Part of our workflow in bringing RATS to life is texturing our models. An amazing amount of thought and detail goes into each of the objects put into the game. In working with UDK, we have the ability to create stunning materials that truly bring our objects to life.

In order to take advantage of this system, we have to make sure that we generate textures covering at least 3 basic categories. Those are the diffuse, specular and normal map channels of a material. The diffuse texture controls the general color of a surface. The specular texture controls the color and amount of light that is bounced off of the surface. The normal map is a bump map texture that gives fine control over small details such as dents, scratches and elements on the object such as bolts, screws and rivets aswell as any engravings.

Using mudbox, we are able to generate extremely detailed textures by working in multiple layers and previewing our textures in each of the 3 channels for diffuse, specular and bump. This gives us instant feedback on what we’re going to be seeing in the game because we are actually painting the bumps and the light while we work.

Below is an example of this in action. Here, Hitpawz takes our latest enemy weapon, the MP40 and creates the entire set of textures from scratch. It took roughly 4 hours to do this work and it is entirely painted by hand. The video is sped up 12x to give a more general overview of the process, rather than a detailed look which would just take way too long. Enjoy.

We’ve been hard at work since E3 finished and now we thought it was time to start sharing some of that progress. New art has been completed to help fill out the world but mostly went through an optimization phase. In a game world like in R.A.T.S. assets can quickly become high in polygon counts and we often have to tune these assets back as much as possible without sacrificing quality. This becomes a constant practice as we go along in development.

R.A.T.S. Army Rat

The characters probably went through the most overhaul in terms of optimization. During E3 our demonstration was about RATS versus RATS in a team versus game style to put the players at the shadow directly into combat action. We had planned it this way. We didn’t want to potentially confuse anyone or cause a game-play scenario that would take a few minutes to grasp so we threw everyone into a five minute limited team death-match.

Although that is a likely scenario, since such a game-play mode will be available, we had to continue with our other planned enemies and combat scenarios. During testing we had a large swarm of ANTS to battle against. With their large numbers, it was exciting, but our frame-rates suffered due to their original higher polygon creation. They were optimized and given a full texture and material overhaul. This sparked the idea of creating a more complex material setup to provide several visual varieties for each ANT. This same idea was then inherited over to the SPIDER as well.

R.A.T.S. Ant

Take a look at our updated gallery to view more screen-shots of these enemies, items, environments and more. Shortly we will be uploading our second promotional video for R.A.T.S. which soon ends the Alpha phase for R.A.T.S. and goes into Beta.