After exploring space with Planet X-11, the art team on Starship Troopers: Extermination settled their interest in exploring Bug Territory: what would a planet fully infested, with no Federation presence, look like? Add a sprinkle of ice and frozen methane, and you have Boreas. Early on in development, the level design team settled on exploring a frozen, Bug-ridden world with a canyon running in-between plateaus, with caves populating them. We were keen on pushing the verticality of this level, which would visually also help us sell the shattered look of the planet.
The Bug Meteor feature above exists as a reference to the first 1997 Starship Troopers movie: Boreas was a toxic, frozen wasteland before it was hit with the Bug Meteor, allowing the Bug Menace to evolve in this extreme environment prior to our troops making it to the ground. The oozing Bug gore would offer a nice material contrast between the deep greenish-blue ice and the sparkling snow.
This feature helps provide players with a clue as to why Frozen Drones and Frozen Warriors appear in Boreas, as well as helping the team create more visually exciting and complex vistas to complement gameplay areas. The Meteor would also serve as a landmark for players to visually orient themselves between the two navigable plateaus (on one side you can see the Meteor and on the other side, you can see additional planets on the vista, hinting at the star system Boreas is a part of).
Once we had a direction of the look and feel for this new map, our level designers started to block out the main areas of the level and the art team set out to develop the tech to achieve this new look. It was very important to us to make this level feel different from existing frozen worlds, which usually have blue, realistic ice and white snow. Below is where we started:
However, that did not visually communicate to the player the toxic nature of the ice, instead it just looked like Alaska. So we introduced deeper greens and cyans onto the mix, which got us closer to the concept target:
As we started to block in and playtest the level, it became clear that we were missing the feeling of coldness in this environment. We wanted to balance out the temperature contrast between inside caves and outside: the former should feel warmer than the latter. After a new lighting pass, the improvement is clear:
Troopers can see below the development of different areas of Boreas from the early level design block out to the final stage:
To help troopers grasp the scale of the new planet Boreas, we’ve scouted out two vantage points troopers can discover of the frosty plateau and the vast canyon.
We at Offworld are proud to showcase the Bug-infested, icy wasteland of Boreas! We hope you have a chill time there and enjoy these previews of what is to come with Starship Troopers: Extermination.
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If these previews have gotten you excited for what is coming to the Mobile Infantry we welcome you to join and come chat and become citizens together in the Starship Troopers: Extermination Community Discord!
Starship Troopers: Extermination is still in Early Access and is available for $29.99 USD until October 11, 2024, when Update 1.0 releases! The standard version of Starship Troopers: Extermination is also available for pre-order, and you can find your local retailer HERE. For those that haven't yet, you can support the Federation cause and wishlist Starship Troopers: Extermination. If you have already enlisted in the Mobile Infantry, we welcome you to give us a review on Steam today! For the team here at the Federation, every review counts, so do your part, trooper!
In addition, The Collector’s Edition of Starship Troopers: Extermination is also now available for pre-order on PS5, Xbox X | S, and PC! Troopers will be able to pre-order the Starship Troopers: Extermination Collectors Edition from September 24th, 2024 to October 27, 2024 on the Limited Run Games website HERE!
