Making our game’s drop pod sexier | Project Quantum Developer Updates
In today’s update, Project Quantum’s Visual Art Director dishes out updates on the player’s trusty steed, the drop pod.
Show Randolph some love for helping to keep our community engaged & up to speed, and be on the lookout for more Project Quantum updates in the near future!
This week, we’ve been looking at the drop pod and ways we could refine or improve it. Given it is such a key part of the game, we really wanted to make sure we covered our bases.
The main design problem we wanted to address being, a squad lands in the same drop pod — so what happens when only one person wants to leave?
So we shrank the pod down to a single-person pod and initially started designing it with pure silhouettes. This is a great way to come up with multiple designs without having to worry about the small details.
When designing these, I’m trying to make each silhouette distinct but also giving some thought to the various component parts that comprise a drop pod — the thrusters, the airbrakes, the door, etc.
The tricky part of this design was that the form of the pod had to look like it could go both ways — given that the Seekers would be both landing and escaping in it.
We experimented with a number of silhouettes and sketches before eventually returning to our original design… it's all part of the process right?!
What we liked about our original design was the unique and squid-like silhouette it had, with the oversized airbrakes being the ‘tentacles’.
With the general form more or less decided, we explored various different nose and tail forms, before eventually losing the large drill bit on its nose in favour of a more rounded shape. This new nose is what will house the drop pod’s thruster for its return journey.
Obviously, since the pod slams down into the ground at 1 gazillion miles per hour, we needed to protect the thruster somewhat. So we also had a play with some different ways the nose ‘doors’ could open and close.
Given that we had these oversized airbrakes and it was important that the drop pod look like it could travel in both directions, we explored a reversible design. With this, the brakes could travel down the length of the pod’s body and assume the same position on its other side.
This would allow for a cool animation while the pod readies itself (by lifting out of the ground ready for take-off), but also serve as the countdown sequence while the player nervously waits for their pod to be ready in order to escape the map with their loot!
Thanks for reading,
Randolph, Visual Art Director
