Hello Edgies! (Edgers? Edgians? Edgites?) Sorry for the terribly long delay since your last update on Planet’s Edge: Fractured Frontier, but my calendar for the last several months has been stuffed with promotional responsibilities for my upcoming Heroes of Might & Magic book, and organizing OVNIcon back in Oklahoma. There’s still lots to do with both of those obligations — as well as recording the audiobook version of The Derailment of the Sunset Limited for the 30th anniversary in October — but I’ve slowly, slowly been clawing back time to work on the game project.
I haven’t really had the mental bandwidth to work on the core systems (as that takes extended periods of time dedicated to doing nothing else), so I’ve been working instead on creating more 3D assets needed for the first level of the game. One of them is not only the most important item in the level, but it’s pretty much the most important object in the entire game. Virtually all of the major quests — and most of the primary narrative elements — are all directly tied to it.
If you aren’t familiar with the original Planet’s Edge — and I’m going to continue to assume that’s most of you — the Centauri Drive is the big MacGuffin. It’s the thing that gets you into the action in the first place, and the thing you spend most of the game trying to reassemble in order to rescue the people of Earth from a dimensional trap that it’s been enveloped in. I could go on and give you a really lengthy description of the original game, but all you really need to know right now is that it’s a big deal.
I WANT A MACGUFFIN COMBO PLEASE - The original Centauri Drive, as it appeared in the original game. In this image, the N.I.C.T.U. and Harmonic Resonator have yet to be retrieved.
Several months back, I created a rough, untextured version of the Centauri Drive based the iconic profile from the original. It’s one of the very few objects from Planet’s Edge that was depicted in a large enough way that I could take at least a reasonable stab at reproducing it.
Before I could drop my adapted version down on a map, however, I needed to spend some time thinking about how it should be textured. I wanted to convey visually that this was not a purpose-built piece of technology assembled all at once, but rather a device cobbled together from pre-existing parts. It is, after all, composed from eight different components that the player has to crisscross the map trying to find. Unlike the common RPG trope of The Great Item That Was Split Up Into Pieces And Scattered Across The Kingdom For Some Damn Reason Or Another, these parts have never been together. They were never meant to be together…which in itself tells the player at least a little bit of a story. Maybe it’s not a great surprise therefore that this jury-rigged device malfunctioned and created the dimensional rift which has imprisoned the Earth. Or maybe the accident wasn’t an accident after all. Maybe the original device did exactly what had been intended by its creator all along. Is it possible that our heroes aboard the Ulysses didn’t find out the truth, or at least not the whole truth…but I digress. That’s a whole discussion for another time. Suffice to say, the truth is still out there.
FORM FOLLOWING FUNCTION - All in all, I’ve been fairly faithful to the original design, but I’ve made a few modifications along the way. (I hope you’ll forgive me if I opted for a less garish paint job in the final design.) The above represents my first pass at the basic geometry for the Centauri Drive in Blender, but I’ve since tweaked a few of the finer details to provide more visual interest for the final model.
I would love to tell you that when I wrote the story for the original game, I spent a lot of time working out the elaborate back stories of each of these components. That would be lovely to say…but it didn’t happen that way. Back then, all the story served the Centauri Drive itself, with the component pieces being little more than interchangeable widgets. Each was simply the payoff at the end of an extended quest chain, and they could have been anything. I just have easily could have told the player to go get a wheel spanner, a coffee filter, the hubcab off a ‘73 Buick, Marsha Brady’s retainer, the third volume of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, twelve bat wings, the tears of an unloved toy, and your Great Aunt Phylis’ dearly beloved photo of Millard Fillmore (signed by the great man himself). With the possible exception of the K-Beam, they were each rather inconsequential items to the worlds from which they were taken. I intend, with Fractured Frontiers, to give each of these components stories of their own that are more connected to the places where they are found.
DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCES - From a visual perspective, no self-respecting industrial designer would mash together all these different colors, textures and styles, but the disunity hints at the Centauri Drive’s chaotic creation. At a more meta level, this drive column reflects the numerous influences of classic sci-fi television shows and movies on both the original game and Fractured Frontier. Can you spot the visual references?
Once I got done with the texturing job, I had so much fun spinning the object around in Blender’s preview window that I thought I’d create the little in-universe “explainer” video that you see at the top of this post. Some version of it may or may not end up in the final game, but in the meantime, you get a little nibble more about what I’m working on. It also gave me the excuse to create a new piece of ambient music that will most definitely end up in the game as well. This one is entitled Accessing the Archive.
Until next time, Edgarians. (I promise, we’ll get this officially worked out. Eventually).
#games #blender #3d #scifi #NarrativeDesign #indiedev #gamedev #video #composer
