Welcome to the second issue of the Black Prophecy Developer Diary. While we still stay in the Art Direction area, I will give you a brief overview about the general faction and ship design. This part of the Art Direction Developer Diary will be a rather short one. In the next issue I will go into detail with each of the three most important factions.
Black Prophecy is settled about 550 years in the future. The goal was to create an optically realistic repertoire of ships, stations and other objects. Our inspiration were the classic 1980s sci-fi movies, where models were created by hand up to the last detail which would not be possible anymore nowadays with regards to development schedules. Examples would be the old Battlestar Galactica movies, Star Wars or single ships like e.g. the USS Sulaco from Alien. It was of great importance to us to not overdraw the design like it happened in the TV series “Andromeda”.
The ships in Black Prophecy, be it capital ships or small fighter, rarely have really flat, clear and curved surfaces and remind of the classic Star Destroyer from Star Wars. This serves the practical purpose of a ship which only holds limited space and avoids design gimmicks. The erratic surfaces make you curious to learn more about it and give the impression of a functional system. Important elements at the right places, e.g. reactors at the stern of a ship support these impressions. In addition to this, ships and stations are built modularly and can be adjusted or extended easily at any time.
For Black Prophecy it was important to us to create a magnitude that gives the impressive feeling to fly around a kilometer large space station or capital ship with a tiny fighter. Next to the completely modeled hull surfaces, more details like e.g. window frames with rivets, (Black Prophecy Gold)tubular and cable lines can be spotted if you fly close by a station or a capital ship. This high level of detail was not achieved with high texture resolutions but by a smart texture layout and a relatively elaborate mapping.
The smaller fighters in Black Prophecy also have an impressive level of detail that strikes the eye on close approach. Many small details like tubes, cables, air ducts and rivets create an easily recognizable and functional picture even if it does not fit into a realistic space scenario in a given case. In these cases it is necessary to find out how far realism and style can be combined. Even if air ducts don't make much sense in space, they remind of air ducts on a combat aircraft on of the radiator grill of a sports car and relay a more powerful character.
