Might & Magic X: Legacy Q&A, Monsters, and Lore

Ubisoft’s official Might & Magic X: Legacy developer blog has been home to a number of updates lately, including a “Meet the Team” Q&A with level designer Johannes, a closer look at some of the game’s monsters, and an overview of the game’s lore. Check it out:

2. Can you tell us about the process of creating such a scene?

Sure, usually I start with gathering some reference and mood images, looking at indoor scenes of the old Might and Magic games, the Ashan compendium, elements of other fantasy franchise and various concept arts which seem to fit the specific setting of an indoor scene.

Then I sketch due to my limited drawing skills in most cases mentally 😉 – some ideas of the scene and significant elements or areas I want to focus on, keeping in mind already created levels or assets and where the scene should be located in the game.

Now, my work in Unity is based on a primarly cinematic approach, as the camera has a fixed position and perspective and I can really stage the characters and prominent parts according to my (mental) sketch. Around these characteristical elements I build up the basic geometry decoration and lighting, then add some details, effects, animated assets or lights to breathe life into the scene. The last step is (high)lighting the existing characters, usually creating a 3-point-light setup for each one and tuning the final image effects of the camera.

During this process I often discuss the scene or certain aspects of it with my colleagues to get some feedback or suggestions on adding (sometimes customized) assets. In my opinion that really helps to improve the scene.

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As we discussed this feature, we agreed on a couple of things. Firstly, using the left page for only a title was not so good. Putting a picture there would actually be better and a great opportunity to showcase some rarely-seen artwork and concepts created for Might & Magic X Legacy and other Might & Magic games. Secondly, due to the way inventory is handled in MMXL, we would need a special interface to (store) the Lore Books the player has already found so he can read them later on. That would mean creating new GUI assets that were not originally planned.

Thomas, our technical lead, also had to cool our enthusiasm a bit and be the voice of reason: (Because it is an additional feature we should keep the extra work on a low level. For that we should use one layout for all lore books. There will be no lore book which will have the image in the upper right and then another will have it in the lower left. One pattern for all lore books.)

We now had a clearer idea of what the Lore Books would look like. We decided there would be 30 of them found throughout the game, split into 3 categories: general lore of Ashan, lore specific to the Agyn Peninsula (the region where the game takes place), and (others).