Defining Vessel’s demo space #1

Hello! This week I want to talk about Vessel’s first area: The Harbor. Specifically I want to dive deep on how I am handling its design and how my creative process has been. 

From text to sketch 

As I mentioned in previous posts, we are using Vessel’s plot as the spine of the rest of the project. So, the first thing I did was check out the definition of the city (which you can read in the post Welcome to Gemino city) and pick the most relevant areas for Vessel plot (you can read it in New Year, New Plot). Then I tried to sketch a map placing all those areas in a way that made some sense.

My original plan was to have the two hills (the Geminias) being split by an estuary or a river. While I think it can make a few areas more interesting and I’m not giving up the idea completely, I choose to build them together in a shape that is more realistic at the moment.

Gemino City aerial view

After getting this aerial view I tried to make the same with the heights of the areas. That really makes no difference for the players since we intend to keep each area as a different level, but it helps a lot to build a coherent narrative and spaces. For example, now we know that the underground museum ends more or less at the same height as the Harbor, which means that this hill is fairly taller than the other.

Once the main areas were placed, I added a few “natural” limits to the map. I mean, on one side we obviously have the sea, but what prevents Lucas from fleeing once the story begins? How can we lock it in Gemino, and how we keep the city itself out of those main areas? Well, I put a highway in between the Harbor and Gemino itself, this creates an excuse for not heading to the city during the game. Then I make the entry point of the Harbor an easily lockable path. From there onwards the excuses to keep him in the city will be on the story itself.

Now that we have an overview of Gemino’s geography we can take a closer look at the Harbor itself. Essentially I used the same approach. By the descriptions we know this place was a military facility that was reused for civilian purposes. After some time, the main activity stopped and the area decayed. First, I drew the bare minimum areas that I needed to make the golden path playable. Then I imagined a possible use for those spaces that tell Gemino’s harbor story. 

Gemino harbor first draft

The first main element is a military wall that divides the space between the harbor itself and the military fort. This wall has a building that serves as a passage between the two elements so it makes sense to be near the access from the city. And if I was a major and I needed to reuse those spaces I would probably use it to make some sort of gubernamental office. In this case this information post will be either a touristic information office or citizen attention office. 

Next to the parkings, and well connected with the highway, there is a warehouse. In this case this is the city warehouse where things that the city needs to store are. Since this is a spanish city it might be something like an epiphany's day float, some pasos of the holy week, we will see. Since it was used for storing things for the harbor it makes sense for it to also be connected to the harbor yard which was renamed as main square when the harbor stopped its activity.

We can see  few remains of the past of the harbor in forms of the ship cemetery, and the shipyard that are exactly like they were when the activity stopped. But few new buildings and construction areas can be found. In an attempt to revitalize the economy of the area new office buildings and facilities have been built. 

Next week I will talk about how we moved from the sketch to a 3D space and which changes I made to the map. So make sure to stay tuned and subscribe to not miss it! Also don’t forget to join the discord server, we will have things to share soon.