Deck Design Elaboration

An elaboration on an earlier deck design..

USCGC Healy & Half-Life's Borealis

The USCGC Healy is a Ice Breaker ship owned by the United States Coast Guard. USCGC stands for United States Coast Guard Cutter, cutter being the name for their commissioned ships. It is capable of breaking 1.4 meters of ice at a steady speed of 3 knots. It also containts 390 square metres of laboratory space, sensor systems, oceanographic winches and living space for up to 50 science staff.

In Half-Life 2, there is a lost ship called the Borealis. It was an Aperture Science research ship that was involved in a large-scale teleportation experiment, which mysteriously vanished from Dry Dock. Since then, the Combine have been searching for the mysterious vessel. 

I didn't know about this before, but it turned up in my search for the Healy. Obviously it is inspired by the ship, or at least a similiar Ice Breaker. I might see if I can find the Borealis in-game and see it for myself.

Some Deck Designs

I tried a few variations of deck designs to experiment with potential layouts for the upper deck area. The darker grey areas are the interior segments, and the lighter grey are the open deck. The first image contains some rough layouts I doodled up, to experiment with potential layouts. I then took two I liked and elaborated on them further..

From Silhouette to Sketch

I took two of my favourite designs from yesterday's experimentation and developed them further, to better visualise the exterior of the ship. After that, I took my favourite of the two and experimented with differing levels of exposure to the elements, and to sea water. In other words, I put a picture of rust over the top and fiddled with the settings.

Silhouettes

So I've been doodling about with some ship silhouettes today. These aren't important as the main focus of the ship is the deck and interior, but I felt it was important to be able to visualise the ship as a whole rather than in pieces.

I sketched a number of silhouettes based on ship reference I'd gathered, experimenting with shape and form. Afterwards, I threw a bit of colour on some of my favourites. I tried swapping the top and bottom halves of the designs around, to create some quick variants.

Nuclear Icebreaker Lenin

So I was just doing some research and I stumbled upon this, the Lenin, which is a nuclear-powered Ice Breaker ship. Basically it ploughs through all the ice and clears the way for smaller ships, like merchant and trawler ships. It was the worlds first nuclear powered surface ship.

It's a very bizarre looking ship, internally. It was launched in 1957 so design wise it's a old looking ship.

HMS Belfast #2 - Field Trip!

Today I got up nice and early and went down to London to visit the HMS Belfast. It's a Town-Class light cruiser that served in Normandy, D-Day and Korea, parked in North Greenwich Port, just outside Crown Court.

I took around 350 photos of the interior and exterior of the ship. I knew there was no way I could document every nook and cranny of the ship, so I set about taking photos of anything I found interesting or important. I got a good feel of how large these ships are, and how foreboding they are just to look at from a distance.

Straight away I loved this area of the upper deck, which was sheltered by a fabric covering. It made the area feel enclosed and separate from the rest of the deck, and dimmed the light slightly. I think it'd make an interesting playable area.

Another thing I liked is the asymmetrical layout of the middle section of the upper deck. It'd give the player a space to explore, and it'd give me much more artistic license to tell a story through decorations and decals in each half of the deck.

This huge radio mast.. thing was cool too. Sorry, you'll have to excuse my lack of brain activity right now, I'm pooped. Anyway, I liked how it loomed over you as you were in the mid to rear half of the ship, a silhouette in the corner of your eye. It's eery, it's like a totem. 

These doors were groovy, and they were everywhere. I'd probably use a different design, but I like the idea of these bulkhead type doors that are ultra-tough.

The bridge was a lot smaller than I was expecting, it was tiny. You could probably fit about three dudes in there comfortably, with elbow room. And if that was the Captain's actual chair, then he must've had a lot of fun in an engagement, being thrown all over the place. It was cool still, got a good view of the front of the ship and good accessibility to the lower decks and exterior. Definitely an area that's going into the level.

I was disappointed with the interior segments of the ship, from a research point of view. It'd all been refurbished, so it wasn't very interesting visually. It'd clearly been refitted with accessibility in mind, so the floor was different to what I was expecting. As you went deeper into the ship it got harder to move around, so I have very few photos of the engine room as that a mess of pipes and railings. 

I meant to add this photo too but strangely it didn't happen. Odd. Anyway, there's a series of "trenches", as I've likened them, on the deck, that are claustrophobic and awesome. I couldn't get a good angle on where they are on the deck and how far they stretch, but it's a good idea regardless.

Pretty much the same thing as above.

I couldn't get a good grasp of what these were, but they were around the AA guns so I reckon they're some sort of targeting/radar/recon thingy. 

It's interesting how she's deceptively big on the inside, but fairly compact on the outside. You can walk the whole deck from end to end in about 2-3 minutes, I reckon. This is where the problem lies, however, in terms of this project. While she's a manageable size, it's the small details that will make the difference, and a ship like the Belfast is littered with them. I reckon they'll be the real time consumers. 

The clear front deck could provide an excellent starting area for the level, giving a good view of the surrounding environment, too.

It was a fairly miserable day, but at least it didn't rain on me. 

Love the wooden flooring here, and the splash of colour in the shot. I'd really like to keep this level of colour in my level, just to break up the otherwise monotone paint of the ship (up close at least).

It must've been painful trying to work underneath these guns firing..