The Great Wastes, or as was called in development “Forgotten Bastion”, is a map which saw a lot of changes through development and even more changes after it was delivered to the IH Team, and the end result is just gorgeous, which speaks volumes of the artistic capabilities of the team at King Art!
Even after all the iterations, the very core precepts are sill clearly distinguishable in the core layout and paths. The map is just an absolutely blasted wasteland, where once there used to be life now military camps embedded inside fortresses are all that remains, attacking them madness which only colonels which are detached from reality would send their troops to die in.
As stated, The Great Wastes saw a very, very high amount of iteration specially in the visual side of things. As you might see the visuals delivered were then refurbished by the art team as when I was working on the map art team hadn’t finished creating the No-Mans-Land biomes and environment, which most certainly made it a very, very challenging situation given that I was doing level art at the same time than the level design!
The core of the initial idea for the environment was to partially re-create the visual look of the siege of Fort Douaumont in the middle of the map which would transform itself into a infantry close quarters meat grinder with very limited entrances for Mechs and heavier artillery units, which if the players wanted to deploy, then they would need to circle around the middle of the map and that way create a pocket of enemy infantry which would then be blasted with artillery in the same manner that happened in the Fort Douaumont and other French Fotresses along the Maginot Line in WWI!
The lighting that is seen in the screenshots and images, is the final look the map had in the delivery I made to King Art, and even when I believe I did a fair job given the constraints, I am just blown away by the final look of it by the KingArt Games team😍🤟
Hopefully you guys get to enjoy some of the true WWI trench warfarre experience while playing Iron Harvest on it! I know for certain that I am!