A Little Bit of Everything

I was given the lead role for the 2nd expansion pack of Civilization IV, called Beyond the Sword. The idea of the expansion was to add to the modern era of the core game and to create a series of scenarios that would push the modding capabilities of the engine. We had a fairly small team, and we pushed to be co-located. The game gave a large number of people the opportunity to design their own mods and created the need for a variety of styles to be included in one game.

I worked closely with Jason Winokur to Prototype the various designs in the game engine. Each problem was given 2 weeks to solve, usually involving a quick animation from me that showed scale any unique camera controls needed. I would then create “in-game” assets for Jason to use to match the look and feel in the engine.

The first game concept that we looked at was a mod called Final Frontier. designed by Jon Shafer. The initial plan was to create a version of Civilization in space, where the planets were the ground, and space was the ocean. Here was the quick example that I made for him:

As the game design continued to evolve, so did the concept of the game centered on. The scope of the game become much larger and now the player claimed solar systems instead of parts of planets.

The Afterworld Mod was Tim McCracken’s homage to X-Com on an alien world. This is an example how even a quick animatic can be useful in determining the scope of the game.

This is the world we finally created for the game.

While working on Civilization IV I had quickly made some thumbnail concepts of the different missionaries. We had a very tight schedule, and there were plans to make a single generic missionary to represent the different religions. This hasty sketch was enough to change people’s minds.

On this project I also had a chance to experiment with some different approaches to concept art, and I wanted to build on what worked with that micro concept. I decided to the best of my ability I would make my concepts at nearly the same pixel sizes that the final art would appear in the game. I also ended up making  simple billboards with the concept art attached for all the new units in the game, so very quickly we could test “in-game” readability. My favorite of the units were for Paul Murphy’s dire near future scenario, “Next War”.

Another new experience for me was the chance to work with an outside production team to develop the opening cinematic for the game. I worked closely with animator Kevin Bradley to come up with the storyboard. We had a very tight budget, so we designed the story structure to be low cost to realize.