Well, after a short break for lots of back-end changes to the website and a whole scale ramping up of development and, as I’m sure you noticed, a few announcements, I’m back. Don’t be expecting the long posts of days of yore but I will be getting you back in the loop, posts about game art and general game chit chat. Occasionally.

So I realised there was one prominent area I hadn’t mentioned at all and that was the splash screen. A much maligned topic due to its intrusive abuse – like everyone else we want to get on and play the game. No ones interested in who the game developers/publishers are, what engine or tools it was built with etc.. Just show me the game!!!! But like it or lump it we need something as the game first loads. We …

Our very own CFO, Nick Karp, has given a lovely and informative interview on Guns, Dice, Butter about his years at SPI and Victory games, the epic games he’s designed and about his time here at Shenandoah.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Pat Ward

Well it’s all happening around here. Jeff’s being asked to lecture to college students about game design, Nick’s being interviewed for a podcast, I, erm, nearly finished Stalker: Call of Pripyat and now Eric, our CEO has been nominated Game Designer of the Month over at the Board Game Geek. This is a real honour and over the month he’ll be answering as many questions as possible so feel free to join him.

subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Pat Ward

So form follows function .. does it? Really?

Well .. yes .. and no.  Partly.

Anyone who’s read my earlier art diary posts will have noticed me mention functionality and its importance in wargame map design, often with a nod towards Redmond Simonsen. Being a regular lurker and one time fist waving contributor to the BGG’s board game art forums I’ve noticed a number of people bandying about the phrase “form follows function” like it was some kind of mantra. A golden rule. A statement of fact. And right now I’m going to terrify the rest of the team by telling you that most of the people throwing that around don’t have the first clue of what they’re talking about.

Let’s be perfectly clear from the start. It’s true. And it’s not true. It’s a partial truth.

Look, in simple terms we’re talking about …

We’d decided we wanted at least 3 buttons on screen all the time, commit, undo and menu, so the interface wasn’t planned to be fully dynamic ..  invisible until required. But how should the buttons look? Obviously they need to look functional, either following iOS/web standards or looking like physical buttons. You need to know they’re pressable.

The iOS look wouldn’t fit the feel of the game so that was dismissed. I wanted something to match the semi realistic look of the map. To not stand out like the units and icons but to blend in so you’re not fully aware of it as you’re playing. I looked at integrating it into a kind of WW2 German map case, all leather, metal studs and plastic but buttons, switches and panels didn’t work in that context. Buttons felt awkward and the kind …

My iPad 2 was the first touch screen device I’d had. My son has an iPod Touch but that always felt too small to me and I didn’t bother with it so sitting down with the iPad was the first time I got to consider how it’s used. Actually, truth be told, I didn’t. I didn’t really think about it properly until starting to lay out the interface. I remember watching an interview with an iPad developer who discussed how they’d spent 3 months working on the position of two buttons on the bottom of their app. I thought that was ridiculous. Now I’m not so sure.

Having to position buttons in a usable manner does require you to take a closer look at what your hands are doing and, more importantly, what other people’s hands are doing. As obvious (or …

Short and sweet this week. I know I’ve said that before but its got to be true today.

So. Icons. I don’t mean app icons but ways of representing game or unit states in-game. These are really interesting and if I’m honest, I’ve never had to do anything like them before. I’ve created all the more obvious ones at one time or another but some of these are just a little bit tricky. I mean, here’s what I’ve got to have icons for ..

Combat Preview
Combat Resolution
Wooded terrain
Forest Terrain
Clear Terrain
Surprise Attack
Artillery Bonus
Armour Bonus
Out of Supply
Out of Fuel
Airpower Bonus
River Assault
City bonus
Town Bonus
Isolated

Non of them appear too problematic. There’s some vague standards/conventions for some but having an icon work at 128×128, 24×24 and 11×11 pixels can be a conundrum. When I started in game graphics professionally I missed out the whole pixel art area …

Continuing from Part 1

I decided early on to go for a more traditional counter design. Something that would hold the relevant information and stand out from the map enough to be easily seen. And what information would there be? In rough order of importance are nationality, availability, the arm (Armour, infantry, mechanized), the unit strength, supply/fuel situation, is an elite/regular unit, can exploit move, the name of the unit (since we’re very much about bringing history alive) etc.. That’s quite a lot but the advantage of making a computer game is that we’re not strictly limited to cramming so much print onto the face of a card counter. Some things will be indicated as and when needed or as additions to the counter.

