There’s another very stylized game from dice in battlefield heroes. No one from the heroes team could make it here, so we decided since I was doing the mirror’s edge presentation that I would do heroes as well.
Battlefield heroes is a 3rd person team based shooter with some of the classical battlefield sandbox gameplay. It’s launched through the web browser, it’s free to play and it’s very much targeted at the casual gamer. So we needed a look that would appeal to that audience.
So the traditional battlefield games look usually look something like this. they have always been targeted at the hardcore gamer. the look was always aimed at realism and coolness.
Talk about stuff in picture, grey, real, looks great. desaturated
But that's not the type of gamer dice was going after with heroes. we were looking for the casual gamer, the type of gamer who goes on the web and plays a game for 10 to 30 minutes. so the look had to be more accessible. gamers that play flash games or perhaps facebook games, although that was not really a big thing when heroes was concieved
So these are some of the websites that target that same audience. They are much more colorful and inviting, non-threatening and definitely not going for realism
And that is very different from the look of the traditional battlefield games
so we needed something more accessible, something that was fun rather than threatening. we also needed it to play well on a wide range of hardware. we wanted it to work on that old pc your grandmother uses for recipes.
So this is some of the early concept art from heroes. talk about images, pleasant, blue skies, it's like somewhere you'd want to go in vacation. A lot more saturated, shapes are rounder
So this is some of the early concept art from heroes. talk about images, pleasant, blue skies, it's like somewhere you'd want to go in vacation. A lot more saturated, shapes are rounder
Original bf game from 2002(?) Wake island, pacific theater. there was some precedence, with blue skies, beaches, even though most of those 1942 maps were set in the pacific
Original bf game from 2002(?) Wake island, pacific theater. there was some precedence, with blue skies, beaches, even though most of those 1942 maps were set in the pacific
Some more heroes concept art
Heroes in game? Meadows, flowers trees. perfect summer's day in southern europe
Heroes in game
More specific examples of building sides and rocks, trees
So this is a house etc. The idea was to basically have most of the details and looks painted into the textures
Heroes in game
Heroes in game
Heroes in game
Heroes in game
As you can tell, most of the geometry here is very simple, all the details are in the textures. and the textures are painted in a flat shaded sort of way that works very well with low poly geometry.
Heroes in game
Heroes in game
Heroes in game
This is similar in many ways to another popular online game. Not that it has this painted look per-se, but in that the style works very well with angular and low poly geometry while still managing to look nice