For Backers Only: Planetary Biome Concepts

Really nice and instantly identifiable.

@paulusss Looking at the image, I see a mixture of old and new. It is rather obvious that not all the biomes are all 'in-game' yet. Desert, Forest, Tropical and Lava all seem to have a 'real' screenshot. While the others are just concept art at the moment. So to me it appears as this is quite hot of the line, sharing the info with us backers as soon as available.

You get an exclusive preview to this sort of material and still complaining?

How I felt when I saw the swirly on the forest biome



How I felt when I saw the barren rocky biome with its awesome mountains and stone spires



How I felt when I saw that gorgeous lava biome and the lighting...



Fantastic work guys, so happy I kickstarted!

What in the wide world
How did I miss this great art
This is amazing.

A short Haiku by me.

In all seriousness, these are some great pieces of art. Here is what I think they are, in order:
Desert
Forest/Plain
Ice/
Jungle/Tropical
Atoll/Water
Rock/Mountain
Metal
Magma
Airless/Moon
Gas Giant

Is this right?
Also, out of curiosity, are the images that look computer generated in-game shots or 3D concept stuff?

I agree with your list.


Very nice work Uber.

The art style looks pretty awesome so far, and I like the variance between the different biomes. I'm looking forward to the day when I can play a RTS where I can find such varied styles not just among different maps, but among different areas on the same map. I think this could end up being one of the defining aspects of PA.

Quick question. When I think of "biome" i think of a sub region of a planet, rather than a planet itself. Will each of these Biomes be a unique planet type, or will a typical planet have multiple regions, each conforming to one of the biomes here. If the latter, is the concept to weight different worlds to have different amounts of biome region, depending upon it's world type? e.g. a hot wet world will have mostly jungle biomes with a few areas of forest biomes and some small Arctic biomes at the poles, while a cold dry world may be mostly mountains, large ice caps, and a small smattering of desert along the equator.

That's what I'm guessing from the planet generator demonstrations I've seen on the live-stream. If so, I'd be curious to see what combinations of biomes we might see on different worlds.

This post needs more cats

Not terribly excited about the painted-on world of warcraft trees. They look low quality compared to the rest.

I need need to remember to wear a bib before I look at these concept art photos... Keep drooling on my shirt they are plenty identifiable, and easily, this is the best looking RTS ever made.

I have to admit that I was concerned about the swirls first. They reminded me too much of Spore - not a good association for me. However, looking at these concepts fills me with joy and Steve and Dox managed to integrate the swirls (even on the metal planet!!! :shock: ) in a way that looks great.

The biomes look stunning! The more I see the more I'm looking forward to PA. =3

I will double my pledge for a Crystalline Entity experimental.

Fantastic work! These look amazing...look forward to the game more with each new bit of information released!

Thought on the swirls, since there seem to be those that like them and don't. Could have a slider in the planet generator: "intensity/number of swirls"

sadly I agree with you... But in my soul I hope they are in a more advanced state with the development. But I know that developing a game like this is far from easy, especially If they have to write the engine from the ground up (as they have said) instead to use something like unity etc.

Wouldn't a Crystalline Entity experimental be kind of useless, seeing as it only feeds on living tissue and not "dead" robots?
Although you could ofcourse use it to terraform planets to a complete desert planet.

an "intensity/number of swirls" slider in the planet maker would be a great way to give everyone their desired amount of swirliness :mrgreen:

Love it, not a fan of the swirls, but the overall style and quality is great, and something as minor as a few aesthetic swirls here and there is something I can easily overlook if they are something you want to keep in the final game

Keep up the good work !

Keep in mind, concept art has little bearing on the state of engine development. And most of the images show here are brand new. Some have been iterated on for a while, but the detail, especially the planet surfaces, has been an ongoing process. This is not, as has been said, months old, except in the sense that it takes quite a while to start to conceptualize 10 radically different planet/biome types that will still make for awesome gameplay.

As different artists do different things, while Steve has been doing a lot of concept work of late, unit development, biome creation, animation, effects, etc by other artists continues to move forward at full speed.

Just wanted to clarify a bit, on both the perceived age of this image (it was just "finished" as much as anything is ever finished), and what it means for the state of development (no real inferences can or should be drawn from a concept image).

Love it all! You got every type that I would like to see in the game.

As much as we would like to see concept images be the real thing, they often lead to creation of better end products

So on the last live stream when the planet editor was shown there were clearly options that said MARS and ACID.



In light of this (excellent) concept art should we not expect to see these biomes anytime soon, or are they getting extra awesome applied and will be revealed later, or are they something that will appear past Alpha and Beta even?

Just curious.

Also if we do get Mars Biome...



....Make sure its really red...