They come from all over the galaxy so they could literally be anything, and we definitely have some wild ones planned.Ī design by Tay Dunn from canceled project Haven. They are basically specimens that Prism have imprisoned in the facility, to either be contained or experimented on. We haven't showed off a lot of these yet. We have everything from space raptors to a floating gas bag that wobbles around and eats stuff in the background. The natives don't have a very cohesive design aesthetic, since they're all supposed to be their own little factions in their own right. Most of the mutations are directly based on of enemies in the game, so whenever a new enemy is added I rip it up and find ways to make the parts "grow" out of Freja. Right now we also have the Chilopods, giant space centipedes that can curl up and roll around like spiky wheels of death, and the Karnak, which are pacifist Nautilus-headed tripods. We actually plan to introduce a few more creepy crawlies in this category. The Native faction represents the indigenous population of the planet that is outside of the Solus ecosystem, so it could be all sorts of things. Just how you can have wacky combinations of items in Dota, there's some weird combinations you can get in Beacon where you're a half-droid, half-bug monstrosity! The mutation system in the game has slots set up that let me add a mutation for Freja's head, back, arms, feet, and tail, so making mutation sets in Beacon is a pretty similar process to making a Dota set. When you die in Beacon, you get the chance to apply DNA you've looted to your next clone, giving you a chance to get mutations. KZ: Learning to adapt an aesthetic and set of models to a set (helmet, armor, bracers, weapon, etc.) actually translated pretty directly into my work on Beacon. How do you apply that experience developing for the Dota 2 Workshop to Beacon? It's always satisfying to see a cosplayer bring something you worked on to life. It was a cool experience, both to get invited to the event to watch the games in person and also to get to interact with fans interested in our work. Both of those years I was invited to hand out and sign prints of my sets to fans. KZ: For the International Dota 2 Championships 20, Valve invited some of the workshop artists to attend and showcase their work at a Workshop Section of The International arena. ĪS: You had some pretty decent success though! After about a year of contributing, I actually was able to get some sets in game and was able to move out here to San Francisco to live with Tay and our programmer. I had already had a couple of Team Fortress 2 items added in-game, but Dota was a completely different art style and workshop. His favorite is Charge of the Tundra Warden (opens in new tab) for Crystal Maiden. Kiefen Zipf designed several item sets for Dota 2 before working on Beacon.
During that time I was still staying in touch with the team, helping out with Black Snow (opens in new tab) and subsequently Haven, before eventually quitting to concentrate on Beacon once we established a more concrete idea of the game. Working on that project led directly into me landing a level design job at Playground Games, where I worked on the first Forza Horizon.Īfter that I moved to Newcastle to join Ubisoft Reflections and worked on The Crew for nearly two years.
Solarus project relic mod#
We initially worked together on a mod called Canvas (opens in new tab), a third-person adventure game that had a conceptually interesting Psychonauts/Mario 64 vibe to it.
there's some weird combinations you can get in Beacon where you're a half-droid, half-bug monstrosity! Kiefen ZipfĪrran Seaton: I came from a background in HL2 modding, making levels and entering mapping competitions through my late teens. Akira, Satoshi Kon's work, HR Giger, and Dune came to mind. Beacon is an homage to all those comics I enjoyed when I was younger and the sci-fi films and designers that have seared themselves into my visual memory.