23/3/2018 0 Comments ResearchNow I had an idea of what the city would look like, I scoured the web, looking for some inspiration. I looked at old city plans, and some flavour shots of buildings and architecture. I knew that in more ancient times it was customary to place impressive (especially ones that carried religious significance) at the highest point in the city. This would make the building appear closer to the heavens, it would also dominate the skyline and look down upon the less important constructions below it. It also instilled a sense of awe in any visitors, as the first thing they noticed when entering the gates was the temple/castle/palace looming over them. Notable examples are found with the Acropolis in Athens, Edinburgh Castle (although with castles the high placement also has strategic value) and Wat Phra That Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai, a sight that used to great me each time I strode out to my balcony when I lived in Thailand. I also looked at the older maps and city plans, and attempted to get a feel of how the cities were laid out, along with a selection of famous landmarks. Landmarks and unique features are useful when creating a space for players to navigate. They can be beacons, interesting features for players to discover, they can lend a sense of place or flavour to a certain area but most importantly they help orient players and provide memory triggers for navigation. It is usually the unique landmarks we recall when finding our way around a new environment, they are also the signposts which we use when giving directions to others; “Just head down the road until you come to the old oak tree, then take a left, you’ll see an old church with two spires then your location is just on the right.” Thankfully there were a few of these landmark structures detailed in the passage, so now I had to link them together. In order to put the whole city together it was time to refer back to an urban planning theory, that of “Figure Ground Theory”. This is a method of exploring the shapes created by buildings and the negative space which surrounds them. An ideal urban plan should include a series of open or positive spaces for people to congregate, such as piazzas, parks and town squares. Linking these would be a network of negative spaces, shaped by the buildings around them. The negative corridors would shepherd people from positive to positive space, and provide easily recalled routes of transit. With all this in mind it was time to start some scribbling, so I set about putting together a series of concept sketches. When I had a fairly good idea of how the city would look overall it was time to layout the streets and start detailing individual structures.
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AuthorIan is an avid player of video games, a watcher of movies, a reader of comics and books and occasionally a dad. Archives
May 2018
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