Developer Blog Post - Creating and Designing Buildings
- The days are growing brighter, thank the heavens. To know that at any moment, a new catastrophe could strike is truly harrowing, but, with time, it also numbs the soul. What's paramount is that we push forward, and when I gaze upon this settlement, we've indeed constructed something magnificent. -Design principles
Designing buildings for Endzone is a complex undertaking. Numerous factors must be considered in advance, and this requires careful planning. Our primary objectives when creating new buildings are:
- recognisable shapes
- effective colour coding
- seamless integration into the surrounding environment
This ensures that the buildings stand out at a distance without appearing detached.
Design Guidelines in Endzone 1
To achieve this, we organise buildings by their subsequent use in our gameplay, categorising and visually sorting them. In Endzone 1, buildings involved in water mechanics were coloured blue and given the Tarpaulin texture. Similarly, structures linked to food production or processing had a reddish colour code.
Design Guidelines for Endzone 2
We have implemented this method in Endzone 2, but with more attention paid to design principles as we learned the challenges of finding buildings in Endzone 1 as settlements grew. We followed the design principle that each building should be a self-contained system, visibly distinct from the surrounding street and neighbouring buildings. This approach minimises complexity in larger cities and logistics, which were significant factors in gameplay for Endzone 1. However, it also reinforces the grid-like appearance, which serves as the foundation of the technical aspect of Endzone.
Visual Progression
Endzone 2 introduces progressive building stages, allowing for visual advancements upon upgrading to a higher tier. Unlike in Endzone 1, this mechanic is now incorporated beforehand in all buildings' technical and resource progression. An example of how this works can be seen below.
In the initial state, referred to as Tier 1, buildings adopt a patchwork appearance that is familiar to most of you from Endzone 1. The design principle dictates that people inhabiting the world after the nuclear fallout use all the materials they can possibly find. Scrap, loose parts, and a lot of wood are used to construct a building just sturdy enough to stand on its own and withstand the environmental conditions. The scrappy look can be found in any building at the Tier 1 stage. The second Tier upgrade for the Acre building introduces new resources available to the player at this stage of progression. Wood is replaced by stone and bricks, corrugated sheets are replaced by actual metal roof panels, and occasionally new walkable and accessible layers for settlers are introduced.
These design guidelines allow for a subtle but noticeable change in the structure and prosperity of your settlement as you naturally progress through the game. It also helps to distinguish more easily which materials or resources are processed in that building or what other uses it has. For example, the Wood Cutter only has a Tier 1 stage and, since it produces a very basic and early available resource, it will remain in that stage.
Organic Placement
Another approach we took was to place the buildings off-grid, making their placement more organic. In Endzone 1, each building was designed to match the grid and sometimes even be relatively square or rectangular in shape, but we intentionally broke away from that look. This allows for a much more organic appearance and helps buildings blend better into their surroundings.
Colour Coding
We also implemented a new colour-coding system for the roofing of all buildings to make it easier to organise and identify your settlement from a distance.
- Raw production buildings use dark blue.
- Food production buildings use orange.
- Housings use red.
- Water buildings use light blue.
- Industrial buildings use black.
Since we are still experimenting with the best layout and distribution, we implemented a workflow that allows us to adjust the colours of certain materials on the fly, enabling us to create unlimited variations of buildings if needed.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Set Dressing
Another layer of readability is introduced by displaying the resource processed in each building. Our modular workflow also allows us to dynamically change the displayed resource, depending on what you choose to process. This is very convenient for farming buildings like the Acre or the Plantation but is ultimately helpful for any kind of building, telling a story and showcasing the work that is carried out there. This layer is also accompanied by the so-called "Set Dressing," which can be manually done in-engine with our very own library of assets. Using this approach, we can create a variety of the same building with a different layout and distribution of dynamic elements.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Environmental Adjustments
On top of that, we have created a custom tool that allows us to paint the texture and foliage that correspond to each building individually. Using this, we can incorporate the building much more smoothly into the existing world and ensure it blends well with the environment it is placed in.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
A look ahead
There is much more we are working on to make each building stand out while still remaining homogeneous and fitting well into the world of Endzone. To give you a glimpse of what is still under production, we will shortly mention a dynamic shading system that allows buildings to have an overgrown appearance and also blend in with mud. In addition, we are exploring procedurally damaging and altering the appearance of buildings, depending on how much they were affected by sandstorms or general destruction. We also aim to implement effects like fire, smoke, and carefully designed settler animations that show interaction with the world and each other. If you are interested in that, I suggest you read our latest blog post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2144640/view/5711185603040607420
Addition to "Organic Placement"
Here you can see, how the Iron Caster Building has a fairly elongated but narrow Ground Plane. Showing the grid as visual guidance shows, how it only appears to carry the logical and technical components, while being visually independent and incorporating non-grid-like shapes.
Last but not least, we want to say thank you for already 10.000 followers for Endzone 2. I hope these detailed insights give you a good climpse of what we're cooking and what Endzone 2 will be about. Keep the comments, feedback and support coming - it's fantastic. Thank you!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2144640/Endzone_2?snr=2_groups_partnerevents_
[h3]As Discord is our main platform for feedback and discussion within the community, we highly recommend joining us and sharing your feedback there.[/h3]
- First version of our new mesh on the right and the old one from Endzone 1 on the left.
- Increasing LOD-Levels from left to right, reducing the overall polycount with increasing distance of the camera
