BioWare has posted a lengthy interview with Dave Shramek who is lead World Designer of Star Wars: The old republic, 433x4
Behind The Scenes Of World Design 6t2f2v
With key non-playable-characters (NPCs) like behind the scenes look, we’ll dig into creating one of the ruling gangs of the planet, Mek-Sha.
For starters, would you like to introduce yourself and explain a little bit about what you do on the team?
Sure, I’m Dave Shramek and I’m the Lead World Designer. On SWTOR, that means I’m responsible for all of the art pieces into an interactive object called a “dynamic placeable” which mostly means it can be clicked on and go into different states, like crates open when you click on them and there’s stuff in there when you loot them, but the stuff is gone when you’ve looted the object.
There are some elements you mentioned that players would expect, such as creation of Missions, placing of NPCs etc. Is there anything unexpected about what a world designer does?
What any one of us does in ability where the Smuggler pulls out their gun, gives it a twirl, and shoots the . Then I named the ability “Unlocking” so that’s what it says on the cast bar.
You mentioned creating the appearance of NPCs. Could you elaborate on that? Is that the same as dressing a player character or are there differences?
We have access to some color palette we have access to makes it easier to mix and match armor pieces without needing to burden character art with a lot of requests. Especially the newer pieces have slightly different material properties that may saturate a color more, or appear brighter, so I need to use a slightly different shade of red to make the whole set match.
For the planet Mek-Sha, one of the powerful gangs is a group of ex-Mandalorians who work for a man named Indigo. Indigo had to get his name from somewhere, so I assembled a lot of various heavy armor pieces and tried to get them all the same shade of, well, indigo. But some pieces are a shinier metal, while some have the flat plastic surface you expect from Trooper armor.
The rest of Indigo’s gang doesn’t play a direct role in the storyline, but one of the most fun parts of the Star Wars galaxy is the way every background talk ing costumes to tell story. We can tell a lot of story just with how they’re dressed. When it comes to Indigo’s gang, being ex-Mandalorians, that means I get to mix and match pieces. Being no longer Mandos, they probably have to scrounge to get the armor they want. Indigo, because he’s the boss, gets the best bits. And Gizka, who’s the “kid” of the group has the most mismatched pieces. She looks the most cobbled together. But it was important for me, when dressing Mandalorians, or even ex-Mandalorians, that they all look similar, recognizably Mando, while also having that kind of individualism I expect.
Hypothetically, would the way these Mandalorians are dressed also correlate to how they’d behave in a combat scenario?
Absolutely. Take Beskad for example. She’s named for the famous Mandalore the Avenger” look. But that also makes him look like a heavy-armored Clint Eastwood, so if he were to fight, he’d be more gunslinger than your typical Mandalorian.
Can you walk us through the color palette decision process for Indigo’s gang? Was there a specific reason/theme the team was going for in choosing those color combinations, equipment, etc.?
When I made the Mandalorians for the Darvannis body type. Again, I think Mandalorians would express their individuality, so I just tried to pick two complementary colors that I hadn’t used before.
For Indigo’s gang, I had to be more specific. Indigo was the only one that needed a specific color palette. After that, I wanted to make everyone kind of vibrant and unique, like on Darvannis, but also steering away from the kind of colors that could be mistaken for Indigo. I figured they’d give him a wide berth on that. One of the characters who goes by Forge, uses the chest piece and giving one character a lot of orange in their armor.
The twins, Talon and Ranger, are both snipers and so I made them hunters. Their armor has a lot of trophies, fangs, fur, claws, but also has a natural look of leathers, or colors that might blend in well with stone and natural environments. Sometimes, I chose a particular kind of leg armor whose texture matched the chest armor I was using, but one of those textures only comes in charcoal gray, so I have to try to match that gray using one of the two color options I have for the other piece. Maybe a set has a baked in accent color, and I’ll try to find pieces that let me duplicate that accent color in the other pieces to try to unify the look. So sometimes I make decisions based on what’s available. Slice, who is the group’s slicer, has techier armor than most Mandalorians and it has these red wires running through the chest piece. So, when I chose legs, I chose ones where I could duplicate that red accent and unify her look.
Last question, what aspect of Indigo’s gang are you excited for players to see or experience once they hit Mek-Sha?
Indigo is one of several criminal gangs on Mek-Sha and one that you interact with differently depending on your past. Since they’re all ex-Mandalorians, they don’t necessarily like it if you bring Shae or Torian to meet them. And they definitely don’t like it if you’re Mandalorian yourself.
With key non-playable-characters (NPCs) like Darth Malgus, Tau Idair, and others leading the charge in the ‘Onslaught’ Expansion, it’s no surprise that a lot of thought goes into their creation, but what about other less known NPCs? What about that arrogant guy at the cantina, or the vendor down that dark alley? To get some insight into what goes into creating the miscellaneous characters that populate the universe of Star Wars: The creating one of the ruling gangs of the planet, Mek-Sha.
