My level design class is coming along nicely, and I now have something to show for the effort. The following is my initial concept painting for the environment I’ll be designing and building.

Back Story:

The setting is an extra-solar space colony constructed and operated by robotic intelligence. The city was autonomously constructed by tiny swarm robots while a colony ship traversed interstellar space to the planet. The city was therefor constructed for human living by robots with no concept of emotion, comfort or any form of human culture. The resulting city is a cold, efficient machine run by an advanced robotic artificial intelligence.

The grid in the sky is the dome around the city, keeping in the atmosphere needed to sustain human life. As it turns out, though, I’ve decided to construct an interior of the living area (that giant tower in the middle of the image) for the level design. I am going to do my best to replicate the same feeling and mood expressed in the concept art into the interior and possibly have windows showing the rest of the city.

I’ve also been working away at imagining how a robotic intelligence would design a human living space, and what it would do to maximize efficiency with complete disregard for comfort and privacy. I must also make sure to not have the robot mind come across as evil or malicious, but simply misunderstanding of the subtler human needs and emotions.

The architecture is loosely based on Bauhaus and Modern architecture. This seemed like an appropriate style for a robotic mind, incorporating asymmetry, hard angles and intersecting cubes.

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