After deciding on the order of importance I divided them again into permanent characteristics and transient/optional though the …

I’m sure you’re all mighty disappointed but the diary shall be shorter than usual this week.

There’s plenty of conventions we’ve all come to expect of wargame counters

I mentioned in an earlier post that unit counters almost design themselves. That’s obviously an oversimplification but what I mean is that you have a prioritized list of information that needs to be on each one. There’s plenty of conventions we’ve all come to expect of wargame counters (most of them actually devised by Redmond and others at SPI) and they’ve endured because they work so I’ve no intention of reinventing the wheel.

I’ve also no intention of going down the minis route for this game. While you might think that having nice little 3D models of tanks and infantry roaming about the semi 3D environment would look cool I knocked it on …

Part 2

So. Continuing on from Art diary 9.

Scale

Issues with scale encompasses everything. The map is obviously not to scale. From a simple geographical point of view areas and towns have been moved around relative to one another and the relative size of the individual areas have been changed. John’s original layout was topographically quite accurate. But this resulted in area sizes that were un-workable. We need to be able to fit six units in each area plus any extra area and unit symbols. Some areas could barely support two.

So when everyone was happy with the proof of concept I had a break from the map and concentrated on other areas. When I came back with fresh eyes I started from scratch. The layout had to be massaged to fit the units and some roads had to be changed. This was …

Over the Christmas holiday we returned to our home city of Liverpool to catch up with relatives and friends. It is always a very important time for us as it is the only time we get to see most of them.

But this Christmas there was an additional chance meeting at a bus stop. My son and I were waiting for a bus to take us into town to spend his Christmas money in the sales and were joined by this nondescript looking old man. It was freezing cold, blowing a gale and raining and he made a comment to us about how he remembered the snow fall when he was de-mobbed and how he’d had to wade through 4 feet of it as he wandered over the farmers fields to get home (it is now a vast, sprawling housing estate).

…

Part 1

OK so the first 8 Art Diaries came out pretty quickly .. I was and still am playing catchup but now I’ve been officially announced to the world expect these to be coming out once a week. There may be the odd random post thrown in here and there but we’ll see.

So if you watched that little teaser movie at the end of diary 8 you’ll know where we are and saw some of the experiments that took place along the way. The decisions weren’t made linearly and they’re all intertwined. It’ll be easiest if I just list them in what ever order comes to mind.

Colour Palette.

The colour (with a U!) range was defined quite early on with the help of the thumbnail sketches and the photo reference. Natural, cool colours. Contrasty but top and tailed. I didn’t want …

One of the unsung heroes has left us.

Not many of us can ever hope to match his ability or levels of output but this mans work alone should show you how important, inspirational and influential a good artist and, by all accounts, a wonderful person, can be.

Update: Bethesda have put up a page in his memory.

www.elderscrolls.com

subject: discussion
author: Pat Ward

So we have the rough playtest map that John had worked up that shows all the most important gameplay features. The design process was still on going and I had no idea if the map layout would change in the future but it was all I had to work with so for now I used it as a template.

If you’ve followed the first 6 diary entries you’d probably expect that, knowing exactly what I was doing, I immediately produced the finished map. I hope Diary #7 indicates that things rarely follow a straight route and that sometimes you need to feel your way into a project before you find the right path.

The very first thing I did was the header for the website. It was the equivalent of putting down that first brush stroke on a perfectly white …

I’ve just reread some posts and something I thought I should point out is that non of this happened in as logical a manner as these entries suggest. Shenandoah are following the Agile Scrum approach to business which is a remarkable system and I think will work well for us but it can sometimes feel like its trying to force the creative process rather than nurture it. To anyone who doesn’t understand it that process can sound like mumbo jumbo excuses for an easy life but its actually about understanding the strengths of the two halves of the brain, how they work and interact and using that to your advantage.

