Overview

This settlement, codenamed Captain, serves as the first settlement the player would enter out of the beginning tutorial. The intended theme was to be a water-laden Columbian-inspired port town by a bay that would host a main-story sea creature boss encounter later on in the game.

Of note, Captain had to have the following locations of interest: a governor's quarters overlooking the city, a plaza for seasonal and live service events, a central tavern to serve as a quick-travel point, a drone workshop from which drones would be dispatched for navigation across the city, a waterfront suitable for a large boss fight, a marketplace to sell and upgrade items, and three main entrances/exits to the city through a defensible wall.

I will cover the iterative process I took for a couple of these points of interest below.

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Process Summary

When beginning work on blocking out Captain, I considered the scaling and metrics of the buildings first, clarifying with my team what the intended specs for buildings and roads were. Noting that allowed me to build a preliminary gym of assets to use for this settlement.

In order to break the 90° rectilinear structure of modern day city block designs, I opted to disable my snapping and began to organically arrange placeholders for the necessary locations that I planned out in my notebook sketch. Next, I dug in canals for the waterways that would wander through the city. Finally, I laid out all the roadways and bridges over the canals to connect the terrain together.

To break the flatness of Captain, I broke up Captain into 4 tiers with about 4-8m to introduce some verticality into the city. This verticality also helped when I went for framing passes later on in the process.

Sketch

With the given brief, I set out with a sketch of Captain. My original idea utilized aqueducts delivering water to the townsfolk from the higher elevation of the governor's quarters. Ultimately, I went with canals to keep the flowing water visible at ground level, leaving space for players to use their navagational mobility to grapple and swing through the town and over the waterways. Positional edits were also made to locations for better access and framing, and terrain was further sculpted for organic verticality.

Governor's Quarters

Originally, the quarters were a simple tiered platform overlooking the city from the north end. I wanted the water to be pumped up from the sea and flow down through the city via canals to support the watery theming. However, the height did not feel sufficient, and this location was very obscured when viewed from the opposite end of Captain.

In order to bake in more geographic features and help differentiate the parts of the city, I extended the hill and cliffside towards the western shore of Captain, so that an iconic cave could be seen from anywhere in the city. I also added another couple of tiers to the quarters to add prominence to this area. The water features and a vegetation pass cements this as a focal point of the city.

Waterfront

The waterfront was expected to be the setting for a huge boss fight after our fourth main quest. In addition to the plethora of room on the quay for this purpose, we levied the possibility of adding ruins and isles off the coast later on if it suits our needs.

After a vegetation and set dressing pass, I was able to highlight the area with colored market stands and a centrally located statue. Breaking holes through the solid tower on the southern end and turning it into a bell tower provides more visibility into and out of the waterfront. Adding additional pathways down on both ends allows easier passage to both the northern and southern parts of the city.