MNC Visual Development Progress

I'll be posting to this thread on how MNC evolved from simple whitebox gameplay to what it looks like today.

First image is what the game looked liked in October of 2008. We were still working out the gameplay first, figuring out the various classes, weapons with very basic temp assets and placeholder UI. You'll notice that we had a minimap and limited ammo at this point in development and placeholder turret art by our CEO Bob Berry. I built a generic dude model that was used for both teams and did some horrible first pass animation work before AZO came on board to do real animation work.


This was our first office in a two bedroom apartment in Kirkland. That's my desk and to the left is Scathis and Ben our FX/Shader Artist. Notice the Costco folding tables and cheap *** chairs. This is how real development happens

Stairs and cargo bins? How intriguing.

What was the setting of MNC before it was decided that you would have it take place in a various stadiums?

We talked about making it a futuristic sport set in a stylistic and colorful world. With that general idea, it was a matter of pulling in the elements that work for the theme. The stairs and cargo containers were placeholder props that were used early on while we were learning how to use the Unreal Engine. As soon as we introduced grappling, using ramps for gameplay became problematic and we tried to avoid them as much as possible.

While we were figuring out the gameplay, I was doing some concept work and grouped the various characters into 3 sizes. I'm a fan of doing more stylized art but wanted to mix a stylized look with more realistic materials and lighting. With a class based shooter set in a over the top sport theme, it was important to exaggerate the characters' facial features and body proportions to make each character have a unique look.

This is the first piece of concept art I did to establish some general look and feel for the game.

I feel like the picture above(of what i assume is a sniper) should've been left in the game or aesthetic unlockables should include armor such as this

That wasn't ever in the game, it's a piece of concept art done in Photoshop. We would have loved to do some extra bonus material or customization for the characters but it was a resource and time issue.

I can see how it'd be a time issue and a resource issue but I personally feel if you guys ever find the time to make customization options this type of look should definitely be included

Been waiting to see stuff like this for a while

On the sharp shooter concept art, his little logo... that a king type thing? almost looks like with the armor/colour it's like... "team Poseidon" or something.

Is that an AR stuck into the end of the turret? These are awesome, thanks for sharing this stuff!

Team Neptunes is what that logo represents. The crown on the logo is echoed on the Sharp Shooters helmet and shoulders. Initially I wanted to do have custom armor styles based on the different themes of each team.

Sweet, great visual design that I can get that from just looking at it Was there a reason you decided against unique armor styles for each team (such as time/resources)? Can't wait to see more.

I wish I could play that Whitebox version. lol Bob sure did make some awesome turrets.:lol:

I'm loving this thread so far. Can't wait to see more.

There's some subtle things there in the UI in that pic that shows the early iterations of game play.
Notice 4 skill circles? A mini map? A number in the middle of the 4 circles? Experience Levels? Skill points? Total Ammo?

Yeah, I noticed all of those. It had me thinking "they changed it from skill points to money. I wonder why?"

In December 2008, we hired AZO who I worked with at Shiny Entertainment and at Gas Powered Games to be our fulltime animator. We also hired Raf who was a concept artist that I worked with at my previous project at Gas Powered Games. Raf has traditionally worked on more cartoony type games and has an amazing ability to give life and personality to characters that he designs.

At this stage of the project we collected a ton of reference images, had a good idea of the direction we wanted to go for the visual style and I did some initial character descriptions. The description also takes gameplay elements we had working at the time into account. While Scathis was doing gameplay design on the characters, we wanted to make sure the visuals worked with functionality of the character's abilities.


The first character that Raf started concepting was Tank. This is the description he started with:

Visual Characteristics
more bottom heavy
rounder armadillo like shape
jump jets
double handed jet engine gun left overhand grip
right hand on pistol grip
on deploy tank could be fully closed by a round shell to contrast with the Gunner's expanding of his armor (this changed later)
represent point defense laser on shoulder (this would later be cut)

Personality
Kimbo Slice (he's got a great face and attitude)
Zangief
Karnov (I loved this game back in the day)
bearded caucasion
quick tempered

Here's Raf's first sketch of the Tank based on the description. The image on the top right was an idea I was playing with for the Gunner who was more top heavy and angular visually and we wanted the Tank's look to contrast it.

In a fast paced shooter it was much easier to grok the idea of a single currency. We had money to buy turrets and <other stuff>. (Notice they were turrets back then, we added the "n" later) And then we had experience and skill points as well. All the early play testers we brought in a had a hard time with the dual currency system for a shooter. So we streamlined it down to just money.

Where did those come from? I find it kind of funny Kimbo Slice is in that list.

[Edit]
Ahhh ok. Thanks Scathis.

Wow all this stuff is great, this has been an awesome post for me to buzz through. Im going to school for graphic design and would love to one day do concept art for video games or be in the development of gaming. The tank went through some cool transformations but i must say the dual machine gun thing looked fricken sweet. If a new character would be added to the game this would have to be one of them. It looks like a great combination of tank and gunny.

makes me think what a sniper and assassin combination would look like or what it would use

Here's another version of Tank:

Woah, he looks weird with hair. Black and White flames look weird too. It kinda looks like foam.