The Environmental Art of NML

Posted by Matheus Pitillo on Oct 8, 2012 in Life at VFS | 2 comments

Hey guys, what’s up? The team is facing crazy days with the last moments before Alpha, but everything is working fine. Our last decisions were to focus on how we will communicate the theme throughout the game, and, after we can finally create this atmosphere, we will start to focus on the last areas of the game. Let’s see how things will work. For this post I’m here to talk a little bit more and to complement the last post about the Environmental Art of NML. One of my other roles in our project. YEY! o/

Arenas Theme
Each Section of the League Arena is focused on a different Theme. We want to relate each section with a unique Brand, with each brand representing a parody of itself. The famous brands are Dr. Papas, Vacation World, Rubrick Pizza and Inrel and will be presented in the game. Any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental. LOL. The player will face challenges that will relate to the brand. For example, in Dr. Papas Arena the biggest brand is a huge Pepper and the hazards on this area are the Fire Machines.

We don’t have the intention of soiling the name of the original brands to which we are referring. The idea is just to get the best brands and represent them in a creative and fun way within our environments. All Parody Brands were done by Omar Gonzalez, the Artist of NML. You can see examples of those Brands in the image bellow.

League Arena Parody Brands

The First Decisions
Everything in our universe is hovering. We have tall buildings, big constructions, spaceships, flying cars, cables and turbines everywhere. At first we decided to show all of these, placing the buildings and everything else around the Main Arena. While the player plays, he would be able to watch the whole city working around him. But, after thinking deeper about it, we came to the conclusion that the player would never be able to watch all these small details, since our main camera is a Top Isometric View. The solution that we got was to create a huge glass flying arena with the crowd all around, and the city far away beneath the Arena. This way the player will be able to see the Main Character moving around the sections and also watch the city far away.

We searched for a lot of futuristic cities and arenas to use as reference point for the Environmental Art. One of the biggest inspirations was the Sport Arena in the game Final Fantasy X. For NML we are following a similar structure for our arena, but, in terms of arena style, the main references that I’m using are the similar shapes of the buildings designed by three different architects: Chris Bosse, Emergents and Erick van Egeraat. I like their futuristic shapes, colours and dimensions used for their projects. The player will be able to see a lot of those references in our Arena in the use of glasses, hexagonal shapes etc.

Environmental Hazards
There are four different hazards in the League Arena of NML. All Hazards are there to create a bigger relation to the idea of the American Gladiator, since this is our biggest focus for our Arena Gameplay.

• In Dr. Papas Arena Section the player will face the Fire Hazard. To cross some important areas of this Section, the player will need to move along some small platforms avoiding the fire that will come from everywhere.
• In Vacation World – Beach of Death Section the player will face the Wormbot of NML for the first time. Players will need to be very careful to not be caught by surprise attacks under the sand. The Environment Hazard in Beach of Death is the Sand, that makes the Mech move slowly in the surface.
• In Rubrick Pizza Challenge Section, the player will need to find the best way to move through the Conveyor Belt Hazard. Slice of Pizza conveyors will also be rotating there. If the player is not careful enough, they will be thrown out of the arena.
• And finally in Inrel Deathmatch Section the player will move along moving platforms, reaching the DeathMatch Room where they will face all enemies in a small arena. The Magneto Hazard will suck anything metallic toward it, making the player’s movement even more difficukt. After the DeathMatch Room, the player will face the Boss Fight against Fatvertiser.

Proping the World of NML
What would an environment be without Props? The famous boxes are all around the League Arena, and also the outdoors, buildings, wall advertisements, turbines etc. To try to make simple props that add to the Level Design of the game and relate them to the theme, simple walls that creates close combats were made as Wall Advertisement. Every prop in NML needs to reflect the marketing and brands of this whole crazy universe. The buildings were placed in the environment to give a better sense of space, and to show how big the Mech is in this universe.

Some of the Props of NML

Most of the props were modelled by me and texturized by Omar Gonzalez. Omar also did some of the last props of the game. You can see all props later on here in the website. For now we are just showing a quick idea of it. 😉

A quick look
And finally you can see a quick look of our League Arena floors. The whole Arena was modelled by me and texturized by Omar Gonzalez. The models and texture of the audience, crowds and VIP section are being completed. But for now, take a look at the image below.

I hope you like it. We are very excited with the final results and how everything is looking together now. Stay tuned here on the website for more details of the 3D Models, Animations, GUI and Game Design of the game. Have a good week. And HAPPY CANADIAN THANKSGIVING! 😀