Deciding that today I’m going to design x .. rarely means that you’ll have the results there and then. You have to go through the initial solo or group brain storming …

With the overall approach starting to gel I wanted to dig down and find the core elements

I’d already established the over riding feel I was aiming for (link to early diary) so with that in mind I next started gathering more photo reference from the war, holiday snaps from Flicker, colour references, aerial pictures and anything else that fed into the feel I wanted. Its not enough to just have representations of trees and landscape .. I wanted to find out what made them live. This is a small selection.

Well, the most outstanding feature off all the photos is the contrast. Kind of obvious in snowy pictures but I just thought I’d point it out. You could reduce them all to 3 colours and it would make little difference. Black, sky blue and white.

The slight issue with the Bulge is …

The major terrain features of the initial map are Forest, Woods, Rough terrain, Clear terrain, Cities, Towns, Rivers, Roads, Bridges and the victory line at the Meuse river. A board with those essential items blocked out would be perfectly functional but utterly dull.

There’s a whole host of different ways of representing these different features and each lends its own flavour to the game so first thing is to go through my library and the net and look for how other people had represented them. I don’t want to be copying anything that’s gone before so like brain storming you get all the most obvious ideas out of the way first and then build on them.

The above is a random selection of what I was looking at and there’s a variety of different styles and techniques on show.

Top right. We’re not …

I’ve mentioned elsewhere about my involvement with the Conflict of Heroes series by Academy games. Well I’m very pleased to announce that the artwork I did for the reprint of Awakening the Bear has finally seen the light of day. Uwe announced it on Academy’s site and there’s been some talk on the Geek.

I’ve got some more info and shots on my own site, Colour and Noise

It’s always very exciting see your work being published but it’s a very nervous time too. You do your best to ensure everything is perfect, that the client is happy and then send it off to a printer and a process you have precious little control over. There’s only so much you can do to ensure you adhere to the printers specs and colour profiles, comparing earlier print runs (from different printers and different …

If you follow Redmond’s directives the first and most important visual game element are the units. However I can’t help but think that traditional counters almost design themselves. (Bare in mind that the map, units and interface have all been worked on at almost the same time so many decisions were based on how they worked as a whole and not made in isolation.)

Maybe that’s too simplistic but from a purely functional point of view and assuming a traditional counter layout they require X bits of information to be displayed in ABC order of importance. You could say the same about the map but for this particular battle I think the environment played such a pivotal role that it needs to be given special emphasis and to an extent dictate the overall graphical direction of the game. And lets not …

As much as I love my shiny new iPad, I like block games. It’s the deception and physical chunkiness of the blocks. The ability to pick it up and slam it on the table with a resounding crack knowing your 4 point Panzers are going to annihilate the 1 point infantry he has in that hex. Providing that STILL IS that 1 point infantry ..

So I’ve been slowly amassing them .. slowly as in I have 3. EastFront 2, Quebec 1759 and Rommel in the Desert. Not much of a collection but they stand proud and look like they mean business when they’re on the table. Well, EastFront does and Quebec looks interesting. But Rommel in the Desert is battered (it was a Geek trade for .. and don’t let Eric and John know, .. Ambush).

A …

There’s no getting away from the fact that the iPad is just fantastic.

There. I’ve said it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Mac fanatic. I started on PC’s. Moved onto Macs when I was doing print work and went back to PC’s when I moved to games and VFX. We have three PC’s at home (two are mine for work) and I’ve no plans to buy a Mac. All the graphics work done for this game will be done on a PC and I expect all the rest in the future will be.

But Apple’s hardware is absolutely up there and the iPad is no exception.

The simplicity and intuitiveness of the UI belies just how clever and well thought out it is. I won’t say it’s a joy to use because you don’t realise you’re using it. You just do.

(Actually thats not …

Well if you came here for a first look at our Battle of the Bulge game you’re out of luck! But don’t turn tail just yet. It’s early days.

I’ve not had the game that long but have played through it several times. I’ve also amassed quite a bit of research as I’m also involved with Academy Games’ Conflict of Heroes Bulge game. The two games differ in scale though – CoH being tactical and this being .. maybe grand tactical(?) or operational(?). I’m sure I’ll be corrected. What’s important is that it’s not tactical.

I have very definite thoughts on tactical artwork. To me, tactical is all about people and their stories. Individual men, machinegun crews, tanks and the world they are fighting through. I like my tactical maps to reflect that world and to provide a framework and enough background …

by Darin Leviloff

subject: art diary
author: Pat Ward