One of my first PC games I had ever played was a spectacular experience, I had never seen such detail put into a game before and I admired it for years. I still do with great enthusiasm, although not much can be said about its sequels. I am talking about a game called Empire Earth. A real-time strategy game developed by Stainless Steel Studios and published in November 2001.
This game took you into the stone age and placed you down on the ground as a new civilisation. Using your citizens you must gather resources and discover new bounty's of treasure to expand your empire and fend off your foes, who are also competing for the best empire. As you pass through the ages, your civilians and buildings change and grow as you discover new building materials and techniques. This was the game dynamic I found really rewarding, as I was progressing I could feel
the sense of achievement and it was that feeling that made me want to play the game.
Above are two sets of buildings that are progress over the Prehistoric age, Stone age and then finally the Copper age. Inspired by this dynamic feature, I wanted to design and model my own set of structures that have the ability to show progression as they went through ages if they were put into a RTS game. These would be similar to how the buildings progressed in Empire Earth, with the building materials, architectural changes and building techniques changing as time went by.
From this idea I have to take into account the following research:
- Architectural structures of many types of civilisations at first
- Building materials and the changes in them over history
- Current computer games that also have this progression feature on buildings/structures
- Emotional feelings this progression gives to the player
- Whether to design realistic or cartoon style buildings
I needed to focus on a major question that would lead me to being more precise with other research at first. This was the thought of whether to design cartoon style or realistically.
Cartoon style -
I have seen both cartoony and realistic buildings in RTS games before. Sid Meier's used cartoony structures in one of his most recent games: Cilivilzation revolution. One of the most successful console strategy games to date, receiving great reviews for "its game play and visual design" - Gamespot magazine. The use of these graphics in game brought humour to the game and it also made the games dynamics feel less serious. The result is an almost casual game feeling, an aesthetic that could bring new gamers to the Civilization franchise.
The picture above is of a Roman town centre from Civilization: Revolution, the huge scale of the model compared the terrain is almost comical. Note the size of a fishing vessel in the bottom left, it's bigger than the towns walls.
Realistic -
From this I move onto realistic building design. Age of Empires III, developed by Ensemble studios and released in 2005 focuses on this realistic aesthetic. Although this game doesn't use the progression mechanic like in Empire Earth, it does however show well designed realistic aesthetics on the architectural structures of early American colonisation.
These pictures are from Age of Empires III, the buildings are a town centre and a house. Although more detail is in both models than Empire Earth, it is also a game that was publish 4 years later. If I was to design my buildings using realistic methods, deep research into architecture and materials will be needed. This is a factor I should now focus on, before I advance my project and is what I plan to do next.
My next task will be to research architecture of the older civilisations to gather more visually compelling pieces to help me further my research.
Links
Info about the Age of Empire series:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_III
Buildings within the Empire Earth game
http://ee.heavengames.com/new/eeh/gameinfo/buildings/index.shtml
Small blog post about house customisation within computer games
http://uk.ign.com/blogs/ryanbob0357/2013/04/14/house-customization-in-games-is-great-and-should-be-used-more
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