I’m drawing inspiration from many sources, and I think it’s only fair to list the important ones. I’m posting this as a regular blog posting but I may come back to this and update the list, as I might not remember every influence from the top of my head.
The overall theme
The most important inspiration is a TV series I watched as a 7 and 9 year old: The Tripods, a BBC production based on books by John Christopher aka Samuel Youd. Specifically, the German dubbing, aired in 1986 and 1988.
I found the overall theme of three young adults trying to escape the rule of alien overlords highly fascinating. In The Tripods, aliens invade earth, get young adults “capped” and make a few selected ones work in their settlements, the “golden cities”. In the Alps, “free men” are planning to overthrow the rule of the Tripods. One of them, Ozymandias, selects the main character, Will, to become part of the resistance, and leads him and his two friends on a journey from England over the English Channel through France and Switzerland.
Unfortunately, only two seasons covering two books were produced, leaving the third book and the resolution open. This turned out to be the cliffhanger of my life, as it took me ~15 years to finally order and read the books, only to be completely hooked again. I started collecting memorabilia, too. As I write this, a Tripod model looks down on me from a shelf next to my desk. I also keep listening to the theme by Ken Freeman; it never fails to put me into a good state of mind.
An allegedly planned new edition has not yet been realized. To this day, there are many active fan groups. If you’re intrigued, you could start with a BBC produced documentary, The Cult of Tripods, which might convey some of the fascination, or dive right into the first episode of the show.
The general theme of control through an implanted device, resistance against an evil overlord, and a character recruiting for the resistance are things I implement in Beneath The Order, too. I chose Osmund as a name for an NPC as a tribute to Ozymandias, the character in The Tripods who recruits the protagonists.
The world layout
When I set out to build the first prototype, I knew I wanted to use height (and fear of heights) as an element when the player navigated a dolly through a level. I wanted the player to feel exposed when riding it, with an open space on most sides. And I had to constrain the players movement to avoid a too large world.
I watched Silo on Apple TV, and the giant staircase was a visual inspiration that came handy for the world’s layout. A dolly attached to such walls would be very exposed, and a growing height could give the player an additional thrill.
Synty Studios’ POLYGON Sci-Fi Worlds art pack contributed equally to the initial world layout. In one of their demo scenes, Demo_BlackMarket_01, they’re using a massive asteroid as a foundation for a base, and it’s pierced with a tunnel with large fans on either side.
A vertical cylinder turned out to be an ideal setup, so I used the fans on top and bottom, experimented with the needed scale to fill the outer walls with the wanted detail, and started building the walls. I used random greeble elements for the first prototype and wasn’t sure initially whether the location would be in space or anywhere else.
Later on, when I turned towards a darker style, I changed the walls to basalt stone prefabs from Synty Studios’ POLYGON Dark Fantasy pack, and settled for a location deep underground in the Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota, USA, due to its population sparsity.
While I created the cylindrical layout of the Aegis, I copied several structures from the Synty Studios art pack demo maps that I own, like individual housing blocks (from their POLYGON Apocalypse Wasteland pack) or dungeons (from their POLYGON Dungeon pack) which I use as the Vitae mines. However, most of these elements have been heavily adjusted to fit into the scene and serve their respective purpose.
The talented folks on the Synty Studios Discord server
Since I’m using Synty Studios art packs from their POLYGON series, I hang out on their Discord server, too. They have a channel, #user-showcase, where other game developers show their work, and they host regular jams; for a 2023 game jam, I even contributed an entry.
Seeing other people create is inspiration on its own, but there are some very talented people on there.
Loran, for example, regularly produces highly polished videos and games like this one:
Jyve is a talented kit-basher who regularly bends the art packs to his liking:
This list isn’t exhaustive by any means and I’ll need to create a dedicated posting to honor all the other nice and creative people.
Human and AI Generated Art
Art by Simon Stålenag
In 2017, I saw and backed a KickStarter campaign for Simon’s book “The Electric State”. The images nicely represented the theme that already fascinated me in “The Tripods”: humans living in coexistence with giant robots, good or bad.
I later got his next release, The Labyrinth, too:
Head over to his homepage to see more.
AI Art by Fredrik Jonsson
Fredrik Jonsson is a very recent discovery for me. One of his posts was a suggestion in my Facebook feed while I casually scrolled through the timeline. Apparently his work is entirely AI generated, yet again, it captures a theme and a mood that resonates with me a lot.
Check out his Facebook profile.
