Star Wars: The Old Republic Developer Diary

BioWare senior environment artist Alex Thomas has penned a new developer diary on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website called “Creating the Polluted World of Hutta”.

Pop quiz: If you had the chance to contribute one thing to a game like Star Warsâ„¢: The Old Republicâ„¢, would it be A) a new Rancor design, B) a quest for constructing your first Lightsaber, C) new Sith Force powers, or D) six paintings of mud? If you said (D), you might be an environment artist or have low self-esteem!

Luckily for us environment artists, Star Warsâ„¢ has an almost limitless supply of amazing planets and environments to get excited about. It’s hard not to get excited when it sinks in that you’re working on an icon like Korriban. Of course, for a well-known planet like Korriban visual reference is abundant we all know what it should look like. But what happens when the designers want to create a planet nobody’s ever seen before (is that even possible)?

That turned out to be the case with Hutta (aka Nal Hutta) when we started production. In fact, the Wookieepedia entry for Hutta now uses an early screenshot from The Old Republic as the only image available. Hutta is the home world of the Hutts, which you may recall as the incredibly notorious species of slimy crime lords from the movies, and is integral to various class stories in The Old Republic.

So how does one create a never-before-seen environment in the Star Wars universe? Where would you find reference for an appropriately vast swamp? Start with photos of Florida.