Dungeon Crawler Environment Art - Week 1: Research & Brief

After reading the brief I've made a few tasks for myself to complete to organise my time this week and try to get ahead of the project.

Pre-existing knowledge & initial take on the brief

One thing I'm considering is having not played some of these games, the list of 3 is Warhammer 40k, Diablo and Baldurs Gate.

I have the greatest background knowledge of warhammer through playing the tabletop games a lot and having played previous games in the series. So this leads me to sway towards selecting warhammer as an initial reaction (particularly as lore is part of the marking criteria). However, after a quick 5 min research into the aesthetics of the 3 Diablo does pop out as an interesting one to consider also.

--------

In-depth Research

Going into a more in-depth research session I've now been browsing on Artstation to see what the environment packs look like delivered for these 3 games and looked at various artists for the different games to assist my choice of game/aesthetic. i want to make sure I chose wisely and am excited to build in this style to assist my learning and overall excitement to help me to push through learning curves.

Here are the artists I found:

Artist: Michael Fabay

Game: Diablo 4

https://www.artstation.com/nshade

When checking out Michael Fabay's Artstation I found this shot which I could imagine to be an interesting integration into a dungeon crawler design, thinking about some additional props I could create to form a more interesting and dynamic map. Adjusting styles of the hanging rope but keeping the same gameplay/use of prop consistent.

Artist: Gert-Jan van de Put

Game: Baldurs Gate 3

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rJB8lL

Gert-Jan Van de Put, Balders gate 3

At this point I've now made the decision to create a diablo 4 based dungeon.

Started thinking about the map layout itself and read: https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/dnd/dungeonmaps.html

This felt a little complex and a lot of the points and complexities I felt going straight over my head but a good read to see how different map layouts affects things. With boring linear dungeons vs complex and rewarding dungeons with exploration at the heart of it. So I would like to keep this exploration element active when I'm thinking about my design and block out in the next stage!

Ideas/brainstorm

I'd like my dungeon to feature some kind of complex access route feel within it.

Additional assets could be: Ladders, Rope swings, Rope climbs, wall climbs, some sort of floor based climb or slide which takes you to a deeper level.

This could be placed at the foot of the shrine/relic or be part of the hero relic?