COASTER COMBAT
RELEASE: Nov 30, 2017
PLATFORM: GearVR, Oculus Go, Oculus Quest
FUNCTION: Lead Artist
Quite possibly the best (and most comfortable) VR rollercoaster game, if I may say so myself. This is so much fun! Coaster Combat was developed around the same time as Landfall, so I was mostly involved in the later stage when working on the Himalayan track, which was an absolute joy to work on.
MY CONTRIBUTIONS:
- Accountable for all art direction & direct communication with the art team
- Art direction of the Himalaya track and menu item
- Prioritization, planning, and distribution of tasks for all artists
- Creation of asset list and direction
- Hands on work on some of the blockout for the segments
INTERESTS & CHALLENGES:
- When we got the assignment to make a new Coaster Combat track, it was clear that we needed to spice things up. Players were asking for more extreme tracks. When the brainstorms’ started, mountains were a recurring theme. I’d just been to northern India and was making plans to go to Nepal for my next trip, so for me it all made sense. This track had to be about the Himalayas.
- One of the major challenges for the whole team was that despite the more extreme track, the comfort level needed to stay the same. To give the player that sensation of speed without losing comfort, there were some specific things that we did on the art side (see Himalaya video for reference):
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- Switch up the environment: go from narrow to wide to narrow
- Placed a lot of parallax objects close to the tracks
- Added effects like speed lines or sparks when going through the corner
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- Another challenge was the short development time. The tracks were made with a limited number of props, but still gives a varied result.