The Art of Field of Glory: Kingdoms

Making the art for Field of Glory: Kingdoms was a lot of fun but had some very challenging aspects – especially when it came to combining the style and feel of medieval manuscripts with the practical needs of the game.

The main source of inspiration for the visuals of Field of Glory: Kingdoms is early medieval art. I believe that the illustrations are the “soul” of the game, and imitate the style of the Mozarabic manuscripts of the 8th-10th centuries. The event and scenario screens are something I tried to imbue with narrative, telling a little story on each of them and taking advantage of the expressiveness of the art style. I had a great time doing those. The User Interface combines gold, wood and fabric with medieval decor to create a period atmosphere without becoming too visually noisy. Cultural differences have been taken into account and each cultural group has its own set of portraits and particular decoration, in addition to using their symbols on the shields.

This has all required a fair bit of research into the medieval world. My main sources have been public online libraries and the medieval illuminated manuscripts themselves. Historical specialists were consulted to verify the authenticity of the heraldry on the coats of arms, for example.

All art in any historical video game has to make adaptations to the original material it is based on, to make it understandable to the eyes of today’s viewer and make it functional. I also like to introduce some hidden jokes in the art.

The biggest challenge though was combining the pre-Romanesque art of the illustrations with the “realistic” look of the UI, which imitated physical objects. The maps are a great example here. While the maps were put together in Substance Designer, all the elements were hand drawn and you’ll see many of the same influences and techniques, in fact some of the same brush marks, as Field of Glory: Medieval. We had a small range of terrain types and defining a look for each took time and iteration but was relatively straight forward.

Readability rather than realism is always the goal on the map so real world scale is ignored. Blending between them though, so the map didn’t look too artificially patchy, without causing confusion was the tricky part. Detail was kept relatively low to aid readability, so it was easy to look at for long periods of time, and so it didn’t distract from more important informational layers.

The medieval parchment look was very much of secondary concern to the base map, and the last element to be added. The majority of time on the parchment was spent finding the best scale, proportion and position. Too big and you don’t see them, too small and they’re too dominant, the wrong place and they can make busy terrain difficult to read (I’m looking at you UK!). It was blended until it felt right, and then knocked back just a little bit more. We’d rather it be missed than obscure information. In the end, I’m really pleased with how it’s all turned out. We have the feel of a medieval manuscript, but still have something that supports play.