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ABSENT LOG Dev Update 5/15/2025
🕑 Added 2025-05-16 02:02:23 +0000 UTC
This month we want to show off our process for creating modular world assets.
One of the biggest bottlenecks we’ve come across when it comes to the game dev process is levels. This makes sense, as it's arguably the star of many games. It is the single piece of content you interact with for almost the entirety of game time. A Lot of moving components go into levels, art, design, testing, functionality, fun, lighting, AI navigation, Player accessibility.
Creating assets for levels, more specifically, the actual room components such as walls, rooms, and doorways, always start off as a bit of a slog. Even with a clearly defined layout, so much of it changes when those level modules move into the engine for testing. So one of our biggest goals for the past month was to find a way to optimize that process as much as possible.
Looking back at older titles from the mid to late 2000s, a lot of levels, especially interiors were built with an almost grid like, snap fit approach. Detail elements like trusses and vents were modeled separately and merely moved in place where it would look and feel best. A mistake we had made in our first initial levels was creating everything in a bespoke, individualized approach, which, while it looks great as it gives you a lot of control, is not appropriate for larger and more common areas, not to mention that it is extremely time consuming.
From an aesthetic point of view, it makes more sense to have a lot of elements stay fairly uniform, as they can be seen in the game world as mass produced tiles and structural components that can be easily installed and replaced on the ship. 
“I've been tasked with handling a lot of the modular components of Maintenance. Maintenance is not a “level” per say, but rather a specific set of rooms and hallways that connect the levels together, and act to visually break up the more individualized deck levels.
The biggest challenge was making sure that every asset fit the grid system we are working with, and are all scaled by a minimum of 2 x 2 meters. Every component, every wall, and every floor panel has to be perfectly scaled to fit flush with each other and avoid z fighting or stitching. One part in particular that presented a challenge was the doorways that connect to rooms. The hallways have an angled, diagonal shape that doesn't fit well with a more blocky, standard room. So I've scaled it out to be exactly the length of 6 meters, with a meter length “flared wall panel” that should allow it to seamlessly snap to the grid set up.
With vertical elements, it's fairly straightforward, as long as we keep everything standardized by that 2 meter rule. Everything in the game is scaled to the real world, with the UE mannequin as the basis. For Reference, he is approximately 183cm tall, so each vertical walkway block should have at least a 3 meter clearance, and vertical “steps” of the walls should be counted in blocks of 3 meters height (that is, for walkable space specifically.)
In terms of aesthetics, Maintenance is very angular, blocky, and very utilitarian. I've been intentional about having walls be segmented in visible panels that could be removed for maintenance, and other important details like having sections where there are in sets that you could see cables, support frames, ports, vents, and other industrial details were key to getting this to feel right.
Originally I had intended this to be a very dark and grey area with high vis yellow accents but Tekka had suggested a red oxide coating which felt a lot more visually striking. In a way, that deep burgundy red almost gives the feeling of moving through the literal guts of the ship, warm colored walls with the ambient throbbing sounds of power and fuel moving through pipes, deep grumbles of large powerful machines doing their secret business in the walls.”
- Loom
MAIN PROJECT UPDATES:
- Further work on residential / Commerce sectors.
- Implementation of Effort sounds for TW mantling, Sprint, Pain, and Efforts.
- Optimization pass on MD Kill Team assets.
- Optimization pass on Residential/Commerce texture sheets.
- Implemented Updated textures for Residential Commerce,
- Created WIP modules for maintenance level assets (Walls, Hallways, Doorways, etc…)
- Established material index for Maintenance and Bulkhead levels.
ART ASSETS:
Greeble Box
(Trivia: a “greeble” is a detail which appears functional but may or may not have a diegetic purpose, its true purpose being to add visual interest. The term was coined by ILM’s model makers.)
“I teased this in last month’s update, and I’m happy to get to talk about it in greater detail.
This prop is a result of thinking about various ways we can get maximum utility out of a limited number of assets. Ideally this should benefit the game’s performance while also benefiting Loom and my ability to build environments with an appropriate level of detail.
The thesis of this prop is that it’s like a trim sheet but 3-dimensional. Instead of multi-purpose textures that can be applied to a variety of surfaces, it’s a multi-purpose object with defined details that can be intersected with map geometry to represent a variety of miscellaneous functional details.
One of the considerations I tried to build into it is the ability to selectively stretch and deform the object without disrupting the details. The red bands in the below image are defined in the model’s geometry. Note that virtually all of the details within those bands are linear, perpendicular to the bands. This means that the model can be stretched or compressed along those bands to alter its shape, and all of the latches and circular details will remain in correct scale and aspect.
Here’s a small mockup demonstrating this asset’s intended use:
I’ll surely be building a few more of these greeble boxes specialized to certain parts of the game world (this one is intended for general corridors and residential areas), but the principle of designing objects to be friendly to scaling and stretching is something that I’m trying to keep in mind with virtually all the environment assets I’m working on.
We’re pretty confident in this design ethos of multi-purpose level assets, as each one added to our library improves both the speed and level of detail with which we can build environments.”
-Tekka
Comments
Zai Hex
This is actually a really interesting take on how to optimize greebles. One object and one material repeated many times for ease of use vs a billion different little objects for details.
