ASSETS: LEVEL 4

Level 4 was another one of those very early concepts that evolved over the years. The basic idea was to make a level using assets similar to those from the first area of the game and transport them into a grainy black and white movie world. Everything in the middleground was in silhouette and this idea lasted until we brought the game over to WiiWare. For gameplay purposes silhouetting simply wasn't going to work; there was just too much going on and you wouldn't be able to tell what's what.

Below is a rough timeline showing how the look changed (click for full size):




Note that this isn't a complete, comprehensive look at the silhouette theme. I want to show how the cloudy silhouette theme changed. In a future post I will show discarded areas and different versions of this theme, and the Torque Eduardo screenshot is a glimpse of that.

As usual, very few assets were used to make up this level. Many of them based on assets from level 1.

(click for full size)

Below is a reference mock-up using final assets.

(click for full size)

And here's an in-game screenshot from the final game:

(click for full size)

The grain is exaggerated in the screenshots--don't ask why. It should look more subtle on your tv screen. Of course, as it always happens, whenever I look back at the game I feel like changing this and that and in this case toning down that grain a bit. But that's okay, I'm satisfied with the end result all things considered. Take what you learn from the past and apply it to whatever you do next, right?

-Daniel