Design Insight, Tabitha Shuttle Bay

I'm excited to share some of our new backgrounds with everyone.

One of the first ones you'll see in the new episode is the shuttle bay, and while I'm working on getting some of the early access released this week, I thought it prudent to take a break and share some design insights with you.

First up we have the job sheet with a rough description of what I needed for the background. Ideally these are written after the script is done, and before coding starts, but it isn't always practical. This particular draft was finalized in April, nearly 4 months ago. At that point in time I had a rough draft of the script, and even so, some changes to the script had to be made to match the visuals of the Background once I received it.

Caba is extremely professional when it comes to the design process. He is great at throwing sketches together from a rough idea, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I have struggled to "see" the totality of scene more than once when putting a design a document together. Below is the first sketch I received for the shuttle bay.

This sketch was adjusted slightly to make room for the Drop-Drones, as well as some other minor changes. I know it seems like the sketches are in the wrong order, as the one below seemingly has less details when looking at the shuttles. You can play a very uninspired "spot the difference" if you like.

Once the basic elements were in place, Caba continued to do a sketch where the details were more defined. At this point we had to nail down the Drop-Drone designs. We also did an impromptu shuttle design, as until now, there had been no description of how the shuttles looked from the outside.

The shuttle designs were quick and easy, and were almost entirely Caba's doing. They are inspired by a hybrid of the X-37 spacecraft and the old NASA shuttles. The Drop-Drones were designed by referencing this old post from August 2020.

From there we did some minor tweaks and changes, adding some clutter and objects to make the scene less static. The robotic maintenance arms and shuttles are all on separate layers, and can be removed with a single mouse click. This makes it easier to use the same image in different configurations.

Finally, we end up with the this. A full color BG image, ready to be used in-game.

I hope you enjoyed the insight! Special thanks to my small group of patrons! You guys and gals motivate me to continue working on this project! Each and every one of you, present and past has played a big role in shaping Infinite Stars.

I'm off to continue working on the project. Stay safe, stay healthy, and keep on dreaming about the wonderful, infinite possibilities of space.