When I first started at Flashbang in the great December of 2007, work had already somewhat begun on this concept. They had recently made the jump from Virtools to Unity, and had just used the new technology to finish Splume, a bust-a-move style physics game that would win them an award and some hard cash. Post Splume, during a mandatory resuscitative period, someone suggested a game concept about hitting velociraptors with an off road vehicle. Since Flashbang makes the games they want to play, it was pretty much on from that moment.

I was really excited to learn Unity. So while Adam Mechtley (the other artist on the team) took on the jeep and the velociraptor, I volunteered to take on the level construction as my first exercise. Unity's terrain engine hadn't yet been utilized and needed to be taken for a ride. The team had already done a little bit of experimentation with the feature set, and this is a far as they got.

 
 

 

So the first thing I did was create these four textures. Unity recognizes them as "Splat Maps", and they're the images used to decorate the terrain object. I used four to create an appropriate amount of distinction between the ground and walls, and also to just make the environment more varied and interesting.

 
The sculpting and painting of the terrain object was going really well, but I quickly got tired of trying to evaluate it without a sky. So I took some pictures of beautiful Arizona cumulus clouds, mixed in some random google images, and mixed in some Photoshop clouds to create a skybox texture. This is actually the third or fourth iteration of the image. It was initially much bluer and busier. Once we threw a bloom down, most of the color was lost, so I complemented it with the predominantly white/blue image you see in the game.
At the same time I was developing the skybox I started making props to populate the world with. In addition to standard naturally occuring props like trees, boulders, grass, etc., there also needed to be a place to deposit raptors, something to carelessly knock around, and sweet looking ball for the Jeep's chain.
Once Adam had completed the Jeep and the Raptor models, he went ahead and made some sick solar-powered structures to interact with. With all this in the mix, the environment was looking pretty lush and playground-tastic. I took some sky-cam style screens to showcase all of the work we had done and in general, I'm very pleased with the end result.
While the game was still co-agulating in it's earlier stages, I actually ended up pre-emptively making this logo in an attempt to communicate my wacky interpretation of the idea. It was easily one of the most fun logos I've ever made.
Eventually everything was feeling really good and looking awesome and it was time to deploy it. Boss man wanted to throw a trailer down onto the internet and let the masses marinate on the idea for a week before the game went live. So I took it on and here it is. FUN FACT! I played the game for about two hours capturing footage for this. I then spent about an hour compositing it and slapping on the music, and then finally showed it off at about 11pm. I was experiencing the euphoria of accomplishment when boss man wondered out loud why he couldn't hear the sound effects. Sure enough...I didn't tell my capturing program to capture any sounds. At 1am that night, I was done with the trailer you see here. Ugh.

The launch of the game was pretty exciting and the anonymous internet response to the game was very good. But the best part for me was the overwhelmingly positive response from our developer friends at the 2008 Game Developers Conference. It ended up being a very good move on our part to produce a handful of shirts to give away at the conference. Throughout the week-long event, a small cadre of elite developers (i.e. our friends) drifted through the crowd with the bright yellow shirt on. A choice example of this glorious tom foolery is this here photo-picture of Derek Yu, co-creator of Aquaria.
As cool as it was seeing all of the people wearing the shirts, the singular moment at which the radness of the shirt set in was when Flashbang's very own Steve Swink wore his shirt as he co-hosted the Independent Games Festival Awards Ceremony with Matthew Wegner. Observe!
That is indeed my co-workers up on the stage on their tiny podium while cameras project their mugs onto giant screens. Oh, the tangled webs we weave. BUT ALAS! Sillyness like this pushed Off-Road Velociraptor Safari onto the 1up show at the end of the conference. Heads up; dear Mr. Scott Sharkey has a slight potty mouth.
 
So that's that. I'd like to wrap this log up with a quote:
"...best dinosaur based jungle driving simulation out there."

Cesar Quintero, 1up Show
Unless specifically stated, all art created by Ben Ruiz belongs to Ben Ruiz. ©2009