New Developer Diary for Chronicles of Spellborn

January 9, 2008

New Developer Diary for Chronicles of
Spellborn

Spellborn International have released a new
developer diary on their upcoming  game, The Chronicles of Spellborn. The
guys at Spellborn use the creation of the The Green District of Quarterstone to
explain how they take a concept from paper and bring it to the computer screen.
The game’s Lead Content Designer recounts how he put his mind to the test and
helped give birth to the digital world of Spellborn.

[Gamedesign Journal] From mind to paper

by Michael Wolf Visser
Lead Content Designer

Hi all, I’d like to first of all send you the
best wishes for 2008!

It is not quickly that I sit down to write a dev
journal, not because I do not want to or that it takes too much time, I simply
have other stuff floating in my mind that I’d like to put to paper first.

So, now that most of the characters in my head
are still asleep and the office is still devoid of life other than me and the
critters in the carpet, I thought I’d take the change to explain how I
personally, put things from my mind to paper and how that eventually becomes
something you can walk through in a digital world.

The Shards of Spellborn
There are numerous examples of what comes into your mind and what makes it to
paper in the Shards of Spellborn. The main idea and story line is so befitting
freedom of thought and implementation of the weird and wonderful twists of a
human brain that whatever you can think of can be accomplished.

This is also true for The Green District of
Quarterstone, and this district will be the main focus of how some of my ideas
became reality… to some extent of course.

When we first started off with Quarterstone, it
was a city split into four different districts all of which connected to the
main platform on which the Oracle resided. But after some thought and some time
passed, more districts were put to the test and bridges leading from the Oracle
to these new districts were built. The last district to be added to the whole of
Quarterstone was the Green District, a place where the forgotten inhabitants of
most of the city’s populace still roam, albeit a bit mutated, and where the
endless fires of the AIOR infestation still burn away at everything there.

A black hole is what the Green District was until
a colleague and I sat down to discuss what could possibly fill this hole. We
covered collapses, drowned villages and huge temples, but in the end we decided
to uphold the main function of Quarterstone as a city and make it a suburb for
the blue collar workers and a place for research and development for some of the
High Houses. All in all a good idea, for it gave us something more to work with.
But twisted as we were, we turned it sour for those living amongst the narrow
alleys of what was lovingly called ‘The Stacks’ as a magical experiment deep
within the bowels of the districts main research facility, the Citadel of Ail,
went terribly awry. Tons of magically infused ore residue, known as AIOR, spewed
from the massive hole that was torn out of the building. The crystalline
fragments nestled itself into living tissue and started mutating the populace.
The Enclave in their panic closed off the Green District for fear of spreading
this mutating disease and all hope was lost for those desperately trying to
escape the explosions aftermath. The Arcane Surge as it was called was the end
of life in the Green District, but also harbored new life, for the empty and
tormented husks of those unfortunate to be in the Green District at the time,
still lumber through the empty streets as the Shunned.

Confrontation
Now it all sounds nice and comfy there, mutated people
scavenging empty streets and burning ore residue spewed from large holes in
giant structures, but this was all in our heads. After we put it to paper, read
it again ourselves and decided to hand it over to the Art department, people
started to look at us questioningly. ‘You want to make all this?’ was the
question that first came from their lips and both my colleague and I simply
nodded…

Two days later, Romano Molenaar our Lead Concept
Artist came up to me and showed me the first concept drawings of the Green
District. And although I expected nothing less from him, I was still awed by the
perfect vision he and I seemed to share when it came to the visualization.

Creation and Implementation
After the initial design had been handed over and the
first concept drawings were made, signs of the Green District started to emerge
from the modelers and texture artists. The level designers came up with a basic
shape and I sat down to add lore and ideas to the various areas that made up the
Green District. Adding lore and ideas also contains the naming of the areas and
being the weird guy that I am, I added a little homage to a man that I respect a
lot, Chris Metzen. So somewhere in the ruined debris of this once splendid
district he has his own retreat. I doubt he’d like to dwell there now, but at
least it looked nice prior to the surge.

The first thing that made it into the map, were
the two separate housing areas. At first they were not ablaze yet so the
impression they left was rather cold, but I knew the guys over at level design
would do the fires soon enough and when they did… well it all changed really.
The fires added an atmosphere so compelling that I could almost feel the
claustrophobia the inhabitant at the time of the surge must have felt.

Next came the Empyreal Parks, located on both
sides of the grand walk that lead to the main entrance to the Citadel of Ail.
The large Philosophers Labyrinth with its hedges and massive statues, the empty
animal pens and the cascading ruins of all sorts of beautifully crafted
structures added the final touch. But the art guys had one little surprise up
their sleeves that I had not dreamed of was possible at the start of writing the
design. A massive twisting maelstrom of AIOR particles twists and turns above
the Citadel of Ail’s main spire. A storm so violent that all over the district
ash and soot falls from it’s long reach. As an added bonus, the guys even made
the eye of the storm visible from the Councilor’s chambers within the Citadel.
Needless to say.. I was relieved and awed to see that what gets written op paper
really makes it to something digitally.

Breathing atmosphere
Now that the time for the release of the game comes
closer and closer and talks of the closed beta reaching its new state of
operation is being whispered amongst the various departments, my hopes are such
that everyone setting foot inside the Green District, actually set foot within a
small part of my mind. There you can see for yourself how twisted thoughts can
become and how skilled professionals can create something unique from a bunch of
words on paper.

The screenshots that have been recently released
show you a small part of the district, the burning roofs, the centre of the
Labyrinth and the ravaged bodies of the Shunned. I hope that in the near future,
you yourself can venture into the dank and moody, yet dark and breathing
atmosphere that still haunts the Green District.


The Chronicles of Spellborn PC screenshots
Click here to see the new screens for The Chronicles of Spellborn.