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Hello, my fellow Renegades and welcome to another Environment Art blog! Last time, we covered the first world in Rooftop Renegade, Cyber City; A dystopian, overcrowded metropolis, home to the evil corporation, Globacorp. Today, I’ll be running you through our second world, the holiday destination in the sky; Rising Resort.

The idea

The residents of Cyber City have seen enough industrial buildings for a lifetime and the natural world has been displaced to make way for humankind. For peace and tranquillity there’s nowhere for the rich to go but up. Rising Resort replicates natural world with the same materials that created Cyber City, but for the purpose of indulgence rather than affordability. If the rich can’t have beaches, they’ll build their own beaches. If the cities are too crowded, they’ll build their own city; high above the madness that is Cyber City.

The concept

Originally, Rising Resort started out as another level at the beginning of Rooftop Renegade’s development, Cloudy Carnival. We thought it would be fun to create an amusement park level, with the Rooftops of Cyber City being replaced by a decommissioned roller coaster with scaffolding. After hitting a few walls with design consistency, the idea was eventually reworked into a paradise, high above the clouds with a roller coaster system weaving between the buildings.

Rising Resort was designed with a few ideas in mind: mimic the surroundings of the upper atmosphere, create an organic/mechanic beach resort and show off the wealth and luxury of Cyber City’s upper class. The giant floating platforms and their buildings’ silhouettes replicate the giant clouds they’re surrounded by. The floating platforms themselves are like flying tropical islands in both shape and colour, with the infinite sky posing as the paradise’s ocean. I also wanted to convey that this paradise is fake; it disguises itself as organic and non-intrusive but it’s still flying pieces of metal and glass covered in superficial plant life.

Shape language

For this world, I wanted to break away from the shape language that made Cyber City so cold and intimidating. Rising Resort is a holiday destination for the elite class of Cyber City, a retreat from the dense hard buildings and toxic green smog.

In Rising Resort, there are very little 90-degree angles. Everything has been rounded off, from the building tops, to the floating islands that dot the sky. Even the roller coaster tracks that Svetlana grinds along are large and round with no right angles. Giant glass panes cover the islands resembling waterfalls, broken up by actual waterfalls descending below like rain from the heavens.

The Palate

When you think of a tropical paradise, warm images come to mind: sunsets, sand, wood and trees. Although Rising Resort is a paradise, I wanted to convey that this paradise is man-made and lacks that natural warmth. For this, I chose a cool palate of blues and greys for the sky along with the buildings and platforms. Blue sci-fi lighting is also apparent on the various platforms that populate the foreground.

Environment art and gameplay

If the next world is an underground cave or a space station in a crater, the game play needs to remain consistent with the other worlds. Svet skates across high platforms whilst avoiding a variety of hazards. If that core criteria are met, then we can explore any kind of environment.

We work with the idea that the environment is there to provide narrative and support the gameplay, and the gameplay should not be restricted by the environment design. If we come up with an idea that looks great but ultimately doesn’t add to, or takes away, from the gameplay experience it is either shelved or reworked into something new.

As always, thank you for reading and please feel free to reach out to me via twitter if you have any questions or comments about game art!