Furnishings, Of The Alien Variety.
In keeping with the hexagon theme that seems to be pervading this game, the alien structures dotted around the landscape also keep in with this design.
The initial idea for this particular environment that the player explores, is that it is an abandoned mining facility deep within a mountainous area. I have some vague backstory written down somewhere detailing why the area is abandoned and why there is mining, however I shall write those notes up separately. The gist is that aliens went to war, needed more spaceships to shoot stuff from, so they mined the hell out of the planet. After the mining was finished, they ran out of aliens to use the spaceships so they sent the miners to war. Something along those lines anyway.
So, here is some concept art for a vague backstory!
This was a study in order to work out the scale and shape of a few objects, notably the large rock structures being mined, mining facility/living quarters and a wall to protect the building from the flora and fauna (which has as nasty habit of shooting green glowy stuff at people and presumably aliens).
This was another study to establish some of the form and texture of the environment, also an experiment into the look for a vista on an alien world. The purpose of the large structures on either side of the image is left ambiguous as to whether they are natural or manufactured. This is due to the desire to get a handle on the look of the world before its purpose.
This images was both to sketch out the building in the first concept in a little more detail, as well as throw out a few more ideas for other building shapes and how they might fit together. The only part of the top half of the image that was developed any further, was the frame work type building on the right hand side, which made itself way into the game as an Alien Mining Tower.
Here is what became of the various concepts of after going through the process of texturing and modelling, then being implemented in the game:
The modelling work for each of these assets for the most part amounted to little more than Get A Hexagon, Do Stuff To It. Some parts required a little more work, such as the trim around the large building and the door. The wall segments required even less, as they are little more than cubes. In fact they are a little less than cubes as I deleted the hidden faces.
More time was spent lining up the UVs and in the texture work for these models than the modelling itself. Here is the texture map for the building, with UVs overlaid: (the texture for the wall piece is almost identical to the flat, blue-grey area of the building)
The pavement parts fulfil both the role of there being some areas of flat, supported ground to walk on (as well as having them collapsed in some areas to add interest/change the dynamic of traversing) and allow areas around the mining facility to have manufactured ground. Especially a ground that had the appearance of being manufactured, yet had also been reclaimed by nature.
The tubular pip-like objects running across the map were another asset created to have strong gameplay implications. Visually, they were designed to be a method of transportation for the mining facility. What the aliens used to transport whatever resource they were mining from one area to another. The gameplay implication is that it enables the player to climb up and down between different elevations, as well as act as a bridge across deep drops.
In order to facilitate fast placement of these tubes, a prefab was created that contained a string of them, each parented to the one behind it. So when one was moved, the rest in the chain moved with it. This greatly sped up the process of placing them, as each one did not have to be aligned indivdually.
For a demonstration of the placing of the tubes:
The other major alien structure in the landscape is the mining tower, other than me simply liking the idea of it from the concept work, is an area where the player would have to watch their step or risk falling to their death is pretty much a staple of platforming and adventure games, both of which this game draws inspiration from. Here is that tower in all it's full, imposing glory:
The tower itself takes inspiration from the large lift towers present over Earth-based mining facilities, and to suggest that this tower was built here for a purpose, there is a green-goo filled hole beneath it, which was perhaps once a mine shaft but became filled with goo.