Our World
Kowloon Walled City
This inspiration is a bit more far fetched, and I don’t know if it’s my childhood fascination for Where’s Waldo drawings or for games in confined spaces like Maniac Mansion or Murder On The Mississippi, but I imagine the lower part of the Aegis as heavily crowded and contorted, just like Kowloon.
Unfortunately, the performance of a standalone headset, my skills, and my available time as a solo developer, won’t allow for such density.
Read more about Kowloon Walled City.
Veryovkina Cave
Where Kowloon is inspiration in terms of density, the cave is inspiration in terms of depth and exploration. It is, in fact, Earth’s deepest known cave, and it took decades and huge risks to explore.
If I could, I would extend the depth of the Aegis massively, and add a lot more natural tunnels and shafts.
Read more about the Veryovkina Cave.
The Maginot Line Forts
Wherever the Aegis has man-made hallways, engine rooms, or other quarters that extend from the hollow core, I imagine them like the Maginot Line forts. Long, narrow, dirty, humid, a mixture of raw stone and painted surfaces, with supplies stuffed on the walls and cables and pipes running from one end to the other. Heavy doors here and there; machinery and tanks and filters in some rooms, empty folding cots in others; some corners to hide, and a lot of stuff to rummage.
There are plenty of images on the Internet, but I bookmarked this Facebook album for inspiration.
My past game development work
I am part of sechsta sinn, a team which built a real-time strategy game in their spare time in the early 2000’s. “Die verbotene Welt” (DVW, German for “The forbidden world”) is inspired by the classic Command & Conquer. As the lead programmer I was heavily involved in the development.
In DVW, Earth is destroyed and only a few remaining people – “Bunkermenschen” – survive in bunkers until their return to Earth’s surface, where they fight with invaders from other planets who are landing to evaluate the Earth’s habitability.
My friend and teammate Gereon reminded me of this similarity when I showed him a Beneath The Order devlog. I didn’t think of this possible inspiration myself! The Bunkermenschen’s life under the surface or any depiction of their bunker lifestyle – except for a military bunker as a defense structure – was never part of the game we worked on, as it plays after their return to the surface. But work on the game kept me busy in my spare time over the course of many years, so I can’t say confidently that it didn’t inspire me in some way – if not consciously, then perhaps subconsciously.
We never finished the project and the homepage is defunct nowadays, but here’s a link to the project page with some screenshots.
Other Film And Television
Rebel Moon
Judging from some reactions I read on the Internet, this might be quite a controversial one:
The “epic space opera films” by Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, and Shay Hatten weren’t received well, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching both parts on Netflix. Literally, watching it, as in “eyeing” it. The visuals were fantastic! The stark contrast between the rural workers in “Veldt” (which seems to come from the German “Feld”, the agricultural field) embedded into a sci-fi environment was something I liked a lot.
I took inspiration for one specific character. I won’t tell which one yet.
Snow Piercer (series)
Snow Piercer was another show I watched on Netflix. It’s driven by the conflict between the poor and the rich in a post-apocalyptic scenario, too, and I enjoyed watching it for this aspect, although the series had its lengths.
I have not seen the original movie, but would like to do so.
AI
I use AI for several use cases and it has enabled me, as a solo developer, to move much faster than I could without.
The tool I use for inspirational purposes is ChatGPT. It’s a great “sparring partner” to discuss the game. For example, I asked for some proposals on catastrophic events which could lead to this post-apocalyptic scenario. Once I narrowed in on the cause and decided for a gamma-ray burst, I asked it for a plausible timeline of events because, frankly, I have no idea about how these would unfold.
Conclusion
As I find inspiration in many sources, either specific prior art or synthesized through AI, a fair and contemporary question is: what’s my own work?
To answer this question, I’d like to draw two parallels:
One is the parallel to existing games. None of the systems I’ve put in place, either through used assets or own code, is new. I’ve not reinvented character controllers, VR interaction, dialogue in games, or anything else. Many games build upon long established concepts, and I do the same.
The other parallel is to my own university education. When I did my Master’s thesis in 2003, none of the algorithms or concepts I used was new. I used several computer vision algorithms, linear regression, marching cubes, and many more, all existing for decades already.
I recon that this may sound overly defensive. The point I’m trying to make is that both then and now I use existing building blocks to create something new. And as this happens on the “theoretical” side of the game design, it happens on the “material” side, too, by using purchased assets like 3D models, sound effects, or music. The assembly of such building blocks into something new, a previously unseen permutation of existing items, is what I consider to be my own work. And I hope that one day, it helps to inspire others.
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