quality versions required us to carefully compare the target art with the mockups, enhancing and rebuilding parts where necessary to ensure optimal topology. At times, this was challenging due to the limitations of the 2D concepts and the need to make them believable in 3D. We made sure that every element had connectivity and purpose, avoiding impractical design elements like floating railings or impossible walls.

As we developed the infras, we also focused on adding details like lamp posts, antennas, oxygen tanks, greenhouses, and doorways. These elements are instanced on demand to minimize the overall footprint while maintaining a consistent design language across all structures. The process spanned several weeks as we ensured the concepts were faithfully translated while meeting technical requirements such as holographic signs, Blade Runner-style ad panels, and reflective glass.

Once the 2D concepts were captured, we faced the challenge of populating the backside of the structures. We commissioned rough concepts to fill in the blank spaces, implementing what worked best without overcrowding the design. These details may evolve as we refine the gameplay experience, ensuring that every partition serves a purpose and offers feedback to the player.

In the future, elements like upgrades, research, manufacturing, and maintenance will become essential, and providing feedback from those systems into the game world is critical to making the environment feel tangible and plausible.

Week 6— Jet Rider: Level Designs

One of our arcade games, initially inspired by Flappy Bird, has evolved into something far more captivating. What started as a simple concept now tells a narrative, adding combat and enemies to become an action-packed run-and-gun shooter which lead to its current name. The game features a Cryptonaut hero in a prequel to The Colony game, showcasing their journey across multiple objectives. This allowed us to explore three major environments central to the story.

To guide the design, we created mood boards for each faction, capturing their distinct styles.

Nova Alliance, the parent faction of the Cryptonauts, draws from industrial infrastructure — defined by solid, structured lines and bold, functional design.

Juroka Hive, by contrast, is a fusion of twisted metal and flesh, where science and nature shape a world of organic tunnels inside a larger living entity.

Earth Corp, a representation of corporate greed at its peak, embraces minimalism and ergonomic architecture, creating a world filled with cubicles and endless corporate progress.

As the environments evolved, we carefully matched their tone and direction with our original concept. Each level is set in a vast, endless hallway featuring intricate structures, deeper rooms, and ominous drops into the unknown.

For Earth Corp, we envisioned space littered with debris and characters, capturing a dystopian “Friend computer” capitalism meets comedy

To bring this vision to life, each environment was broken into core elements and adapted into a 3D world with 2D props. This unique 2.5D experience keeps the action and focus in the foreground, while the background tells the deeper story. Every level was meticulously designed with unique variations in walls, floors, ceilings, windows, doors, and even wall trims, allowing us to merge and remix environments as needed.

Watch one of the inspirations to explain the backgrounds during early concepts

Week 7— Earth Corp Soldiers: Concept to 3D

Earth Corp, a tech-driven faction, handles all forms of technology with a special focus on military-grade equipment for frontier expansion. To protect these assets, they rely on an elite team of soldiers divided into distinct classes: SWAT-based Soldiers, Elites, and Guards. Additionally, the faction includes Experimental soldiers specializing in demolitions, scouting, and advanced weaponry.

The SWAT units come in three flavors, each inspired by real-world USA tactical SWAT and riot gear, reimagined for a sci-fi universe. We wanted to ensure each class had a unique role conveyed through their armor and weapon preferences. This design not only guided the characters’ abilities but also signaled players on what behavior to expect in combat.

The Experimental soldiers followed a similar design process but with more futuristic inspirations. Divided into three categories — Scout, Soldier, and Demolitions — each class received specialized armor and weaponry. Scouts carried sniper rifles, Soldiers were armed with assault rifles, and Demolitions experts wielded rockets and shotguns. These designs were meant to feel distinct and cohesive, blending modern sci-fi aesthetics with functional, tactical roles.

With a clear direction for both SWAT and Experimental units, Each character’s proportions were carefully aligned with the overall style and themes of the faction, ensuring they felt cohesive within Earth Corp’s futuristic yet grounded look. After the sketches were approved, we moved on to coloring and blocking the final shapes, further refining the visual identity of each unit.

Once the 2D concepts were finalized, we transitioned into the 3D phase. Each character was built on a shared base frame to maintain consistent animations across classes. The base frame allowed us to layer distinct armor and body parts on top, adding faction-specific decorations and enhancements. Every detail, from their helmets to their boots, was sculpted to stay true to their concept while ensuring the models remained practical for animation and in-game performance.

