Finally we have some environment assets! We’ve spent the past week or two working on some environmental stuff to make it a tad prettier, with Logan working his butt off making nothing but rocks. So many rocks.
To start us off we printed out a picture of our map and had a look to see how we could convert it into assets, with consideration of narrative and how it will affect or compliment the gameplay. This helped us get a good idea of how many unique pieces and hero objects were necessary and what we would be able to manually construct using modular bits. We would have plenty of rocks to construct formations and islands with and a modular scaffold set to make paths with. 
For the main islands we planned to use static meshes with high-ish poly counts to allow for polypainting, giving us great control over where certain textures will appear and how they will blend. These high-ish meshes would be used wherever a flat surface is. Polypainting gives us more control for greater communication of good grappling spots through colour and texture. Once the textures are completed we will do a pass over the tops of the main islands, giving them grasses, small clutter and different surfaces.
Once we had a plenitude of rocks we got to building out the islands as best as we could. We were able to minimize the amount of unique island shapes by building them this way. We had to be careful to not have sharp corners or areas of safety to prevent camping and to ensure that it is easy to knock others off the map, this same consideration carrying over to doodads and props (which don’t really exist yet). For the scaffolding and train tracks we used splines, making for nice clean curves and more precision
Here’s how it looks now:
See yous next time!