Blackstar - A Sci-Fi/Fantasy MMO
Blackstar was a cool, stylized MMO set in a hybrid genre sci-fi/fantasy universe. It involved lots of space combat, with players flying their own small spaceships (think X-wing ships from Star Wars), and ground-based dungeons, cities, etc. I totally loved the look of the game!
Here are a couple of in-game shots of a huge ship called the Ion Maiden. This ship is big enough to serve as a sort of 'terrain' in the level. Players would fly around in their ship, encountering groups of aliens at various areas of the ship's exterior and interior, and eventually they would gain entrance to the ship's interior and finish their adventure on foot, exploring a portion of the vast craft and hopefully gaining SPACE LOOT.
Another shot of the back of the Ion Maiden. The ship was made by me and another artist. I worked on the back of the ship, and some of the interior (a cargo hold area...the ship is like a huge oil tanker). I also made the shaders used on the ship, and created other aspects of the environment such as lighting, fog (SPACE FOG! It's quite hazy out in space, as it turns out), background objects and such.
The approach to textures for much of the game was clean and sparce, without grunge and detail that you might normally find. Much of the detail comes from nicely defined normal maps, as opposed to detail in the main texture. Below is a screen shot of the interior of a space station.