During the modeling process, we had to continuously refine the characters, focusing on form, shape, and design standards. We smoothed out bias gradient angles, sharpened key edges, and enhanced features to reflect advanced, high-tech design principles. The goal was to achieve a balance between sleek and functional, maintaining the sci-fi theme while keeping the units grounded in realism.

The last phase involved testing the models through render passes. To match our game’s visual style, we ran the models through our toon shader pipeline, which posed some challenges with noise due to the complexity of the character parts. We minimized this by keeping the forms simple, reducing the total number of exposed edges to ensure clean outline tracing. This final step allowed us to see how the characters would perform visually in-game, locking in their look for Earth Corp’s elite forces.

After completing the render tests, we proudly present the Experimental soldiers alongside the SWAT units in their final group render. These designs represent the foundation of Earth Corp’s elite forces, but this is just the beginning. There are many more units and factions to come, each bringing their own unique flair to the battlefield. This is only a taste of the content we plan to introduce as we expand on the world of Earth Corp, with even more tactical variety and exciting designs to explore in future updates. Stay tuned for what’s next!

Week 8— The Evolution of Jet Rider: Campaign System

The initial concept of Jet Rider began with the idea of a straightforward infinite runner. The concept was simple: randomized rooms, increasing threats, and an endless stream of challenges. In theory, this could have been achieved by continually generating random rooms with varying threats that scaled up in difficulty. However, as the development evolved, the focus shifted toward creating a more structured campaign with objective-driven goals. This shift required a more complex system, capable of mapping rooms into levels and managing content effectively.

Components and Content Management

In Jet Rider, the levels are composed of several key components:

Pick-ups: These are resources that spawn within the rooms, providing players with boosters, weapons, coins, or gems. The pick-up system adds an additional layer of strategy, as players must manage resources while contending with threats.

Threats: These are the obstacles or enemies that players must contend with as they progress. Threats are organized into an ordered list, and their appearance is determined by a random number generator (RNG). As the difficulty level increases, so does the number and complexity of these threats. This dynamic system ensures that players are continually challenged as they progress through the game.

The Room: This serves as the basic building block for each level. Each room is accompanied by a backdrop, a visual piece that defines its look and feel, making each section of the game unique and immersive.

These components are handled by a vendor system, which is designed to ensure balance within each level. The vendor operates as an overseer with a “credit score” system, which limits the amount of content (e.g., threats, pick-ups) that can appear on the screen at once. By assigning credit values to each piece of content, the system ensures that rooms are not overloaded, keeping the game fair and enjoyable. When the vendor “purchases” obstacles or pick-ups, they are placed onto a grid, which allows for flexible positioning of all content.

To transform individual rooms into coherent levels, We use the overseer system. The overseer pulls from a definitions table to determine the order in which rooms appear within a level. This system allows the game to dynamically create levels, while each room defines and manages its own internal content. This modular approach offers flexibility, as developers can easily tweak room designs and content without affecting the overall structure of the game.

The game’s level definitions are managed through a custom editor. This editor allows developers to define a range of properties for each level, including bosses, themes, and other key attributes. This tool streamlines the process of level creation, enabling rapid iteration and experimentation with different level designs.

Campaign System: Objectives, Tracking, and Flexibility

The complexity of Jet Rider extends beyond individual levels into its campaign editor, which introduces objective-based gameplay. The campaign editor provides developers with the ability to set specific goals for each level and track the player’s progress through various metrics. These metrics include secret trackers, hidden timers, and fail conditions, which add depth to the gameplay. For example, a player could defeat a boss too quickly, triggering the campaign to increase the difficulty or unlock hidden levels. This system offers a high degree of control and customization, allowing for a dynamic, non-linear progression based on player performance.

A Dynamic, Database-Driven System

Ultimately, the goal for Jet Rider is to create a flexible, database-driven system. This system would loop together mission objectives, past activity, and level construction in real-time, generating rooms and populating them with faction-based content. By leveraging this dynamic approach, the game can continually adapt and evolve based on the player’s actions, ensuring a unique experience every time.

In summary, while Jet Rider may have started as a simple infinite runner, it has grown into a robust system that combines level design, content management, and campaign objectives into a cohesive whole. This evolution has enabled the creation of a game that is both flexible and challenging, offering players a rich and dynamic experience.