Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising Dev Q&A: Art


Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising Dev Q&A: Art

The team over at Heatwave have conducted the following Q&A with their art team.

 

For our second Dev Blog Q&A session, we’re engaging the Art Team! We’re happy to bring you Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising news by answering some of the questions we receive from the forums, Facebook and Twitter. Our hope is that these weekly Q&A sessions will help answer some of your questions as well as raise awareness of the work we’re doing.

 

We reached out to Nick Carter, our Studio Art Manager for the following Q&A session!

 

Q: What are the biggest challenges for the Gods & Heroes Art Team?

A: There have been several large challenges for the Heatwave Art team on this project. Some of the big ones have been the cataloguing and inventory of existing art assets. It’s like cleaning out a huge garage. You are not sure what you have and what state it is in. It is a very manual labor process. The second large problem was updating our art pipeline to support newer versions of our software. We had to take old versions of plug-ins and scripts and convert these to work with present day 2d and 3d software applications. Lots of bug fixing and R&D work. Additionally reverse engineering workflows and processes to understand why things are done the way they are from the previous art team.

 

Q: Are you keeping the same customization options for Character Creation?

A: Currently right now we are keeping everything the same. As the project progresses and overall art is improved we will move onto expanding player choices.

 

Q: The before & after screen shots show the work the Art Team is improving. Are you reworking animations, too?

A: Right now our big focus has been to address large scale overall visual improvements such as terrain textures and grass. We have spent some time writing new shaders to support Normal maps and improve the overall lighting for the game. As we fix large global visual improvements we will progressively narrow our scope and focus on more detailed areas. This includes animations. As feedback comes in from Design testing, QA and the community we will address the animation quality and player experience.

 

Q: Which art pieces have been your favorites to rework?

A: For me the grass and adding the normal map textures have been my favorite. It is really neat to see major improvements come online with the flick of a switch. Since the game takes place at all times of day and night I really enjoy the little details such as the normal maps changing the way they are lit as the time of day changes and the way the grass moves as the wind hits it.

 

Q: Do we get more silly hats or cosmetic fun items?

A: This stuff is all on our radar. The team has been working on new ideas and tossing around concepts for these type things and additionally new weapons ideas and such. So yes! We like cool stuff too so any suggestions you have let us know!

 

Thanks to Nick for giving us some great answers to the questions you’ve been asking! Next month, our Dev Q&A will be with the Design Team about COMBAT!

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