MNC Visual Development Progress

Thanks for creating this topic Eka! I hadn't seen the Tank artwork yet. The last one looks like his gun shoots vanilla ice cream. I think this idea has huge potential...

I like the tuft of hair on the Gunner/Tank contrast sketch.
It's charming.

However, after coming to know the Tank as he is now, that slick hairdo he has in the flaming gun sketch doesn't really strike me as suiting him, haha.

Is it just me or does he look like angry Abe Lincoln in that last image? Probably just me.

This is a very interesting thread so far! Thanks for posting all this stuff c:

Tank head studies:


So I ended up picking the first Tank design and you know which head won. The difficult think with Raf's designs are that they could all work so it comes down to a personal preference, personality of the character and how he contrasts with the other characters.

The head on the bottom, second from the left, looks like the gunner with chin hair.

The one in the middle row, second from the left looks what would happen if the tank and gunner had a baby. "I'm a mutha, brutha".

I really like the style of the first three but I don't see that as the Tank. The first one bottom row looks like it can be from an Aladdin movie. lol

Continuing on with the Tank, once we decided on look and face, Raf did a more finished version of the front and back of the Tank.



Based on the concepts, I build a rough temp model and AZO and I figured out the three skeleton sizes we would use for all the characters. Once the temp model is built, AZO binds it to a skeleton does some rough animations, then I tweak the model and we go back and forth until were happy with how his overall shape and movement works in the game.


Tank was a little tricky because of his deployment parts so that's another reason to keep the model fairly rough to make quick adjustments before starting out on the final model. Once AZO is happy with it, he can continue to animate while I work on the model and if we both did our jobs well, it should be easy to swap in the final mesh and have everything work well. This isn't always the case but this process worked pretty well for all the characters.

Concept
Rough model
skeleton test
rough animation
final model
final animations

Here are some more early screenshots from December 2008. We still didn't have a final name for the game and internally we were still calling it Hostile.

You'll also notice that we have particle effects in the game thanks to our other hire Ben who joined the team bringing the art team to a total of four. Raf, AZO, Ben and myself.



At this point we had more roughed out robot models that broke apart when destroyed and a basic textured level that Scathis was still working on. We did daily playtests and we still continue to do that for iterating on new maps, features, etc.

This thread is amazing. Thank you so much!

Kimbo was totally the right call btw.

Yeaa that's awesome. The early stages of "Hostile" look pretty cool.

*Puts on his eager face*

Can't wait to hear Support's early history. :mrgreen:

Would you guys consider releasing a whitebox deathmatch version of the game for PC? :shock:

...because that would be teh awesomez

What was the thinking with making flaps opening up on the tank while deployed? What is the purpose of making him a larger target and losing rear armor? I mean from an artistic stand point, looks cool and makes him look bigger and more fearsome. But from a tactical stand point, if I was buying armor and all of this was really possible, you know suspension of disbelief and all. I would seriously question why when I decide to deploy and lose mobility with this armor, I would also lose rear protection and become a bigger target. If anything I would want to increase my armor and have a smaller profile if I can't move. Especially in an arena environment where people can sneak behind me.

Now I would understand if the thinking was becoming a human wall so your team mates can try to hid behind the flaps and use them as cover.

I'm pretty sure the point is to make it easy to tell that he is deployed. If his appearance didn't change at all, it would be very hard to tell from a distance.

That's right. The point of the expanding armor was to change the outline of the silhouette so players could tell when the Tank was deployed. The same is true for the Gunner as well.

Yep, silhouette change primarily. If you're curious about the thinking behind the functionality, Tank's armor reroutes power from mobility to faster Juice gain. Initially we also had a repulsion field that would push enemies back if you get close to him, hence the glowing circular bits on his upper back.

How did this get removed? Too overpowered? Too hard to draw? This would have been awsome. Shame...

It was removed because it didn't work so well with the game physics. Really odd looking behavior.

Yeah, I recall reading that with the gunner, change the silhouette. And I guess that overrides the real world logic trying to be applied to video game demands.

We try to be consistent with the rules of the world, real world logic doesn't mean anything in a game.