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Reflecting on World Design

The process over the past year has taught and incredible amount in regards to designing worlds and made me realise that I have been doing this my whole life without even realising it. It has sparked in me a passion for creating worlds and designing levels and laying out environments in games. A 500 word blog post seems too small a word count to cover all that I have learnt over this paper but if I had to pick three things that I have taken away that have influenced me the most they would have to be: how to guide the player, lighting, and designing a world . Guiding the player was one of our first lectures and probably the most important and solidifying lecture for me. I never knew that so much work went into guiding the player and once I had this lecture, I saw this process in every game I played since. Things like placing large landmarks in areas where the player can get their bearings seems obvious but is very crucial. This allows the player to gather their bearings if los...
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Creating a map

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This exercise got me really excited, there’s nothing more I enjoy than world building and I’ve been building a world in my spare time over the past year, so what better excuse than to draw a map for it (albeit one of my first so excuse the poor quality). This map of Korlath is representative of the races within, where they dwell and how the region is split. Korlath is split into four main areas: Kingdom of Roldem, ruled by humans in the South East, The Clanhold Mountains in the North held by Dwarves, The Fey Forest in the East where the elves live and the Barren Wastelands to the North West where no life exists. Running from the Forgotten Sea in the West and through the majority of the Region is the life sustaining River Numenora. With these main areas in mind I began to design my map, adding smaller villages and medium towns in between the larger capitals, all connected by roads. 
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Mass Effect Andromeda: Atmosphere.

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Right off the bat Mass Effect Andromeda hits the player with that sci-fi feel. Bioware has learnt over the course of the Mass Effect series how to perfect the implementation of sci-fi atmosphere through their use of differing visual elements such as lighting, atmospheric fog, hyper-realism and model design. Image retrieved from: https://cdn.segmentnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/mass-effect-andromeda-00007-1-620x349.jpg One of the first planets the player makes their way to has a very mars-like quality to it. The planet is barren, dusty and seemingly uninhabited. Bioware achieves this quality through the use of juxtaposition in their scene composition. The color palette is very brown which contrasts greatly with the sleek, clinical white of the buildings placed by the Andromeda Initiative (the players faction) and the bright blue of the sky above. This all helps draw attention to the environment surrounding the player and builds a feeling of otherness in the player...
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